There’s a new shelf in front of your customers, and most venues aren’t on it. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI “where should I take the kids this weekend in [city]?”, the AI names a few venues. If yours isn’t one of them, you’ve lost the customer before they ever reached Google. This guide explains how activity venues get recommended by AI.

What “AI search visibility” actually means

It’s whether AI assistants recommend your venue when someone asks them where to go. Unlike Google, there’s no page of ten links — just a shortlist of two or three. Being named is everything; being absent is invisible.

Why it matters now (not in two years)

AI assistants are already a meaningful and fast-growing source of “where should I go” decisions, especially for family and group activities. Because almost no venue is optimised for it yet, the operators who move first become the default answer — and that compounds.

How AI decides which venues to recommend

AI tools pull from what they can read and trust about you:

• Can the AI read your site? Crawlers like GPTBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended must be allowed.
• Does your site clearly state what you are? Entity and FAQ schema, plus an llms.txt summary, help AI understand you.
• Is your information consistent everywhere? AI learns from your Google profile, directories and reviews — they must agree.
• Do customers vouch for you? Reviews and citations are the trust signals AI leans on.

The AI-visibility checklist

Unblock AI crawlers, publish an llms.txt, add FAQ and entity schema, make your name/address/phone consistent everywhere, build genuine reviews, and monitor monthly which AI tools mention you and which name competitors. That’s exactly what our AI search visibility service does.

How long until you appear?

Typically within four months — a Sheffield climbing wall went from invisible to recommended by ChatGPT for climbing birthdays in its city in that time. Pair this with local SEO, because Google Maps is still where most bookings are won today.

Find out if AI recommends you — free

Our free visibility audit checks whether ChatGPT and Perplexity currently recommend your venue, and which competitors they name instead.

Get your free visibility audit →