AI visibility for hotels · vs. Hotelrank.ai
Same question. Two more answers.
Hotelrank.ai (now Lighthouse's Connect AI) tracks AI visibility and benchmarks competitors too. Here's exactly where the two products stop overlapping.
Hotelrank.ai was acquired by Lighthouse in May 2026 and folded into "Connect AI." It tracks ChatGPT and Gemini on its Essential tier (€58/mo, up to 3 hotels), scaling to all platforms on Pro (€166/mo, up to 50 hotels) and Enterprise, with a Hotel Visibility Index, direct-vs-OTA link attribution, and competitor benchmarking.
Sourced from Hotelrank.ai/Lighthouse Connect AI public pricing pages and press coverage (PhocusWire, Lighthouse's own acquisition announcement) as of July 2026 — see docs/08-competitive-landscape.md for full citations. Last verified July 2026.
| Feature | Staylight | Hotelrank.ai (Lighthouse Connect AI) |
|---|---|---|
| Engines tracked (entry tier) | ✓ChatGPT + Google AI Overviews (Radar) | ChatGPT + Gemini only (Essential) |
| Engines tracked (top tier) | ✓All 5 engines, up to 7 languages | "All platforms/models" (Pro/Enterprise) |
| Segment-aware query panels | ✓Yes — luxury/boutique/business/budget/family templates | Not stated in public pricing |
| Competitor benchmarking | ✓Yes — share of voice + co-citation | Yes — competitor benchmarking |
| Technical AI-crawler audit | ✓Yes — robots.txt, schema.org, llms.txt, sitemap, rendered-DOM | Not found in public pricing/feature list |
| Off-page NAP/citation-authority check | ✓Yes — Google Business, OTAs, directories | Not found in public pricing/feature list |
| Sentiment & hallucination detection | ✓Yes — verified fact-base cross-check | Not found in public pricing/feature list |
| Direct-booking ROI calculator | ✓Yes — free, no signup | Direct-vs-OTA link attribution (related but not a revenue estimate) |
| Entry price | ✓$79/mo (Radar) | €58/mo (Essential) |
| Distribution/backing | ✓Independent SaaS | Backed by Lighthouse's hospitality sales/distribution channel |
Why hotels choose Staylight instead
A technical audit, not just a scoreboard. Connect AI's public pricing shows tracking, a Visibility Index, and direct-vs-OTA link attribution — real, useful things. It doesn't show a technical AI-crawler readiness check: whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest can actually read your site's robots.txt, structured data, and llms.txt. Staylight starts there, because a hotel invisible to AI crawlers stays invisible no matter how good its content is.
We check whether AI is telling the truth about you. Sentiment and hallucination detection — catching an AI stating a wrong check-in time, room count, or amenity — isn't in Connect AI's listed feature set. Staylight verifies every AI answer against your own confirmed facts.
One number, in dollars. Staylight rolls every scan into a direct-booking revenue figure. That's a different question than "what's my visibility index," and it's the one that gets a budget approved.
What we won't claim: Hotelrank/Lighthouse has real hospitality distribution behind it now, and a lower entry price. If tracking and competitor benchmarking alone are what you need, they're a legitimate option. Staylight is for hotels that want the crawler audit and the hallucination check in the same subscription.
Yes — Lighthouse acquired Hotelrank.ai in May 2026 and folded it into its platform as "Connect AI." Older references to "Hotelrank.ai" and current "Connect AI" pricing describe the same underlying product.
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