Kollective Completes Initial Data Collection for the Boutique Hotel AI Index

Hospitality marketing agency Kollective has completed the initial data collection phase of the Boutique Hotel AI Index, an independent research project examining how AI platforms recommend boutique hotels to travellers.

Conducted over 15 collection runs between 18 June and 19 July 2026, the project analysed responses from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot across 100 destinations worldwide using consumer-facing versions of each platform.

The completed dataset contains:

• 28,600 AI-generated answers

• 156,074 hotel naming events

• 9,895 distinct hotels following entity resolution

• 252,032 cited-source records across 11,811 domains

As AI-assisted travel planning becomes increasingly common, understanding how hotels are selected and appear within AI-generated recommendations is becoming an important consideration for hotel marketers. Despite growing industry interest, there has been relatively little independent research into how these systems recommend boutique hotels or how consistently they behave across different AI platforms.

The Boutique Hotel AI Index was created to provide a repeatable, transparent methodology for studying AI hotel recommendations at scale.

Rather than evaluating individual hotels, the research focuses on how AI recommendation systems behave, including recommendation volatility, platform differences, hotel visibility patterns, citation behaviour and the impact of prompt design.

The project also includes dedicated research examining regional variation, recommendation stability through same-day repeat testing and how different prompt wording influences AI recommendations.

"Every hotelier is asking how AI platforms decide which properties to recommend, but there is still very little independent data available. The Boutique Hotel AI Index was designed to move that conversation beyond screenshots and assumptions. By analysing thousands of recommendations using a consistent methodology, we hope to provide practical evidence that helps the industry better understand how AI hotel discovery is evolving."

Lynn Patchett, Founder and Head of Search & AI Visibility, Kollective

Over the coming weeks, Kollective will publish findings covering recommendation volatility, cross-platform differences, citation patterns, geographic variation and the relationship between hotel characteristics and AI recommendations.