Prepare your travel brand for AI search in 2026. Chloe Osunsami shares how to use digital PR, human-first narratives, and tailored outreach to boost visibility.

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Hi, and welcome to this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Chloe Osunsami, Head of Digital PR at Aira, and today I'm going to talk to you about how to compete with your travel marketing in 2026 and make sure you're future-proofing too.

The travel landscape has evolved rapidly with the adoption of AI-powered search. 84% of people globally plan to use AI when preparing for future trips. And that's everything from choosing a location, an accommodation, looking at activities, and even full personalized itineraries. So if travel brands really want to compete moving forward, they need to be appearing in these spaces, and that's why digital PR has come back into the spotlight.

It is not just about links. Although some studies have shown that traditional search performance correlates with visibility in AI, it's about brand mentions. Other studies show that brand mentions are one of the biggest correlating factors with visibility in AI, and that is what digital PR can help with.

Due to all these changes, at Aira, we conducted some brand-new research into the state of digital PR and what's working right now, and how to prepare for the landscape shifting and make sure you can get your brand covered. 

We surveyed senior digital PRs with plenty of hands-on experience and interviewed in-house travel marketers as well as travel journalists and editors. One of the key findings was that 81% expected digital PR to become even more critical over the next 2 to 3 years. 

But with all these changes come challenges.

The 2025 word of the year was "AI slop." And AI-produced content is unlikely to be going anywhere because budgets are still restricted for some, and AI-produced content can be produced at speed, helping to alleviate some of those problems.

Alongside that, 57% of digital PRs that we interviewed said that they had seen an increase in demand for digital PR from travel brands over the past 12 months. So it's already becoming more competitive in the landscape.

So how do you manage to stand out and land coverage in 2026? There are five key areas I'm going to take you through. 

1. Personalized stories

The first one is personalized stories. It's always been really important to understand your target persona and your target audience and their wants, needs, and desires. 

But it's even more crucial this year. Not just those things, but what they value as well as the real-world and economic factors that are going to impact their travel plans. 

Alongside that, target audiences are wanting much more personalized itineraries and things that align with their hobbies and their passions. 

Journalists are already following this trend, and if we don't do the same, then we are going to miss out on coverage. They always have their readers front of mind, and so we need to too. 

2. Human-first narratives

Next up, human- first narratives. Human-first narratives are going to help set the PR content apart from AI-produced content because they cannot imitate that. 

How do we do that? Through adding behind-the- scenes insight, untold angles, or through using case studies. This is going to help really set us apart. Journalists are already looking for this within their stories. 

3. Take an “always on” approach

Third is taking an "always on" approach. 95% of digital PRs that we surveyed use data-led creative campaigns to land coverage effectively. 

But on top of this, 71% are using newsjacking and reactive tactics to make sure that they can take this "always on" approach and maximize coverage opportunities. In fact, they said it's become even more important over the last three to five years to help them do so.

And so if you want to make sure you're landing consistently to increase brand mentions and help support AI visibility, this is going to be crucial. 

4. Robust data-led stories

Going back to those data-led stories, there is much more emphasis on ensuring that we have unique, robust data and to set those stories apart, so once they gather interest, we can make sure that there are no questions on the validity of it and that we're not considered in any way to AI. 

5. Tailored outreach

Finally, tailored outreach and relationships.  

This is something that has always been key with PR. Especially traditional PRs will talk about this a lot. Among the journalists that we spoke to, they all highlighted how it's crucial for PRs to really understand the writers they're pitching to, their areas of interest and expertise, as well as their editorial styles. 

Alongside that, the journalists also said that they source their expert commentary from people within their network. They don't put callouts for them. So, unless you have those relationships already, you probably won't land in those cases. So tailoring your outreach is going to be crucial moving forward. 

So once you have all this, what can you expect when it comes to results? Now digital PR is a long-term play. It's not going to happen overnight to help increase your AI visibility.

The digital PRs we spoke to said it's all about relevancy and quality over quantity, even though they're really hard to quantify. In fact, only 38% actually put a numerical value to relevancy.

When it comes to individual campaigns, however, we're looking at roughly naught to nine pieces of coverage for it to be considered a success, and that was highlighted by roughly half of the digital PRs we spoke to. That was the biggest response to the question. However, over the last 12 months, most campaigns actually secured between 10 and 19 pieces of coverage, so more than successful.

Finally, if you take a tailored "always on" strategy, it's likely to increase visibility over time. But you can't expect that to happen in the short term. So you need to be patient. 

So with all that in mind, the key takeaways from today are that the landscape is evolving rapidly. Brands need to be investing in their brands if they want to compete in the future, and to do so, they need to make sure they're creating personalized stories for their target audience, they are really focusing in on those human-first narratives to set themselves apart from AI-produced content, and they're taking a tailored approach to outreach and building relationships with the media.

Finally, we just need to be patient. Over time, these results will help build visibility across traditional search and AI search, too.

So we will link to the full report below so you can have a look if you'd like to, and I hope this was helpful.