BrandInsightAI Insights
Travel · a live data story

Package Holidays, Cruises & Tours,
according to AI

Every week we ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini the questions real UK consumers ask about package holidays, cruises & tours — and record exactly which brands they put forward. Right now, Booking.com owns the conversation.

0 AI answers this run · 0 brands named · measured, never estimated

The podium

Booking.com is the default answer.

Named in 47% of package holidays, cruises & tours answers, typically in position 1.6. Scenic follows at 18%, Marella Cruises at 8%.

Scenic
18% of answers
Booking.com
47% of answers
Marella Cruises
8% of answers
The full board

Every brand AI names, ranked.

Visibility is the share of answers naming the brand; citation share is its slice of all brand-owned pages cited; read→cited is how often its pages convert a read into a citation.

#BrandVisibilityAvg. positionCitation shareRead→cited
1Booking.com 47% 1.6 0% —
2Scenic 18% 1.6 0% —
3Marella Cruises 8% 3.0 0% —
4Celebrity Cruises 7% 3.5 0% —
5Royal Caribbean 5% 1.7 33% 33%
6On the Beach 5% 2.0 0% —
7Princess Cruises 5% 5.3 0% 0%
8TUI 5% 5.3 33% 50%
9P&O Cruises 5% 5.7 0% 0%
10MSC Cruises 5% 8.3 0% —
11Jet2holidays 3% 2.5 0% —
12Carnival Cruise Line 3% 4.5 0% —
13Cunard 3% 7.0 33% 14%
14Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines 3% 8.5 0% —
15Disney Cruise Line 2% 1.0 0% —
What AI wants here

Booking.com is named most. That is not the same as being wanted.

Being named is visibility. Underneath it, asked to rate each brand directly, the AI assistants judge it three ways — how much it stands out, how much it belongs, and how much it is returned to. They put 68% of the 38 brands rated above indifference. Disney Cruise Line leads the brands the answers name, at 82% of maximum Desire. On attraction, the most divided driver, Disney Cruise Line indexes 123 against Travel Republic at 79, on a category average of 100.

Attraction
Disney Cruise Line123
Travel Republic79
44-point spread
Affinity
Audley Travel120
Loveholidays78
42-point spread
Attachment
Disney Cruise Line117
Travel Republic78
39-point spread
Disney Cruise Line: Attraction 123, Affinity 115, Attachment 117
Disney Cruise Line
Above indifference · Ahead on all three
Viking: Attraction 113, Affinity 112, Attachment 110
Viking
Above indifference · Ahead on all three
Virgin Voyages: Attraction 113, Affinity 105, Attachment 110
Virgin Voyages
Above indifference · Chosen, not loved
AttractionAffinityAttachment

Each whorl lights one ring per index threshold cleared (84 / 92 / 100 / 108 / 116). Above indifference means Desire above two-thirds of its maximum. See the full package holidays, cruises & tours desire edition →

Who AI trusts here

The referees of package holidays, cruises & tours.

The independent sources AI models cite when answering package holidays, cruises & tours questions — the places a brand needs to be seen, reviewed and ranked.

gov.uk 11 cites
caa.co.uk 7 cites
abta.com 4 cites
cruisecritic.com 4 cites
reddit.com 4 cites
avoyatravel.com 3 cites
emmacruises.com 3 cites
endlesstravelplans.com 3 cites
metoffice.gov.uk 3 cites
forbes.com 2 cites
Read is not cited

Royal Caribbean converts reads into citations. Cunard doesn't.

When Claude or ChatGPT opens a brand's own pages while answering, does the page make the cited-sources list? Royal Caribbean converts 33% of reads; Cunard just 14%. That gap is a content problem, not a visibility problem.

Royal Caribbean · read 3×33%
Cunard · read 7×14%
Full data table
#BrandVisibilityAvg. positionCitation shareRead→cited
1Booking.com47%1.60%—
2Scenic18%1.60%—
3Marella Cruises8%3.00%—
4Celebrity Cruises7%3.50%—
5Royal Caribbean5%1.733%33%
6On the Beach5%2.00%—
7Princess Cruises5%5.30%0%
8TUI5%5.333%50%
9P&O Cruises5%5.70%0%
10MSC Cruises5%8.30%—
11Jet2holidays3%2.50%—
12Carnival Cruise Line3%4.50%—
13Cunard3%7.033%14%
14Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines3%8.50%—
15Disney Cruise Line2%1.00%—
Which AI you ask

All three models agree: Booking.com.

A rare consensus — every model puts Booking.com first, and their top-five lists overlap 25%. Winning here means winning everywhere at once.

Claude recommends
Booking.com
named in 25% of its answers
Gemini recommends
Booking.com
named in 45% of its answers
ChatGPT recommends
Booking.com
named in 70% of its answers

Brands whose visibility swings most between models — the bar per model, widest gap on the right.

Booking.com 45pp
Scenic 15pp
Marella Cruises 10pp
Jet2holidays 10pp
TUI 10pp
On the Beach 10pp
ClaudeGeminiChatGPT
The data behind this chart
BrandClaudeGeminiChatGPTSpread
Booking.com25%45%70%45pp
Scenic20%10%25%15pp
Marella Cruises5%15%5%10pp
Jet2holidays0%10%0%10pp
TUI0%10%5%10pp
On the Beach0%10%5%10pp
Norwegian Cruise Line5%0%0%5pp
Carnival Cruise Line5%5%0%5pp
Celebrity Cruises5%5%10%5pp
Disney Cruise Line5%0%0%5pp
What AI reads here

Editorial carry package holidays, cruises & tours.

Every page AI opened while answering, classified by what kind of page it is. Editorial supply the most citations; Product pages convert best — 93% of the ones models opened were actually cited.

Editorial
142 cited · 61 read only
70% of reads cited
How-to guides
122 cited · 42 read only
74% of reads cited
Listicles
52 cited · 23 read only
69% of reads cited
Comparisons
34 cited · 20 read only
63% of reads cited
Other
34 cited · 69 read only
33% of reads cited
Documentation
30 cited · 49 read only
38% of reads cited
Product pages
28 cited · 2 read only
93% of reads cited
category-page
21 cited · 6 read only
78% of reads cited
The data behind this chart
Page typeCitedRead but not citedConversion
Editorial1426170%
How-to guides1224274%
Listicles522369%
Comparisons342063%
Other346933%
Documentation304938%
Product pages28293%
category-page21678%
What gets cited

Structured data is what separates cited from ignored.

Of the package holidays, cruises & tours pages models actually opened, how much more often each feature's pages ended up in the cited sources. Structured data is worth 31 percentage points; hard statistics pages fare 24pp worse. Measured within the read population, so selection can't flatter it.

Structured data +31pp
Named author +24pp
Updated this year +14pp
Cites its sources +7pp
Answer up front +2pp
Comparison table -8pp
Specifications -10pp
Hard statistics -24pp
The data behind this chart
FeaturePages withCited %Pages withoutCited %Difference
Structured data62868%26738%+31pp
Named author42272%47348%+24pp
Updated this year25869%63755%+14pp
Cites its sources3266%86359%+7pp
Answer up front35460%54159%+2pp
Comparison table22553%67061%-8pp
Specifications5450%84160%-10pp
Hard statistics23242%66365%-24pp
Citation readiness

Princess Cruises builds pages AI can quote.

Readiness scores each brand's own pages on the structure models reward — a direct answer up front, tables, hard numbers, named authors, structured data, recency, specifications. Princess Cruises is the widest gap: well-built pages that still aren't converting into citations.

BrandReadinessPages citedPages profiled
Princess Cruises 31 0% 75
Royal Caribbean 28 33% 12
Riviera Travel 28 0% 5
Celebrity Cruises 27 0% 91
First Choice 26 0% 26
TUI 25 33% 9
Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines 21 0% 3
Andante 21 0% 3
Saga 18 0% 5
P&O Cruises 17 0% 3

Readiness is the share of eight measurable structural signals present on a brand's profiled pages. It is a build-quality measure, not a ranking of the brand.

What the answers answer

The questions package holidays, cruises & tours pages have to settle.

Read straight off the pages AI cited: the consumer questions cited content answers most often. Content that fails to settle these is content models have no reason to quote.

What is ATOL protection?
What is a package holiday?
What is the best cruise line for first-time cruisers?
Why do cruise ships miss ports?
What are the best cruise lines for first-time cruisers?
What is the difference between immersive travel and traditional sightseeing?
What is the single biggest dealbreaker for cleanliness in UK hotel reviews?
What makes The Good Hotel Guide different from other review platforms?
Keep exploring

Nineteen more categories.

Method: 20 unbranded consumer prompts per category, spread across the buying journey, run weekly against ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Read→cited uses Claude and ChatGPT only (Gemini does not separate the two). Correlational observations of model behaviour at the time of the run. Data from the run completed Sat, 17 Oct 2026 13:12:31 GMT.

scroll ↓