Before working with Nuno, travelers asking ChatGPT or Gemini where to stay near Denver's RiNo Art District mostly saw Catbird described through directories, community threads, and booking sites rather than through the hotel's own pages. Here is the measured shift once its marketing team could see the citations, not just guess at them.
The problem was retrieval, not ranking
Nuno's April 2026 diagnosis ran 329 organic category prompts. Catbird appeared in 31% of the answers, mentioned by any source, not only via its own site, but when it did appear it averaged rank 2, with nearly half of its mentions at number one. The constraint was retrieval: hotels outside RiNo were winning RiNo neighborhood queries, five Denver editorial sources still referred to the rooftop by its former name, and the signature experiences guests ask about had no pages of their own for AI models to find.
What the audit found
Nuno re-runs a panel of 354 traveler prompts every 2-3 days across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Claude. In mid-April 2026, Catbird's citation rate sat at 15%: the share of relevant AI answers that pointed to Catbird's own site rather than a third party. The website had the vocabulary AI needed; what was missing was structure a model could retrieve and cite directly.
The guest the data found
The audit set Catbird's booking data against how AI models describe the hotel: 79% out-of-state design travelers on short 2 to 3 night stays, 21% Colorado staycationers. Yet on extended-stay queries, AI names a different guest, remote workers and relocators testing a month in Denver before a move, a segment barely present in the booking mix. The rooftop draws its own crowd too: AI reads it as a Denver locals' destination, not a guest amenity. The new pages speak to each one.
What Nuno changed
Working from that diagnosis, Nuno rebuilt the extended-stays page around the rate structure AI needed, expanded the hotel's FAQ, and published a series of RiNo neighborhood guides under catbirdhotel.com. It also fixed on-site technical gaps, giving AI models a source that named it correctly instead of the outdated name older editorial write-ups still used. Every draft went through Catbird's marketing team before it published. Nothing went live without human approval.
The measured outcome
Between mid-April and mid-June 2026, Catbird's citation rate increased from 15% to 27%, and the gain reached all seven tracked topics, not just one. Extended stay page, rebuilt around the rate structure AI needed, held the lead and is now Catbird's highest-visibility topic at 57%; when Catbird appears in those answers it is the only hotel named roughly 90% of the time. The eight RiNo neighborhood guides published under Catbird's own domain gave AI retrievable neighborhood content, moving RiNo visibility from 30% at the April diagnosis to a 42% average across July's runs.
Direct-channel sessions rose alongside it: June 2026 ran about three times more than June 2025, every month from March through July 2026 overcame the prior year, and April to June alone gained 46%, the same window the citation rate climbed. AI assistant sessions rose 141% year over year for May through July, with availability checks going from rare to daily, and 75% of those sessions engaged, a visitor already knowing what they came to check.
Catbird's shift was not a redesign. It was making the hotel legible to systems that were already answering questions about it, just not from Catbird's own pages.
Why this matters for you
That is the gap most independent hotels are sitting in right now, unmeasured, unaddressed, and out of sight of the marketing team responsible for it. Catbird is the measured example. Your hotel's version of this page starts with the same audit.
Catbird's AI citation rate rose from about 15% to a 27% peak in two months, and citations of its own site nearly doubled. See what an audit finds for your hotel.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly does Nuno measure?
Nuno re-runs a panel of traveller prompts every two to three days across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Claude, tracking citation rate, the share of relevant AI answers that point to a hotel's own site rather than a third party, across every topic guests ask about.
Does Nuno tell us who our guest actually is?
Yes. Nuno sets a hotel's booking data against how AI models describe it and surfaces where the two diverge. For Catbird that was an extended-stay audience of remote workers and relocators that barely showed up in the booking mix.
Does Nuno guarantee a top spot in ChatGPT or Gemini answers?
No. Nuno makes a hotel's own pages accurate, consistent and retrievable so AI systems can cite them correctly. It does not promise a guaranteed rank, and booking intent still depends on price, availability and reputation.
How long before we see a measured outcome?
Catbird's citation rate moved from 15% to 27% over roughly two months, and the gain reached all seven tracked topics in that window.
Does this replace our SEO or paid media work?
No. AI visibility works on a different part of the journey than paid media and traditional SEO. All three need honest, separate measurement to be worth the spend.
Who approves the content before it goes live?
Your team. Every draft goes through the hotel's marketing team before it publishes. Nothing goes live without human approval.
