The most comprehensive paid media benchmark in travel

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AI

Google Analytics Now Tracks AI Assistant Traffic. Here's What to Do With It.

By Allison Brown

Google Analytics rolled out a dedicated AI Assistant channel in Default Channel Group reports, giving marketers a clearer picture of how users are finding websites through ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI chatbots.

The update automatically tags this traffic with a new ai-assistant medium value and groups it under an "AI Assistant" channel, no manual setup required.

For travel brands, this is worth paying attention to. As more travelers turn to AI assistants for destination research and trip planning, understanding how much referral traffic is coming from these sources is becoming a meaningful piece of the organic visibility puzzle.

Our advice: use it as a benchmark.

A few things worth doing today:

• Check your GA4 reports for the new "AI Assistant" channel and establish a baseline
• Note which pages are driving that traffic, those are your AI-visible assets worth doubling down on
• If you're seeing low or no volume, that's signal too, it may be time to evaluate how well your content is structured for AI citation

This is still early days, but the measurement infrastructure is now in place. The brands paying attention now will be the ones with the data advantage later.

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SEO/GEO

Why You Still Need SEO: How Generative Engine Optimization Works

By Emily Souydalay

Your customers are no longer searching only on Google. They're asking ChatGPT or Claude to plan their trip, Google AI Mode for the best tours in the city, Gemini to compare operators, and Google's AI Overviews to summarize what matters before a single click.

The question isn't whether AI reshapes travel discovery - it's whether the AI answering those questions mentions you, describes you accurately, and recommends you over the competitor it cites in your place.

So if the goal is to show up in Generative AI Search, does SEO still matter?

What GEO is and what it isn't

SEO still matters. Google's updated Search Central documentation, released May 15, 2026, reinforces that SEO is still relevant for AI search. The content AI search surfaces as valuable is rooted in Google's core search ranking and quality systems. GEO isn't a replacement for SEO; it's a second layer building on a strong SEO base.

Generative Engine Optimization is the work of making sure key large language models, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and AI-native search surfaces like Google AI Overviews can reach your site, understand what you offer, and represent your brand accurately. It's a second layer applied to the same pages and infrastructure as SEO, engineered for how AI reads, retrieves, and cites.

For example, at Propellic, when we rewrite a page for a target keyword, we're also engineering it for easy AI retrieval: clear section structure, consistent entity framing, and structured data that helps AI models attribute your brand correctly.

Read more

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NEWS

When the itinerary becomes the headline: hantavirus and what it means for travel

Propellic Team

It started as a luxury expedition. A Dutch cruise ship, the MV Hondius, departed Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1, 2026, carrying 114 passengers who had paid between €14,000 and €22,000 for berths on a once-in-a-lifetime journey through Antarctica and some of the most remote islands on the planet.

By early May, the ship had become the center of the first hantavirus cluster ever linked to cruise travel, with three deaths and a CDC Level 3 emergency response in its wake.

What happened on the Hondius

The virus in question is the Andes strain of hantavirus, endemic to Argentina and Chile, and notable for one trait that sets it apart from all other known hantaviruses: it spreads between humans. Most hantavirus variants require direct exposure to infected rodents or their droppings. Andes can transmit through close, sustained contact, and may be airborne.

The first cases involved a Dutch couple who had traveled through Argentina before boarding. At least one is believed to have been exposed before the ship left port. From there, the virus moved through the ship's close quarters. By the time the outbreak was confirmed on May 6, eight cases had been identified, two more were suspected, and three passengers had died.

After receiving clearance from Spanish health authorities, the ship diverted to Tenerife in the Canary Islands, arriving May 10. Evacuation flights returned passengers to six European countries and Canada. The WHO currently assesses the global risk as low and has not issued restrictions on air travel.

The numbers behind the noise

Here's what makes this story particularly relevant for travel marketers: the Hondius incident didn't cool the market. Not visibly, anyway.

But the outbreak did move one number meaningfully: travel insurance. Purchases of "Cancel for Any Reason" and "Interruption for Any Reason" upgrades nearly doubled, from 10% in early 2025 to 19% in the same window of 2026. That's a behavioral signal worth watching. Travelers aren't retreating from ambitious itineraries. They're hedging them.

The bigger picture for travel brands

The Hondius outbreak isn't just a cruise story. It's a useful lens on a broader shift in how travelers evaluate risk, especially at the high end of the market.

Expedition travel, "last chance tourism" to climate-sensitive destinations, and remote adventure itineraries have all grown sharply in the past few years. The travelers who book these trips are experienced, well-resourced, and increasingly aware that remote doesn't mean risk-free. If anything, the more isolated the destination, the further from the nearest hospital.

Scientists also flagged something the industry will need to track longer term: hantavirus-carrying rodents are expanding their geographic range, likely driven by climate change. More than 100 hantavirus cases were recorded globally between June 2025 and early May 2026, roughly double the previous year's count. The Andes outbreak on the Hondius is unusual, but the conditions that enable it are not becoming rarer.

Expedition and adventure operators face new scrutiny on biosecurity protocols. Tour operators departing from or transiting through endemic regions need to understand pathogen risk as part of their product design. And destination marketing organizations in affected areas are navigating a communication challenge that didn't exist in their playbooks a few years ago.

What this means for how you show up

The travelers most likely to book your highest-value experiences are the same ones paying attention to these developments. They're not necessarily only looking for reassurance. They want transparency, accurate risk framing, and evidence that the brands they trust have thought this through.

That means the brands that win in this environment will be the ones addressing it directly, without alarm and without spin.

We are all familiar with the experience from COVID-19. Health and safety infrastructure is now part of the product. Handled well, it's a differentiator.

The Andes virus remains the only known hantavirus strain capable of human-to-human transmission. WHO continues to assess the global public health risk as low. For updated guidance, visit the CDC Hantavirus Situation Summary and the WHO Disease Outbreak Notice.

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