Lighthouse Acquires Hotelrank.ai, Adding AI Visibility Intelligence to Connect AI
Acquisition strengthens AI discoverability analytics, allowing hotels to track and optimize performance across AI-powered travel platforms including ChatGPT and Gemini
Lighthouse, the AI Commercial Operating Platform for the travel and hospitality industry, today announced the acquisition of Hotelrank.ai, the leading AI visibility and optimization platform for hotels. The acquisition adds a measurement layer into Lighthouse's Connect AI solution, giving hotels the ability to manage their appearance, ranking, and performance across AI travel platforms including ChatGPT and Gemini.
Closing the AI visibility gap
AI-powered travel planning is growing faster than any distribution channel in hospitality history. The opportunity for direct bookings through AI channels is significant, but most hotels have no way to measure or influence how AI platforms perceive, recommend or link to their properties.
Lighthouse launched Connect AI to make hotels discoverable, understood and bookable by AI agents. With Hotelrank.ai, Lighthouse now adds the measurement layer: real-time analytics that show hotels how they rank across AI platforms, how their perception compares to competitors and whether AI agents are directing travelers to book directly or through OTAs.
“Connect AI gives hotels the ability to be discovered and booked through AI travel platforms. Hotelrank.ai completes the picture by showing them exactly how they're performing in this new channel,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of Lighthouse. “Hoteliers have spent years optimizing for discovery and conversion funnels. The next wave of innovation is about agentic discovery and conversion where hotels can reshape their growth strategy. The hotels that figure this out early will have a real competitive advantage.”
“AI is becoming one of the most important discovery channels in hospitality, and hotels need the same level of analytics and optimization they have for every other channel,” said Nicolas Sitter, co-founder of Hotelrank.ai. “Joining Lighthouse means we can deliver that at a scale and depth no standalone tool could achieve. Together, we're building the definitive platform for hotels to win in AI-powered travel.”
From visibility to performance: A complete AI distribution solution
Hotelrank.ai was built to solve a problem that did not exist five years ago: understanding how AI recommends hotels. The platform runs structured queries across major AI models, tracking where and how a hotel appears in responses, monitoring citations and rankings and analyzing competitive positioning. Hotels gain insight into their AI visibility score, perception attributes, direct-vs-OTA link distribution and performance trends over time.
Combined with Connect AI, the solution will enable hotels to:
Monitor AI visibility: Track how the property appears across ChatGPT, Gemini and emerging AI platforms, with visibility scores updated over time.
Optimize for direct bookings: Measure the split between direct hotel links and OTA links in AI responses, and take action to increase direct booking share.
Benchmark against competitors: Compare AI rankings and perception scores against competitive sets and traveler personas.
Connect and convert: Ensure the property is discoverable, accurately represented and directly bookable across all AI travel planning channels.
“Bringing together Connect AI and Hotelrank is also setting the ground for what comes next: a world where AI agents book hotels autonomously on behalf of travelers. The properties that understand and optimize for these agents now will capture a disproportionate share of that demand,” said Benjamin Pipat, co-founder of Hotelrank.ai.
Availability
The AI visibility insights are available now to all Connect AI customers. To learn more about Connect AI, visit mylighthouse.com/connect-ai
About Hotelrank.ai
Hotelrank.ai is the leading AI visibility and optimization platform for the hospitality industry. The platform enables hotels to monitor, analyze and improve how they appear across AI-powered travel planning platforms including ChatGPT and Gemini. Through proprietary research and analytics, including the AI Hotel Landscape 2026 report covering 245,000 unique sources and 31,000+ hotels, Hotelrank.ai provides the data and insights hotels need to compete in the era of AI-driven travel. Founded in 2025, the company serves hotels across 25+ countries.
