Our AI citation gap study found that when guests ask ChatGPT where to book a vacation rental, it tells most of them to start with a local company. The obvious next question: how many of those guests actually click through to a manager’s website?
So we pulled 12 months of Google Analytics data from 41 vacation rental managers’ websites, 8.4 million sessions in all. At the median site, ChatGPT sent 6 of every 1,000 visits. Email sent 24. Paid ads sent 310.
Six in a thousand is small. It also doubled in a year, and that’s the part worth planning around.
The Findings In 60 Seconds
- ChatGPT is still a rounding error. 0.58% of visits at the median manager’s site over the past 12 months. Paid ads sent about 50 times as many visits, and email about 4 times as many.
- It doubled. ChatGPT’s share of visits at the median site went from 0.37% last winter to 0.73% this fall, and 34 of 42 sites grew. Same months a year apart, on the 10 largest sites: 0.34% to 0.67%.
- It books, too. On the 34 sites whose GA4 booking data passed our checks, ChatGPT visits brought in $473,847 of $80.7 million in website bookings: 0.59% over the year and 1.06% from August to October. Matched to the same site and month, a ChatGPT visit booked about 87 cents for every dollar other visits did, which is within the margin of error.
- It’s passing organic social first. ChatGPT sent more visits than organic social media at 2 of 42 sites last November and 9 this October.
- It isn’t passing email. Where a manager runs tagged email, email still wins almost everywhere: ChatGPT out-sent it at 5 of 33 such sites in October.
- ChatGPT visitors stick around. 72% of ChatGPT sessions were engaged sessions, against 56% for the site as a whole, and ChatGPT came out ahead at 39 of 41 sites.
- GA4 hides half of it in a yearly report. GA4 only started labeling ChatGPT visits “AI Assistant” in late May and June 2026. Over the full year, that channel shows 48% of ChatGPT visits.
What We Measured
These are 42 vacation rental managers websites in all. We pulled every session from November 2025 through October 2026 from each site’s GA4 property and grouped it the way GA4 does: direct, organic search, paid search, paid social, organic social, email, referral and the rest.
ChatGPT gets its own line. We counted every session whose source is chatgpt.com or OpenAI, whatever GA4 filed it under, and left out ChatGPT ad clicks. We report the median site, so one big manager can’t skew the result. The full method is at the end.
Where The Visits Come From
Share of all visits
All 8.4 million visits pooled: ChatGPT’s slice is 0.74%
All visits to 42 vacation rental websites (41 managers), November 2025 to October 2026, by channel. Hover or tap a slice.
| Channel | Visits per 1,000 (median site) | Share of all visits combined |
|---|---|---|
| Paid ads (search, social, PMax, display) | 310 | 34.4% |
| Direct | 291 | 26.6% |
| Organic search | 227 | 23.1% |
| Organic social | 37 | 5.9% |
| Referral | 32 | 3.9% |
| 24 | 3.3% | |
| ChatGPT | 5.8 | 0.74% |
Each median is its own middle site, so the column doesn’t add to 1,000. The right-hand column, like the chart, pools all 8.4 million sessions, which lets the biggest sites count for more, and counts each ChatGPT visit once, under ChatGPT. Either way, ChatGPT is the smallest line on the list.
Two caveats before anyone reads too much into the top of the table. These are agency clients, so paid ads run higher than they would for the average manager. And email only counts clicks that carry tracking tags. Untagged email lands in Direct, which is part of why Direct is so big.
Where The Booking Revenue Comes From
Visits don’t pay the bills. Bookings do. So we ran the same split on booking revenue: every booking made on the website, credited to the channel of the visit that booked. GA4’s booking data is shaky on a lot of vacation rental sites, because the booking engine often sits on another domain and GA4 loses track of where the guest came from. So we only used the 34 sites where it holds up. How we checked is at the end.
Share of booking revenue
$80.7 million in website bookings pooled: ChatGPT’s slice is 0.59%
Website booking revenue on 34 vacation rental websites (33 managers), November 2025 to October 2026, by the channel of the visit that booked. Hover or tap a slice.
ChatGPT visits brought in $473,847 of $80.7 million in website bookings, 0.59%. On the same sites, ChatGPT sent 0.78% of visits. 23 of the 34 sites booked at least one stay from a ChatGPT visit.
Over the full year, a ChatGPT visit was worth $8.20 in bookings and every other visit $10.85. Most of that gap is timing. 38% of the year’s ChatGPT visits came in August, September and October, when the average visit to these sites booked about $9.78. The year’s most valuable visits came in January and February, at about $13.61, before ChatGPT traffic took off.
So we compared each ChatGPT visit with other visits to the same site in the same month. On that basis, a ChatGPT visit brought in about 87 cents in bookings for every dollar from other visits. There are few enough ChatGPT bookings that this is within the margin of error: the real figure could be anywhere from about 68 cents to $1.08. What the data does show is the trend. From November to January, ChatGPT brought in 0.38% of booking revenue. From August to October, it brought in 1.06%.
It Doubled In A Year
At the median site, ChatGPT’s share of visits sat between 0.34% and 0.36% from November through February. By September it was 0.74%. Comparing November to January with August to October, the median went from 0.37% to 0.73%.
Those are different seasons, so we checked the same months a year apart on the 10 largest sites. August to October 2025, the median share was 0.34%. August to October 2026, it was 0.67%. 8 of the 10 grew. It wasn’t even, though. Two were flat, and the fastest grew 6.7 times. It could be more guests using ChatGPT, ChatGPT linking out more often, or both. This data can’t separate them.
Month By Month: The ChatGPT Traffic Tracker
Here’s the same trend as raw visits from ChatGPT, month by month, across the same sites. We add each new month to this chart as the data comes in, so check back.
Monthly tracker
ChatGPT sent 8,704 visits in October, up from 4,000 in January
ChatGPT visits to the same 42 vacation rental websites (41 managers), January 2026 to October 2026. Updated monthly. Hover or tap a month.
See the monthly numbers
| Month | ChatGPT visits | Share of all visits |
|---|---|---|
| January 2026 | 4,000 | 0.54% |
| February 2026 | 3,474 | 0.55% |
| March 2026 | 4,421 | 0.60% |
| April 2026 | 4,125 | 0.61% |
| May 2026 | 5,092 | 0.70% |
| June 2026 | 5,920 | 0.80% |
| July 2026 | 4,851 | 0.56% |
| August 2026 | 6,543 | 0.87% |
| September 2026 | 8,236 | 1.25% |
| October 2026 | 8,704 | 1.23% |
It’s Passing Organic Social First
Last November, ChatGPT sent more visits than organic social media at 2 of 42 sites. By October it was 9. At about 1 in 5 managers’ sites, ChatGPT now sends more visitors than Facebook, Instagram and every other unpaid social channel combined.
You’ll see claims that AI is already beating email. In our data that’s only true where nobody sends tracked email. ChatGPT out-sent email at 16 of all 60 client sites in October, which sounds like a lot until you look at which sites. Among the 33 vacation rental sites where email is at least 1% of visits, ChatGPT beat it at 5. An email list still sends a manager about 4 visits for every one ChatGPT sends.
ChatGPT Visitors Stick Around
An engaged session in GA4 is one that lasts at least 10 seconds, views two or more pages, or triggers a key event (GA4’s name for a conversion). 72% of ChatGPT sessions met that bar at the median site, against 56% for each site’s traffic overall. ChatGPT beat its own site’s average at 39 of 41 sites.
That fits what you’d expect. Someone who asked ChatGPT where to stay and then clicked your link has already done some shortlisting. Engagement isn’t a booking, though, and on bookings it comes out closer to even. Matched to the same site and month, a ChatGPT visit booked about 87 cents for every dollar from other visits, within the margin of error (see the revenue chart above).
The GA4 Trap: Half Your ChatGPT Traffic Isn’t Labeled ChatGPT
In late May and June 2026, GA4 started filing ChatGPT visits under a new channel, AI Assistant. The sites we checked month by month show none before that, even though ChatGPT was sending traffic all along. Earlier visits sit in Unassigned (source chatgpt.com with no medium) and Referral.
So a yearly report built on the AI Assistant channel shows 48% of your ChatGPT visits. Even since June, it catches 77% to 91%. Most of the rest arrive with ChatGPT’s own source tag but no medium, so GA4 files them as Unassigned.
Here’s how to see all of it:
- In GA4, open Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition.
- Change the table’s first column to Session source / medium.
- Type chatgpt in the search box. Add up every row, then do the same for openai.
- Leave out any row ending in / cpc. Those are paid ad clicks, not ChatGPT recommending you.
- To track it every month without the search, an admin can add a custom channel group (Admin, then Data display, then Channel groups) with a ChatGPT channel for any source containing chatgpt or openai. Put it above Referral and Unassigned.
If your booking engine sends purchases to GA4, add the Total revenue column to the same report and you’ll see ChatGPT’s bookings too. Check that number against your reservation system first. On a lot of vacation rental sites, GA4 loses the guest’s source when they move to the booking engine.
Our GA4 guide for vacation rentals covers the rest of what we set up and watch in GA4.
What To Do About It
- Don’t move budget yet. At 6 visits in 1,000, ChatGPT can’t replace email, paid search or your Google rankings this year. Cutting a channel that sends 24 or 310 visits to chase one that sends 6 is a bad trade.
- Measure it properly, starting this month. Use the steps above so you have a clean baseline. If your share doubles again next year, you’ll want to know where it started.
- Do the work that gets you named. ChatGPT can only send visits to companies it recommends. Our AI citation gap study found that managers listed on more third-party ranking sites get named more often (a correlation, not proof), and that Google’s AI Mode leans on Business Profiles. The GEO guide has the baseline checks.
- Look at where ChatGPT visitors land. Filter your GA4 landing pages to the chatgpt.com source. If they land on a page with no clear next step, fix that page first. In our data, these visitors engage more than average.
- Tag your email. If email shows as a sliver in GA4, your links probably aren’t tagged and the traffic is hiding in Direct. You can’t compare channels you can’t see.
What This Study Doesn’t Prove
- Revenue is what GA4 saw. The booking numbers come from GA4’s purchase tracking on the 34 sites where it holds up. They miss phone and OTA bookings, and they credit only the visit that booked.
- It’s a floor. A guest who reads ChatGPT’s recommendation and then searches your name or types in your address shows up as organic search or direct, not ChatGPT. ChatGPT’s real influence is bigger than its referral count.
- These are agency clients. Managers who hire an agency run more paid ads than average. Your channel mix will look different.
- The year-ago check is a sample. We compared the same months a year apart on the 10 largest sites, not all 42.
- ChatGPT only. Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Claude sent visits too, but far fewer, and we didn’t include them.
How We Ran It
- Sites: every BuildUp Bookings client with GA4 connected in our reporting platform and a lodging website: 69 sites pulled. A site had to have 12 full months of data, with at least 100 sessions every month and 6,000 in total. 60 passed. The headline uses the 42 vacation rental manager sites, with two sites owned by the same company counted once. Resort and hotel sites were checked separately and aren’t in the headline.
- Data: GA4 session source and medium, November 1, 2025 to October 31, 2026, pulled November 3, 2026 through AgencyAnalytics. Every file was checked so its months add up to its total and its channels don’t add up to more than its total.
- Revenue: GA4 purchase revenue by session source and medium, same window, pulled November 4, 2026. We left out sites whose GA4 purchase tracking broke during the year or that recorded no bookings, then required revenue in US dollars, an average booking between $150 and $20,000, and no more than 10% of revenue arriving as a referral from the site’s own booking engine or payment page. 34 of the 42 vacation rental sites passed. Every channel’s sessions and bookings were checked against the November 3 pull. The same-month comparison multiplies each month’s ChatGPT visits by that site’s revenue per non-ChatGPT visit that month. The range comes from resampling the sites 5,000 times.
- ChatGPT: any session source starting chatgpt.com or openai, in any medium except paid (cpc). Websites hosted on chatgpt.site are excluded, because they’re not ChatGPT.
- Channels: GA4’s default channel groups as reported. “Paid ads” adds paid search, paid social, cross-network (Performance Max) and display.
- Year-ago check: the 10 largest vacation rental sites by sessions, August to October 2025 against August to October 2026, same definitions.
- Engagement: GA4’s engaged sessions divided by sessions, for sites with at least 50 ChatGPT sessions.
- Disclosure: every site here is a BuildUp Bookings client. We report aggregates only and name no client.
Common Questions
How much traffic does ChatGPT send to vacation rental websites?
Not much yet. Across 41 vacation rental managers’ websites, ChatGPT sent 0.58% of visits at the median site from November 2025 to October 2026, about 6 in every 1,000. Email sent about 24 and paid ads about 310.
Is ChatGPT traffic to vacation rental websites growing?
Yes, fast. The median site’s ChatGPT share went from 0.37% in November 2025 to January 2026 to 0.73% in August to October 2026. Compared with the same months a year earlier, the 10 largest sites went from 0.34% to 0.67%.
How do I see ChatGPT traffic in Google Analytics 4?
Open Traffic acquisition, switch the dimension to Session source / medium and search for chatgpt, then for openai. Don’t rely on the AI Assistant channel alone. It only started in late May and June 2026, and in our data it caught 77% to 91% of ChatGPT visits after that.
Do ChatGPT visitors book?
Yes, though not in big numbers yet. On 34 vacation rental websites whose GA4 booking data passed our checks, ChatGPT visits brought in 0.59% of website booking revenue from November 2025 to October 2026, and 1.06% from August to October 2026. Matched to the same site and month, a ChatGPT visit booked about 87 cents for every dollar other visits did, a gap within the margin of error.
Want to know what ChatGPT is sending your site, and how to get named more often? Talk to BuildUp Bookings.
