Inside Sri Lanka’s First AI Visibility Study for Hotels.
Why This Matters?
The way travellers discover hotels is changing. More people are now using AI-powered tools and assistants to research destinations, compare hotels, and plan their trips. As AI becomes a bigger part of the customer journey, hotel brands need to ensure they are visible where these recommendations happen. Strong AI visibility can directly influence brand awareness, website traffic, and future bookings.
How We Built It?
Real-world prompts were submitted across leading AI platforms via our AI visibility tool, “aeyepulse”, to simulate how potential guests search for hotels. Each response was analysed to identify the brands mentioned, their position in ranked answers, and the external sources the AI cited.
The analysis covers 18 segments, including Beach, Luxury, Wellness, Ayurveda, Family Travel, Honeymoon and Couples, Wildlife, Colombo, Kandy, Ella, Nuwara Eliya, Negombo, the East Coast, Jaffna and more.
Which Sri Lankan Hotels are the most visible?
We discovered 742 hotel brands across 18 segments for this edition. Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle Resort came out as the overall winner with 20.5% AI visibility.
Some of the most interesting findings are in the destination segments. In Ella, 98 Acres Resort and Spa leads at 88.5%, with visibility heavily concentrated at the top despite 57 brands competing in the segment.
Kandy tells a similar story where Cinnamon Citadel Kandy leads at 38% across 47 brands. Sigiriya / Dambulla is dominated by Heritance Kandalama at 54.6% out of 78 brands discovered. It’s the same in Nuwara Eliya, where Heritance Tea Factory is leading with 77.9% visibility, competing with 56 brands in the segment.
The Down South segment offers the starkest contrast. It is the largest segment in the report with 192 brands discovered, yet the segment leader, Jetwing Saman Villas, holds just 22.7% visibility. The broader the segment, the harder it is for any single brand to own it. However, in Jaffna, Jetwing Jaffna is leading with 83.9% visibility, competing with 14 brands.
The winner in Colombo was Shangri-La Colombo, recording 86.7% visibility, competing with 43 brands discovered in the analysis. Amaya Beach Pasikudah became first in the East Coast segment with 23.8%, competing with 67 brands.
Sentido Heritance Negombo recorded 87.1% AI visibility, beating 33 brands in the west coast beach destination of Negombo.
Despite strong competition in non-destination segments, Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle Resort successfully emerged as a leader in both the Beach and Honeymoon/Couples segments, achieving visibility scores of 71.8% and 56%, respectively, while competing against 134 and 147 brands discovered.
Shangri-La Hambantota came top in the Family Travel segment with 69.6% visibility, competing with 111 brands.
Wild Coast Tented Lodge topped both the Wildlife and Luxury segments with 90% and 55.9% AI visibility, competing with 81 and 90 brands, respectively. The Ayurveda and Wellness categories were led by Heritance Ayurveda and Santani Wellness Kandy, recording AI visibility of 53.8% and 81.6%, respectively.
Source: Sri Lanka Hotels, AI Visibility Report | May 2026
Who Should Read This
This report is relevant for hotel brand owners who want to see where they stand in AI-driven discovery, marketers looking to identify content and PR gaps relative to competitors, revenue and distribution teams trying to understand the new top of the customer journey, and agencies benchmarking clients against the broader competitive set.
Why We Built This?
eMarketingEye has been working in hospitality digital marketing for 19 years, partnering with hotels and resorts across Sri Lanka, the Asia Pacific region, the GCC, and Australasia. Over that time, we have seen the channel through which travellers discover hotels shift more than once, from traditional search to OTAs to social media. We are now watching it shift again.
As AI tools became a mainstream part of how people research travel, we started seeing a clear gap. Hotels had no way of knowing whether they were appearing in AI-generated recommendations, which platforms were highlighting them, or how they compared to their competitors in this space. The data simply did not exist in any structured form.
We built AEYEPULSE to fix that. AEYEPULSE is our AI brand visibility monitoring platform, designed specifically for the hospitality industry. It submits real-world prompts across leading AI platforms, analyses the responses, and tracks how hotel brands appear, rank, and are recommended over time. The AI Visibility Report for Sri Lanka Hotels is the first published output from this platform, and the beginning of a report series we will be rolling out across multiple markets.
What is next for Hotels ?
Hotels can subscribe to aeyepulse to analyse their AI presence and gain a comprehensive understanding of their market positioning, competitor intelligence, and overall AI visibility. Through detailed insights and performance analysis, hotels can identify opportunities to strengthen their presence in the evolving AI-driven search landscape.
In addition, hotels can partner with eMarketingEye to enhance their AI visibility by implementing advanced Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) strategies. These tailored solutions help hotels improve discoverability across AI platforms (LLMs) and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive digital environment.
Get in touch with us at sales@emarketingeye.com to discuss how we can help you improve your AI visibility and for a Free AI Visibility report for your hotel.
Full Report: Find Out What Is Inside Sri Lanka’s First AI Visibility Study for Hotels
The complete AI Visibility Report offers a comprehensive analysis of the visibility of Sri Lanka hotels across leading AI platforms. The report showcases key insights, including overall winners, top-performing brands on each AI platform, and the top 10 brands across the 18 segments evaluated for AI visibility.
Please visit the link below to download the Al Visibility Report for Sri Lanka Hotels, May 2026 edition
Disclaimer: This report reflects Al-generated recommendations captured during May 2026 using generic predefined prompts. Al outputs are non-deterministic and rankings may change as models evolve. Results are relative rankings, not a substitute for sales or market-share data. This report does not promote, endorse, or recommend any brand listed. Data is for informational purposes only.
