What's documented: a generated layer above traditional results
Google documents AI Overviews as a feature that generates a synthesized answer sitting above the traditional list of blue links, drawing on Google's existing crawled and indexed web content along with structured data on those pages. It's built directly into the results page you already know, layered on the same underlying index that produces ordinary organic rankings. What Google hasn't published in detail is the exact selection criteria that determine which pages get pulled into the generated summary versus staying in the ordinary organic list.
Why ranking #1 organically doesn't guarantee an AI Overview mention
This is worth stating plainly: being the top organic result for a query is not documented to guarantee, or even reliably predict, that your page will be named in the AI Overview generated above it. The Overview is a separate selection layer with its own process for deciding which sources to synthesize and cite — a page can rank #1 and still be absent from, or only indirectly reflected in, the Overview text.
What this means: schema.org markup and extractable answers likely help
Given that AI Overviews draws on structured data as a documented input, it's a reasonable inference — not a confirmed formula — that schema.org markup (Hotel, FAQPage) and clear, directly extractable, answer-first content improve a page's odds of being pulled into the summary. A page that states "check-in is at 3 PM" in a clean FAQ block is plausibly easier to extract from than the same fact buried in marketing prose.
The relationship to traditional SEO
Of the five engines covered in this hub, AI Overviews is the one where it's fair to say classic SEO fundamentals — crawlability, page authority, relevance, structured data, content quality — plausibly still carry the most weight, since it's built on top of Google's existing index rather than a separate system. This doesn't mean traditional SEO alone is sufficient, given the #1-doesn't-guarantee-inclusion point above, but the fundamentals you'd already invest in for Google rankings aren't wasted here.
Test it yourself, and where to go from here
Search a real guest-style question in Google for your city and segment. Check whether an AI Overview appears above the organic results, and if it does, whether your hotel is named or cited. AI Overviews sits closest to territory hotels already understand from traditional SEO — a natural starting point if you're new to AI visibility, but not a guarantee, so it's worth testing directly rather than assuming existing rankings already cover it.