Companies and other commercial websites take 76.2% of the citations in AI answers to travel questions, the highest share of 12 industries, against 8.1% for government and university websites. Delta's website is the top source on both ChatGPT and Gemini.
Analysis of 1,600 AI answers to 400 travel questions · ChatGPT and Gemini, September 2026
Key Findings
- 1.Companies and other commercial websites take 76.2% of the citations in AI answers to travel questions, the highest share of 12 industries, against 8.1% for government and university websites.
- 2.delta.com is the most-cited website in AI answers to travel questions, appearing in 13.2% of ChatGPT and Gemini answers that cite a source.
- 3.Delta is the top travel source on both engines, cited in 13% of ChatGPT's sourced travel answers and 13.5% of Gemini's.
- 4.Gemini answers 37.1% of travel questions without citing any source, against 1% for ChatGPT.
- 5.Flight-route sites flightconnections.com and directflights.com appear in 12.4% and 10.9% of ChatGPT's sourced travel answers, and in under 1% of Gemini's.
Summary
A traveler asks an AI assistant which airlines fly direct from Atlanta to Lisbon, or how strict the carry-on rules are. The sources under the answer are airline pages, flight-route databases and Google's own travel tools. Forums and social media barely register.
For airlines, hotels, tour operators and travel publishers, that is good news and a warning. A citation is the link an AI answer shows as its evidence, and it is one of the few ways an answer sends a reader to a website. In travel, those links mostly go to businesses, so a travel company can win them, but only with the specific facts travelers ask for.
Companies and other commercial websites take 76.2% of travel citations, more than in any other industry, while government and university websites take 8.1%. delta.com leads at 13.2% of sourced answers, followed by google.com at 9.9% and the Federal Aviation Administration's faa.gov at 8.2%.
What we measured
On September 23, 2026 we asked ChatGPT and Gemini 400 travel questions, each twice, as part of a wider study of AI sources across 12 industries. That gave 1,600 answers, 1,295 of which cited at least one source, and 694 different websites were cited across them.
A website's share is the percentage of sourced answers that cite it at least once, counting all pages from the same site together. We also sorted every citation by the kind of website behind it: government and education (.gov, .edu and .mil addresses), nonprofits and associations (.org), media and reference publishers, user-generated sites such as forums, social media and video platforms, and companies and other commercial websites. The same measures were taken for the other 11 industries.
Travel is the most commercial industry in AI answers
No other industry comes close to that share except software, and it is the reverse of subjects like home improvement and fitness, where government agencies and universities take 39.2% and 45.5% of citations. Travel questions are about routes, fares, schedules and rules that businesses set and publish themselves, so the businesses are the primary source. Government and university websites take 8.1%, 11th of 12 industries, and the FAA is the only government site in the top ten.
Source: Suff Digital analysis of 1,600 AI answers to 400 travel questions · ChatGPT and Gemini, September 2026
| Industry | Top source | Share of sourced answers | Government and university share | User-generated share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Legal | americanbar.org | 14.7% | 20.6% | 3.8% |
| Health | nih.gov | 32.3% | 36.2% | 0.6% |
| Money | irs.gov | 13.8% | 30.2% | 1.7% |
| Real estate | consumerfinance.gov | 27.2% | 26.9% | 1.6% |
| Home improvement | energy.gov | 11.8% | 39.2% | 1.6% |
| Travel | delta.com | 13.2% | 8.1% | 2.8% |
| Cars | consumerreports.org | 6.7% | 11.4% | 2.9% |
| Software | apple.com | 24.3% | 4.7% | 3.2% |
| College | consumerfinance.gov | 13.1% | 32.1% | 2.1% |
| Fitness | nih.gov | 41.5% | 45.5% | 0.2% |
| Pets | vcahospitals.com | 18.4% | 10.1% | 3.1% |
| Recipes | usda.gov | 37.5% | 31.8% | 2.1% |
Traveler forums are a small part of the picture. User-generated content, meaning forums, social media and video, takes 2.8% of travel citations, and Reddit ranks 16th at 2.7% of sourced answers.
Airlines and flight-data sites lead the source list
Delta's lead is consistent: it is the top source on ChatGPT (13%) and on Gemini (13.5%), the one website both engines put first. Behind it come google.com (9.9%), the FAA (8.2%), and two flight-route databases, FlightConnections (7.8%) and DirectFlights (6.6%). Booking and fare sites follow: Kayak (5.4%), the fare-alert service Going (5.1%) and Expedia (4%). Google appears twice, through google.com and its blog.google site (4.9%).
Source: Suff Digital analysis of 1,600 AI answers to 400 travel questions · ChatGPT and Gemini, September 2026
| Rank | Website | All answers | ChatGPT | Gemini |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | delta.com | 13.2% | 13% | 13.5% |
| 2 | google.com | 9.9% | 12% | 6.6% |
| 3 | faa.gov | 8.2% | 10.5% | 4.6% |
| 4 | flightconnections.com | 7.8% | 12.4% | 0.6% |
| 5 | directflights.com | 6.6% | 10.9% | 0% |
| 6 | wikipedia.org | 5.7% | 4.2% | 8.2% |
| 7 | kayak.com | 5.4% | 6.8% | 3.2% |
| 8 | going.com | 5.1% | 4% | 6.8% |
| 9 | blog.google | 4.9% | 7.2% | 1.4% |
| 10 | flightsfrom.com | 4.6% | 5.9% | 2.4% |
| 11 | expedia.com | 4% | 6.1% | 0.8% |
| 12 | southwest.com | 3.4% | 4.3% | 2% |
| 13 | reuters.com | 3.2% | 5.3% | 0% |
| 14 | simpleflying.com | 3.2% | 0% | 8.2% |
| 15 | jettly.com | 2.8% | 0% | 7.2% |
What wins here is structured, factual data: which routes exist, which airports connect, what the rules are. Airlines publish that on their own pages, and route databases organise it by airport. An airline's policy page or a route list is easier for an AI engine to quote than a travel story.
ChatGPT and Gemini agree on Delta, then split
Below Delta, the engines choose differently. ChatGPT's next sources are FlightConnections (12.4%), google.com (12%) and DirectFlights (10.9%); Gemini cites the two route databases in under 1% of its answers and turns instead to Wikipedia and the aviation news site Simple Flying (8.2% each) and the private-jet site Jettly (7.2%), which ChatGPT never cites.
Source: Suff Digital analysis of 1,600 AI answers to 400 travel questions · ChatGPT and Gemini, September 2026
| Measure | ChatGPT | Gemini |
|---|---|---|
| Answers with no source | 1% | 37.1% |
| Websites per sourced answer | 2.5 | 2.7 |
| Most-cited website | delta.com | delta.com |
| Share of sourced answers citing it | 13% | 13.5% |
ChatGPT cites a source in 99% of travel answers and lists 2.5 websites on average. Gemini cites a source in 62.9% and lists 2.7. Across both engines, 19.1% of travel answers cite nothing, almost all of them from Gemini. A travel site can be well placed on one engine and missing from the other.
What this means for travel and hospitality brands
Publish the facts travelers ask about, in a form an AI engine can lift: direct routes and seasonal schedules, baggage and pet rules, check-in and cancellation terms, what is included in a rate. Put each fact on a clear, current, crawlable page with the date it applies, and keep policy pages in plain text rather than inside PDFs or booking widgets.
Hotels and tour operators can apply the same approach locally: airport transfer times, parking costs, accessible rooms, the nearest direct flights. Those specific answers are what AI engines cite, and a hotel seo program built around them makes a property's own site the source rather than a booking platform.
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<p style="font:14px/1.5 system-ui,sans-serif">Source: <a href="https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/ai-sources-travel-questions">Companies Get 76.2% of AI Citations for Travel Questions vs 8.1% for Government Sites - Suff Digital</a></p>
Cite this study
Suff Digital. (2026). Companies Get 76.2% of AI Citations for Travel Questions vs 8.1% for Government Sites. https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/ai-sources-travel-questions
Companies Get 76.2% of AI Citations for Travel Questions vs 8.1% for Government Sites - Suff Digital - https://www.suffdigital.com/resources/data-studies/ai-sources-travel-questions
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