Research · Hotels
Hotel websites and AI by city: 44 US metros ranked
By Cloute · Published October 2, 2026
The short answer
Cloute requested 2,280 hotel pages in October 2026 as a plain automated visitor and ranked the 44 US metros with at least 30 hotels in the sample by the share that could not be read. Orlando, FL was highest at 87.1% and Las Vegas, NV lowest at 33.3%, against 63.9% overall. The differences mostly reflect which hotel brands are in each city's sample, because the brand's website decides whether a property page can be reached.
Orlando, FL: the highest share of hotel pages that could not be read
Las Vegas, NV: the lowest
across all 2,280 hotel pages
The ranking
| Rank | Metro | Hotel pages tested | Could not be read | On a brand website |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Orlando, FL | 31 | 87.1% | 100% |
| 2 | Minneapolis, MN | 31 | 83.9% | 96.8% |
| 3 | Tampa, FL | 54 | 83.3% | 88.9% |
| 4 | Phoenix, AZ | 30 | 83.3% | 86.7% |
| 5 | Birmingham, AL | 32 | 81.2% | 93.8% |
| 6 | Omaha, NE | 32 | 81.2% | 96.9% |
| 7 | Charlotte, NC | 48 | 75% | 87.5% |
| 8 | Philadelphia, PA | 55 | 74.5% | 83.6% |
| 9 | Salt Lake City, UT | 38 | 73.7% | 84.2% |
| 10 | Kansas City, MO | 34 | 73.5% | 85.3% |
| 11 | St. Louis, MO | 37 | 73% | 86.5% |
| 12 | Washington, DC | 47 | 72.3% | 76.6% |
| 13 | Atlanta, GA | 52 | 71.2% | 84.6% |
| 14 | Dallas, TX | 60 | 70% | 81.7% |
| 15 | Houston, TX | 59 | 69.5% | 91.5% |
| 16 | Pittsburgh, PA | 35 | 68.6% | 82.9% |
| 17 | Chicago, IL | 50 | 68% | 80% |
| 18 | San Antonio, TX | 57 | 66.7% | 91.2% |
| 19 | Baltimore, MD | 53 | 66% | 88.7% |
| 20 | Virginia Beach, VA | 53 | 66% | 81.1% |
| 21 | Oklahoma City, OK | 35 | 65.7% | 91.4% |
| 22 | Nashville, TN | 46 | 65.2% | 93.5% |
| 23 | Austin, TX | 53 | 64.2% | 81.1% |
| 24 | Boston, MA | 39 | 64.1% | 74.4% |
| 25 | Indianapolis, IN | 58 | 63.8% | 94.8% |
| 26 | Milwaukee, WI | 31 | 61.3% | 67.7% |
| 27 | Louisville, KY | 31 | 61.3% | 90.3% |
| 28 | San Diego, CA | 51 | 60.8% | 64.7% |
| 29 | Columbus, OH | 53 | 60.4% | 92.5% |
| 30 | Seattle, WA | 60 | 60% | 78.3% |
| 31 | Miami, FL | 32 | 59.4% | 68.8% |
| 32 | Portland, OR | 34 | 58.8% | 61.8% |
| 33 | Albuquerque, NM | 31 | 58.1% | 87.1% |
| 34 | New York, NY | 33 | 54.5% | 66.7% |
| 35 | Jacksonville, FL | 43 | 53.5% | 88.4% |
| 36 | Boise, ID | 40 | 52.5% | 65% |
| 37 | Tulsa, OK | 39 | 51.3% | 71.8% |
| 38 | Los Angeles, CA | 38 | 50% | 60.5% |
| 39 | Memphis, TN | 46 | 50% | 73.9% |
| 40 | San Francisco, CA | 74 | 48.6% | 47.3% |
| 41 | New Orleans, LA | 54 | 48.1% | 61.1% |
| 42 | Denver, CO | 61 | 47.5% | 86.9% |
| 43 | Park City, UT | 40 | 37.5% | 42.5% |
| 44 | Las Vegas, NV | 60 | 33.3% | 38.3% |
What explains the spread
- The brand mix. 76.8% of pages on a hotel brand's website could not be read, against 13% of hotels on their own website, so a city with more independent hotels in the sample ranks lower.
- Not robots.txt. Where we could read it, no hotel page's host blocked an AI search crawler.
Across 64,441 AI answers about local businesses, engines named a business 84% of the time when they had opened one of its own pages while answering, and 16% when they had not.
How this was measured
Each hotel's own page, as linked from its Google Maps listing, was requested once in October 2026, identifying as an ordinary web browser, without running JavaScript, from one network location. A page counts as not read if the answer was an HTTP 403 or 429, a bot-challenge page, or no answer within 10 seconds. We never sent a request pretending to be an AI crawler, so these figures describe how a site treats automated clients in general. A brand can let verified AI crawlers through while refusing other automated clients.
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Which city's hotel websites are hardest for automated visitors to read?
Of the 44 metros ranked, Orlando, FL: 27 of 31 hotel pages (87.1%) could not be read by a plain automated request.
Why do cities differ?
Mostly because of which hotel brands are in each sample. The brand's website decides whether a property page answers an automated visitor.
Does this mean ChatGPT cannot read those hotels' pages?
Not necessarily. We did not pretend to be an AI crawler, and a brand can let verified AI crawlers through while refusing other automated clients.
How to cite this research
Cloute (October 2026). Hotel websites and AI by city: 44 US metros ranked. https://cloute.ai/research/hotel-websites-by-metro
The underlying data is open under CC BY 4.0: github.com/luked9/cloute-ai-visibility-research.
About Cloute. Cloute is an AI visibility company for local businesses. It measures how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews recommend a business against its local competitors, and works every month to move it to the top.