Most operators we talk to assume their organic traffic fell because they did something wrong.
They did not. Google changed the mechanism while you were managing the property.
What changed
Since 2024, Google has been rolling out AI Overviews in Australian search results. You have probably seen them. They are the generated summary boxes that appear at the top of results when a guest types "best places to stay near the Daintree" or "things to do in Coffs Harbour."
The AI box answers the question directly. It draws from several sources, cites a couple of them, and the reader gets their answer before they reach your organic result.
You are still ranking. The click does not happen.
This is not a penalty. Your site has not been punished. The layout changed and the traffic changed with it. These are not the same problem, and treating them the same leads to the wrong fix.
Why travel gets hit harder than most industries
AI Overviews favour informational queries. High-intent questions like "where should I stay in the Hunter Valley" or "what is the best time of year to visit Lord Howe Island" are built for the AI answer box. They are factual. They can be answered in three sentences. Google is very good at answering them.
Those queries were your top-of-funnel. They introduced a first-time guest to your property or your region. Many of those introductions are now happening inside the AI box, without a click to your site.
What still sends people to websites: transactional queries. "Book a cabin at Seal Rocks." "Currumbin Beach resort direct booking." That guest already knows you exist. AI Overviews ate the step before that.
In our experience running website audits on AU accommodation properties, the sites with the sharpest organic traffic drops over the past year share a common pattern: they relied on informational blog content and regional guide pages to drive first-contact discovery. That traffic channel is being restructured.
Three schema types that help
Schema markup is structured data you add to your site that tells Google exactly what each page is about. Adding it does not guarantee a result. But it makes your content easier for Google to cite, easier to surface in AI answers, and easier to appear in the rich results that still show below the AI box.
Google’s structured data overview is the place to start if this is new territory.
Three types worth adding now:
Lodging and vacation rental schema. If you operate an accommodation property, marking up your key pages with LodgingBusiness or Vacation Rental structured data tells Google your property type, location, check-in and check-out policy, amenities, and price range. Google’s vacation rental structured data documentation walks through the required and recommended fields. For accommodation operators, this is the baseline. Not optional.
FAQPage schema. This one is underused and consistently effective. If your site has a FAQ section, a "before you arrive" page, or any page that answers common guest questions, FAQPage markup signals to Google that your content directly answers a question. AI Overviews draw heavily from content already structured as a question-and-answer pair.
Practical action: write a page that directly answers the ten questions your guests most commonly ask before booking. "Is the beach walking distance?" "Are pets allowed?" "What is included in the nightly rate?" Mark it up with FAQPage schema. That content is now citation-ready.
Review snippets. Adding AggregateRating markup to your property pages enables star ratings to appear alongside your organic result below the AI box. This does not fight the AI Overview directly, but it lifts click-through on results that do appear. When a guest sees a star rating and review count under your listing, you recover some of the clicks lost to the visual dominance of the AI box above. Google’s review snippet documentation explains what is required.
Use Google’s Rich Results Test to verify your markup before publishing.
Write to be cited
AI Overviews cite sources. Becoming a cited source is a reachable goal.
What gets cited is not the most optimised page. It is the most direct answer to the question. A page that leads with a clear sentence-level answer (for illustration: "For peak summer season, most operators across the Whitsundays recommend booking eight to twelve weeks ahead") is more citation-eligible than one that builds to the same conclusion after five paragraphs.
Audit your key landing pages. Find the main question each page is trying to answer. Put the direct answer in the first sentence. Then support it.
This is not an optimisation trick. It is just writing the way you would talk to a guest who asked you directly.
What you cannot do
There is no shortcut back to 2022 search behaviour.
AI Overviews are not a bug. They are not in beta. They are not going away. Google’s published account of generative AI in search is clear on the direction. The AI layer is expanding, not contracting.
Google Ads still appears above the AI box. But that is a paid-per-click channel with its own cost structure. For operators who relied on organic discovery to keep acquisition costs low, paid search is not a free substitute.
Keyword optimisation alone will not recover what organic lost. You need to work with the AI layer: structured content, direct answers, and citing-worthy specifics about your property and region.
The shift is permanent enough to act on now
Operators who treat this as a temporary algorithm quirk are going to wait through a recovery that is not coming.
The operators who will have direct booking traffic in 2030 are the ones who understand the mechanism now. AI Overviews answer the question your guest had before they needed to click. Your job is to be the property those answers point to.
Fix the schema structure. Write the direct answers. Build the citing-worthy content that earns a reference.
The organic traffic that looked free was always conditional. Now the conditions have changed. Do something about it now.