How AI Prompts Can Help Discover Hidden, Off-Season Experiences

From SEO to EO: A Quiet Revolution in Travel Discovery

For years, tourism marketing has focused on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) ensuring your business ranks highly on Google. But AI assistants are transforming this landscape. Unlike search engines that show multiple options, AI chats present one single, conversational answer.

That means a traveller might ask:

“Where can I go for a peaceful coastal escape in November with local food and good walking trails?”

And the AI might recommend just one or two destinations, without showing how it made that choice.

This shift from “search results” to “suggested experiences” is what’s now being termed Experience Optimisation. For small tourism businesses and destinations, it poses both a challenge and an opportunity.

A Challenge for Small Businesses

While large hotel chains and well-known destinations may soon pay to feature in AI-generated recommendations, small businesses could find it harder to be seen. Without transparency into how AI ranks responses, the risk is that smaller, more authentic experiences get lost, precisely the kinds of experiences that make travel sustainable and enriching.

However, there’s still hope. The same AI tools that are changing search habits can also empower travellers to look beyond the obvious, if they know how to use them.

AI Prompts Travellers Can Use to Discover Hidden Gems

To encourage more authentic, off-season, and low-impact travel, travellers can try prompts like:

• “Suggest some lesser-known destinations or regions that are great to visit outside the main tourist season.”

• “Where can I stay with a local host near national parks or walking trails in X country?”

• “Find cultural or food experiences run by local communities near X city or X town.”

• “Which coastal towns in x country are best to visit in x month to avoid crowds but enjoy good weather?”

• “What destinations support sustainable tourism and community-based projects in x region?”

Prompts like these can help redirect attention from overcrowded hotspots to smaller, locally driven enterprises that depend on off-season travel for survival.

An Opportunity for Destinations: Preparing for AI Discovery

For destinations, the key will be ensuring that high-quality, accurate, and sustainability-focused information is available online. AI tools learn from public data, so every time a destination’s story, sustainability certification, or local business is clearly presented and tagged, it becomes more discoverable.

To prepare for this next era of AI-driven travel discovery, destinations and businesses can:

1. Maintain accurate, up-to-date information on official websites, Google Business Profiles, and booking platforms.

2. Use clear, descriptive language that aligns with what travellers ask for, think “locally guided walks,” “low-season getaways,” or “community-run eco-lodges.”

3. Highlight sustainability credentials and community impact. AI tools value credibility and verified data.

4. Collaborate regionally, ensuring consistent messaging about what makes a destination authentic and responsible.

How Destinations Can Stay Visible in the AI Era

AI won’t replace the human curiosity that drives travel, but it will influence how that curiosity is guided. The challenge for the tourism sector is to ensure that the technology doesn’t narrow travellers’ choices but broadens their horizons.

At Acorn Tourism Consulting, we’re exploring how data, storytelling, and digital readiness can help small destinations remain visible in this new era of Experience Optimisation. By working together, we can ensure AI-powered discovery supports the kind of travel that benefits both people and planet. If your destination or organisation would like to understand how to adapt your digital presence for this evolving landscape, contact us at nicole@acorntourism.co.uk