AI-Generated Leads for Travel Businesses Grew 82% in June

For any travel business, a phone call may be the best new customer lead. For travel agencies, hotels, airlines, and tour companies, a call represents direct voice connection to an eager travel shopper.

Unexpectedly, AI search chatbots such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini are producing real phone calls from their users — possibly even  ready-to-buy travelers. For you, improving your mastery of AI search technology means you might produce more of these great customer leads and improve your lead conversion process. Google’s use of AI overviews on search will be the big driver, however, ChatGPT is growing leads for you too as travelers become more comfortable and enthusiastic about what it offers.

While the volume of leads for AI lead generation is less than 1% of travel leads, AI search is part of a fast-improving travel education and buying experience. Its growth in use, how it affects travelers, alters the travel shopping experience, and how it generates real, traveler leads can’t be discounted. Travel business owners and entrepreneurs have to take AI search seriously — from citations to website visits to phone calls.

Orbit Media conducted a comparative study of AI conversion rates and found them to be much higher quality — capturing more of visitors’ emotional intent.

And with respect to key event, a phone call, CallRail’s latest research involved 40 million customer phone calls during the month of June 2026. It showed Travel & Hospitality (0.273%) became the leading industry for AI-directed calls with a growth of 82% month over month and overtaking last month’s leader, manufacturing.

They suggest that it’s summer consumer traveler demand that’s producing this recent AI lead surge. And the resulting high-intent leads coming from ChatGPT and other AI platforms are likely moving Travel AI lead generation onto travel business owners’ radars.

Travel Agency managers will find fixing their lead generation performance isn’t a simple matter. That’s why hiring a Travel AI marketing consultant is wise. Clarity Bridge Consultants provides a comprehensive analysis of your company’s lead gen and sales performance success, disappointments and opportunities.

Callrail’s report authors suggest the industries that are enjoying the strongest AI-driven call volume are those where customers are looking for a provider, not just information. Of course, tracking calls from the web has never been easy, and it is likely that many leads to travel agencies and hotels aren’t traced back to AI search. So we have a tip of the iceberg phenomenon.

“As AI search engines have gained significant traction among consumers, marketers have faced a growing challenge: accurately attributing leads originating from these platforms,” said Ryan Johnson, Chief Product Officer at CallRail. “Many of these AI-driven search engines previously hid the traffic source, which has historically made it impossible for marketers to measure and optimize their campaigns successfully. However, this new capability provides marketers with confidence about their attribution data and reflects our ongoing commitment to helping businesses navigate a future increasingly being driven by consumer adoption of generative AI solutions.” – from CallRail’s new AI-powered attribution capabilities (callrail.com/ai).

If this lead generation process is happening, it’s a compelling insight into why consumers are using Travel AI and the process they’ll use to book their trips in future.  And it shows AI may be delivering high intent, ready to convert travel shoppers to travel companies like yours.

Travel business owners might have believed that OTA’s and AI-powered booking sites would reap the lead-gen bounty from AI as customers sought trip information. It might not be going this way.

AI is Altering the Travel Shopping Journey

What might be happening instead is AI suggests, builds or leads travel consumers into more complex trips that require a trusted, reliable travel advisor.  AI is delivering an information experience as part of a more involved, travel shopping experience, where travelers end up needing the advisor’s expertise, reassurance, responsiveness, and even their AI-assisted itinerary builder (your more powerful, connected booking tools).  AI is here, but many don’t want to use it —  they want their travel advisor to manage all of it.

AI tends to screen all businesses it cites for trust, relevance and more. Those who optimize their content for AI algorithms tend to corral all that search traffic for themselves. And being mentioned and even recommended is the icing on the cake.

With AI and a good travel advisor combined, travelers might feel they’ve downloaded a complex research and decision process to a travel advisor. But who that travel advisor/agency will be is perhaps the last decision (an AI referral) to be made while they’re using ChatGPT or an AI Travel planner.

Click to Call, or, Click to Website then Call

If you’re wondering how the click-to-call action actually happens in a chat, well, phone numbers often appear in AI-generated search responses (like Google AI Overviews or ChatGPT search). If the AI is recommending a local business or service, the phone number is typically displayed directly in the main response text or in an attached, structured information card. And if the url of your travel company website appears, and they click through to your site, they may click on your contact/booking phone number.  This is particularly true if the user is using a smartphone where it’s so convenient for the user. However, stats show laptop/desktop users have a much better sales conversion rate, usually.

To increase the conversion rate of your new AI-driven phone calls, Callrail advises that:

Staying competitive in AI-driven discovery requires:

• Accurate online hours and consistent NAP data
• Clear, structured service descriptions that AI can interpret
• Fast response times and fewer missed calls
• After-hours coverage for time-sensitive inquiries

Of course, this launches you into the strategy and techniques known as Generative Engine Optimization.

ChatGPT is Still King of AI Search

The CallRail report on AI-generated phone call leads revealed that ChatGPT remains the dominant source of AI-directed calls, accounting for 91.48% of all AI-driven calls. Behind it, Claude (+8.2%) and Perplexity (+8.9%) both gained share month over month. Surprisingly, Google’s Gemini AI system is languishing in last place for creating calls.

Given Google’s massive business ecosphere that includes the Google Travel site (Google Flights) and its Gemini travel planner, this is astonishing. Google remains the largest overall traffic referrer and lead generator for the travel industry, controlling roughly 90% of global search. So, we’d have to think a big percentage of phone calls are coming from Google search. However, you’re being alerting to a current opportunity to optimize your Google AI presence and perhaps capture a future opportunity where Google pushes more travel consumers through Gemini and Google Search AI Overviews.

The report also found that Claude saw the biggest increase (+291%) in driving AI-influenced leads for all industries, signaling that calls from AI search are beginning to spread beyond a single platform.  Claude has enjoyed a good growth period and its technical app adopters are influential in businesses that are integrating Claude tools and API rather than ChatGPT’s business tools.

The future of travel company discovery is already taking shape. It might be time to gain clarity about where you stand right now, and build a new view of the travel business opportunities ahead.

About CallRail:

CallRail is the AI-powered lead intelligence platform, with its capabilities that help businesses easily track and attribute unique traffic from AI-generated search engines, providing a more complete and accurate understanding of agencies, DMO/DMC, hotels, tour companies and airline’s lead-generation efforts. Their digital services allow travel sales/marketing pros to track leads from AI-driven sources such as ChatGPT/SearchGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.

The role of AI search in the personal and corporate travel industry will only grow, and you’ll need to upgrade your content quality/EEAT, content experience, and topic relevance via expert GEO strategy.  And as the Callrail report shows, AI Search might be spinning off a lot of great opportunities for your travel business.  From high-intent leads, customer insights, marketing and sales clarity, cost efficiency, to building new travel services and partnerships, it’s not something to neglect.

Find out more about travel marketing and a review/evaluation of your travel marketing and sales strategy can help.