How can a hotel or resort get recommended by ChatGPT? (Malaysia)
EasyFound · · 8 min read
Put the facts guests ask about on the page ChatGPT reads for that question. In our Malaysian test, family and kids-pool questions sent ChatGPT to resorts' own facility pages. Cheap weekend questions sent it to Booking.com, Agoda and Tripadvisor, not to a hotel's own site. Gemini mostly answered without searching the web, so check both.
Whether ChatGPT recommends a hotel or resort in Malaysia depends on the page it reads for that kind of trip, so put the facts each kind of guest asks about on that page. In our test those were two very different places. Family and kids-pool questions sent it to resorts' own facility pages. Cheap weekend questions sent it to Booking.com, Agoda and Tripadvisor instead, while Gemini mostly answered without searching at all.
So the real question for a hotelier is which trip the guest is planning. We put six hotel questions about Penang and Langkawi to ChatGPT, each one three times (all answers, CSV), and the sections below follow the trip behind each question.
What does ChatGPT read when a family asks for a resort in Malaysia?
For a family holiday, ChatGPT read the resort's own website: it cited a hotel's own site in 8 of the 9 family and kids-pool answers, often a kids, family or facilities page. The nine covered Langkawi, Penang, and Penang asked in Malay.
Every one of the nine named specific family facilities. Kids clubs appeared by name, alongside splash pools, water slides, toddler pools and family rooms or villas.
The wording often came straight from the hotel. One answer said a resort is "marketed as the premier family-friendly resort", citing that resort's rooms page. Files were fair game as well: ChatGPT cited a brand fact sheet, and a 2023 wedding brochure as evidence of a large pool.
Asking in Malay didn't make ChatGPT search in Malay. Every search it ran behind our Malay and Chinese questions was in English, as in our language test, so we'd treat the English facilities page as the one that counts.
Where does ChatGPT look for a cheap weekend hotel in George Town, Malaysia?
For a budget weekend, ChatGPT looked at booking sites rather than hotels. Booking.com, Agoda or Tripadvisor appeared in all 6 George Town answers, asked in English and Chinese, and a hotel's own site in none.
What it passed on was what a listing shows: price, guest score and area.
- Nightly price for a named hotel: 3 of 6 answers. Two more gave only the city's average price.
- Guest score out of 10: 3 of 6 answers.
- Prices in US dollars: 5 of 6 answers, taken from Booking.com pages, though our location was set to Malaysia.
The Chinese version changed none of this. These answers also reached for small guesthouses and heritage hotels rather than big resorts, found through booking-site lists. For a budget property, then, the Booking.com or Agoda listing is effectively the page ChatGPT quotes.
Which sites does ChatGPT trust for the best hotels in Penang, Malaysia?
For a plain "best hotels" question, ChatGPT trusted third parties. Its answers cited travel media, Tripadvisor, Booking.com and a company filing, with a hotel's own site in 1 of 3 answers.
ChatGPT also wrote the word "official" into its own searches in 13 of 18 answers across the whole test. Penang's state tourism site and Tourism Malaysia's site turned up in its search results but weren't cited, unlike the seafood answers in our tourist test, run on a different model.
The five Penang questions ran on one model on one day, so unlike in our online-store tests, the split isn't a model change. We suspect the kind of hotel a question draws, big resort or small guesthouse, shapes which pages get read.
Does Gemini recommend the same hotels as ChatGPT for a Malaysian trip?
Mostly not: Gemini named different hotels from ChatGPT for most of our questions, and it rarely searched the web first. It searched before 3 of 16 answers, all for the English George Town budget question. It still named hotels in all 16.
Google's documentation explains the switch: "The model analyzes the prompt and determines if a Google Search can improve the answer" (Grounding with Google Search). The two are different products, asked through their APIs with different settings; Gemini had no location setting.
| Question | Named by both, of all hotels named | Gemini searched the web? |
|---|---|---|
| Best family resort in Langkawi | 4 of 7 (one Gemini answer only) | No |
| Kids-pool hotel in Penang (English) | 3 of 7 | No |
| Kids-pool hotel in Penang (Malay) | 3 of 15 | No |
| Best hotels in Penang | 9 of 25 | No |
| Cheap weekend hotel in George Town (English) | 1 of 24 | Yes, all 3 |
| Value hotel in George Town (Chinese) | 2 of 27 | No |
On the five questions Gemini answered three times, its lists also held steadier between runs, as in our wider comparison of the two. A Gemini that answers without searching may take a while to notice a change to your website.
Three things this test can't settle:
- How common any of it is. It's 34 answers to six questions about Penang and Langkawi: examples, not rates.
- What guests see in the apps. We used the developer APIs, not the ChatGPT or Gemini apps, which can use chat history.
- Why a hotel was picked. We saw what each tool named and cited, not its reasons.
What should a Malaysian hotel or resort change first to be recommended by ChatGPT?
Change the page ChatGPT reads for your kind of guest first, and that depends on what you run.
Step one, for any property: ask us for the free check. It shows the answer ChatGPT gives a guest who types, say, "Looking for a resort in Langkawi for a family of five. Kids are 4 and 9, they love water slides." We then go through that answer with you on a free call.
If you run a family resort:
- Give the family facilities a page of their own, naming the kids club with its ages and hours, the pools, slides and family rooms, in text and not only in photos.
- Update or take down old PDFs, such as fact sheets and brochures, so an outdated description isn't the one quoted.
- Look at Gemini on its own. In our test it named hotels without a web search far more often than with one.
If you run a budget hotel or guesthouse:
- Keep your Booking.com, Agoda and Tripadvisor listings complete and current, because those were the only sites the budget answers cited.
- Check the price a guest would see on your Booking.com page: 5 of 6 budget answers gave Booking.com prices in US dollars, though only half named a hotel's own nightly rate.
- Treat your guest score as public copy: half the budget answers quoted a hotel's guest score right next to its price.
EasyFound is an AI search visibility (GEO) tool built for Malaysian businesses. Pointed at a hotel or resort, it checks which hotels ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI engines name for family, budget and best-hotel questions, and which page or booking listing they quote. Our team can run it for you and fix those pages in our AI SEO service.
Would ChatGPT send a family to your resort?
See what ChatGPT says when guests ask for a hotel or resort like yours, then go through it with us on a free call.
Frequently asked questions
Who can check what ChatGPT says about my hotel in Malaysia?
EasyFound can, and so can other GEO providers; we sell this work, so weigh our answer accordingly. Our free check shows, word for word, what ChatGPT tells a guest asking for a hotel like yours and which page it quoted. Whoever does it for you, ask them to test Gemini apart from ChatGPT, to ask in the languages your guests type in, to hand you the raw answers rather than a score, and to look at your Booking.com, Agoda and Tripadvisor listings as well as your website, because in our George Town test ChatGPT cited only those for budget questions.
Does ChatGPT use Booking.com or Agoda to recommend hotels in Malaysia?
For budget questions, yes. In EasyFound's October 2026 test through OpenAI's API, ChatGPT answered six questions about a cheap but good weekend hotel in George Town, in English and Chinese. All six cited Booking.com, Agoda or Tripadvisor, and none cited a hotel's own website. Half of them repeated a hotel's nightly price and guest score from those pages.
Why does ChatGPT recommend big resorts and not my small hotel?
It depends on what the guest asked. In EasyFound's Malaysian test, family and kids-pool questions drew resorts whose own websites describe a kids club, a splash pool or family rooms, and ChatGPT cited a hotel's own site in eight of nine of those answers. Cheap weekend questions in George Town drew many small guesthouses and heritage hotels instead, found through booking-site lists. So for a small hotel, the listing pages carry as much weight as the website.
Adakah ChatGPT mencadangkan hotel jika saya bertanya dalam Bahasa Melayu?
Ya. Dalam ujian EasyFound melalui API OpenAI, ChatGPT menjawab soalan tentang hotel di Penang yang sesuai untuk kanak-kanak dan ada kolam renang dalam Bahasa Melayu, dan menamakan hotel dalam ketiga-tiga jawapan. Tetapi semua carian web yang dijalankannya untuk soalan Melayu dan Cina itu dalam Bahasa Inggeris. Jadi, pada bacaan kami, halaman kemudahan hotel anda dalam Bahasa Inggeris paling penting.
Does Gemini search Google before it recommends a hotel in Malaysia?
Not often, in EasyFound's test through Google's Gemini API with Google Search turned on. Gemini searched before 3 of 16 hotel answers, all for the English question about a cheap weekend hotel in George Town. It named hotels in all 16 anyway. Google's documentation says the model 'determines if a Google Search can improve the answer'. The test used the API, not the Gemini app.
Sources
Our data: We sell AI visibility work, so this is a vendor's test, and that's why every answer and our coding are published for you to check. EasyFound, What ChatGPT and Gemini answered when asked to recommend hotels and resorts in Penang and Langkawi. Five questions were asked on 1 October 2026 (Malaysia time), the same answers used in our Gemini and ChatGPT comparison; the Langkawi question was asked on 13 October 2026 (Malaysia time). Each question was put three times to ChatGPT (OpenAI Responses API, model gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17, web search, approximate location Malaysia) and to Gemini (Gemini API, model gemini-3.8-flash, Google Search grounding, no location setting), with no chat history, and each model decided whether to search. The six questions came from EasyFound's standard panel for hotels and resorts, typed as short keyword phrases rather than full sentences: "best family resort in Langkawi", "best hotel in Penang for kids with a pool", "best hotels in Penang", "cheap but good hotel in George Town Penang for a weekend", "hotel di Penang yang sesuai untuk kanak-kanak dan ada kolam renang" and "乔治市性价比高的酒店，周末住". ChatGPT gave all 18 answers. Gemini gave 16: the other two Langkawi runs failed with a "high demand" (503) error from Google's API on 14 October 2026, so that question has one Gemini answer, which we use only as an example. We made no new AI calls for the counts.
We read every answer in full and coded by hand the hotels named as recommendations (two hotels written as "X / Y" count as two; hotels mentioned only to avoid were left out) and the kind of each cited site, counted once per answer. A hotel's own site includes its hotel group's site and brand PDFs. "Searched" means the API response shows a web search; a Gemini answer with no Google Search grounding data counts as not searched. "Named by both" counts distinct hotels across all runs of a question. By hand we kept apart a guesthouse and a hotel with similar names at different addresses, two sister hotels written as "X / Y", and two branches of one guesthouse brand; the comparison article's automatic grouping had merged them, and its data was corrected on 14 October 2026 to match. A price counts when the answer gives a nightly price for a named hotel. Download the coding (CSV). We don't name the hotels, because one small test isn't a ranking.
Other sources:
- Google, Grounding with Google Search, Gemini API documentation, read 14 October 2026 (link)
The coding is shared under CC BY 4.0: reuse it with credit to EasyFound.
AI answers change often; read these figures as a snapshot from October 2026.
Research by Janice Pang, EasyFound.