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DMO discoverability guide: SEO, GEO, and AEOin practice

If your destination site does not answer traveller questions, other sources will. This guide shows how to improve visibility across SEO, GEO, and AEO while protecting destination voice and partner fairness.

THE GAP MOST DMOS RECOGNISE

What is the discoverability gap for most DMOs?

DMO websites are often built around campaigns, hero imagery, and seasonal promotion. Travellers use those pages, but trip planning gets specific quickly. They want answers like where to go with a dog, which walks suit young children, where to eat local seafood, or what is worth stopping for on a route. If your site does not answer those questions, search engines and AI tools will use other sources. This is usually a capacity problem, not an ambition problem. Small teams are balancing campaigns, members, events, approvals, and stakeholder pressure at once. Producing enough useful destination content by hand is hard to sustain. Each of these is a potential entry point to your destination — but only if your website has a page that answers it.
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WHY THIS MATTERS NOW
Why does this matter more now?
Travellers still use Google in the usual way, but they also ask questions in AI tools and increasingly see AI-generated summaries in search results. Those systems favour sources that are specific, useful, and easy to trust.

If your website mostly has broad promotional pages, your destination voice can be crowded out by blogs, OTAs, publisher round-ups, and user-generated content.

For DMOs, this is not just a traffic issue. It affects authority, partner visibility, and whether your own website becomes the trusted local source.
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THE 3 PILLARS TO SEARCH VISIBILITY
What is SEO, GEO & AEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is essential for boosting your content's ranking on search engines by targeting specific keywords and queries, making it easier for users to find relevant information. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) enhances this by organizing content so AI chatbots can understand and deliver it effectively, improving user interaction. Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) goes further by crafting content that provides clear, direct answers to user questions.
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SEO
Show up in standard search results
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) matters when someone searches Google and chooses from a list of links. Your site needs pages that rank high for keywords and appear in the top search results. Ideally your pages should be in the top 10 ranking so that travellers see you in the first page of results.
GEO
Get cited by AI Chatbots
GEO (Generative engine optimisation) matters when AI tools summarise information from across the web. Clear, factual, specific destination pages are more likely to be included. LLMs fan out queries, basically a wide set of queiries and collates the top pages that are relevant. That's why it's important to have strong SEO performance. For the LLMs they are trying to find the best website pages that will help them have all the answers to use and cite back to the user.
AEO
Answer direct questions clearly
AEO matters when a traveller asks one direct question and expects one useful answer. Pages that answer those questions clearly are easier for search engines and AI tools to use. LLMs fan out queries, basically a wide set of queiries and collates the top pages that are relevant.
IS THIS YOUR SITUATION
Does this sound like your destination team?
If two or three of these statements feel true today, this is probably your situation.

"Our team is too small to commission destination guides at the scale we need."

"Most of our website is built around campaigns, not specific traveller questions."

"Travellers are more likely to find blogs, OTAs, or publisher round-ups than our own pages."

"We know what travellers ask, but we do not have time to turn that knowledge into useful pages."

"Member businesses want better visibility, but we cannot represent them consistently across the site."

"We want more useful destination content under our own domain, not spread across multiple platforms."


If most of these feel true, you are not unusually behind. Many destination teams are in exactly this position. If only some feel true, there may still be quick wins in where your site is thin and which pages should come first.
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"We're not just promoting the West Highlands any more, we're becoming the authoritative voice for it online. In just a few months working with Obvlo, we've seen our destination appear in Google results and AI Overviews in ways that simply weren't possible before. And our member businesses are being surfaced alongside it."
Frazer Coupland
CEO, Visit West Highlands
CASE STUDY
What does this look like in practice for DMOs?
Within three months of working with Obvlo, Visit West Highlands had content appearing in Google organic search, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT. Member businesses were being surfaced alongside it too.

Visit West Highlands is the DMO for a large region of Scotland, including Ben Nevis, Skye, and the north-west coast. The missing piece was enough useful content on its own website.

Using Obvlo and the destination's SEO direction, hundreds of destination pages were published under the DMO domain in a local tone of voice.

Want to see how Obvlo helped Visit West Highlands improve content discoverability across SEO, GEO and AEO?

Ready to find out if your destination is visible to AI search?

Ready to empower your team with local expertise?

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