DATA: The quiet monopoly taking over your visitor traffic
- In Blog
- ai, ai policy, artificial intelligence, GEO, google analytics, SEO, web
- 5 min read
Since the beginning of 2025, AI traffic to visitor attractions’ websites experienced a two to threefold increase in absolute volume.
What’s more, one player is forming a severe monopoly.
It’s often said every technology market becomes a race to monopoly. One player surges ahead, a few competitors chase from a distance, the rest fade into the long tail.
That pattern is now emerging in how visitors discover attractions through artificial intelligence. Like many technology adoption curves, it’s also an exponential one.
Though AI referrals to visitor attraction websites still make up a small slice of the pie, they’re growing at a pace cultural and commercial leaders can’t ignore. From data in Dexibit drawn from Google Analytics, in January 2025, AI driven traffic represented roughly <1% of all web sessions to visitor attractions. By September 2025, it had climbed to typically 3 to 4% of all sessions. In just 9 months. Across the year so far, AI has averaged 2% of total traffic, a modest share, but one that’s grown two to three times over in absolute volume since the start of the year.
This segment also likely only represents a slither of visitors using AI tools to plan their visit, the remainder a possible explanation for many attractions seeing a reduction in overall organic or paid search driven volume. For many visitors conversing with AI about an upcoming visit, they may not be presented with a link in their chat, or may not click through. What we’re seeing is probably just the tip of the iceberg.Â
Across the sector, one AI platform has emerged as the clear leader, accounting for nearly 9 out of every 10 AI referrals to visitor attractions’ websites. The rest of the market is shared between a handful of competitors, from Google and Microsoft to newer AI search tools. A long tail of niche referrers barely registers.
It’s no surprise who the dominant player is, given ‘ChatGPT’ has risen to the the verb level brand status Google previously enjoyed. It seems incredible the phrase ‘just Google it’ may soon drop from common use.
It’s a pattern that mirrors the broader technology landscape: a single dominant platform defining the space, surrounded by smaller players trying to find their edge. While this quiet monopoly defines the big picture, the detail tells a more interesting story. The mix of AI referrers shifts subtly by geography and audience:
- Family oriented attractions see the strongest consolidation, as visitors stick to the familiar
- High end cultural venues show more diversity, with visitors experimenting across platforms
- Tourist destinations sit somewhere in between
These nuances suggest that AI discovery isn’t just a matter of technology, it reflects who your visitors are, where they’re from and how they think.
For attraction leaders, this is the beginning of a new discovery channel, one that’s small today but growing fast. If AI continues to enjoy an exponential curve, it will account for double digit traffic by early 2026. As AI becomes embedded in how people search, ask, and plan their visits, AI referrers will increasingly sit alongside search and social as core digital sources.
Together with OpenAI’s ecommerce announcements of late, the quiet monopoly taking over your visitor traffic might just be the start of a new era in visitor discovery.
Using Dexibit? Look for the AI Referrer visualizations in your Library.
Dexibit automatically identifies website referrers classified as AI. You’ll see this as the “AI Referrer” attribute in your Google Analytics Sessions data set (you can see how this is performed by inspecting the attribute in the Data Explorer).
Curious about what AI says about your attraction? Dexibit’s generative AI benchmarks show how you compare to your peers and neighbors.Â
Book a consult with Dexibit and we’ll take you through it.Â
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