TL;DR The way guests discover and choose hotels is shifting from search engines to AI assistants and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. This “Answer Economy” rewards hotels that provide structured, credible, and richly detailed information that AI can trust. For boutique hotels, LLM optimization means becoming the authoritative source for your own story, so AI assistants recommend your property directly to potential guests, reducing reliance on OTAs and boosting direct bookings. — The New Digital Concierge is an AI Imagine this: A traveler says to their phone: “Find me a charming boutique hotel near Hilton Head with a balcony and a great coffee shop nearby.” They’re not scrolling through dozens of blue links on Google. Instead, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, etc. responds instantly with: “The Inn & Club at Harbour Town – a boutique on-island, with private balconies in some rooms. Harbour Town Bakery &