WORKGROUP 7 OUTPUT

Digital readiness

Assess whether AI systems can find your business, verify its facts and connect a guest with a genuine direct booking.

I control my own domain I don't control my domain

AI readiness

Overview

This page covers the second of the two assessments: whether AI systems and search engines can find your business, verify what is true about it, cite it correctly, and let a guest book directly with you.

This assessment is about how your business appears to the outside world and to the AI systems now sitting between a guest and a booking. Whether your name, address and hours match everywhere. Whether an AI assistant asked to book you would reach your reservation system or a reseller. Whether the facts about your rooms, rates and policies are published in a form a machine can read and trust.

Choose the route that applies to your business.

When someone else controls the domain →

If you do not control your own domain and CMS, the team that does controls the website changes that affect AI visibility. The assessment still matters: take the same questions to your brand, group or agency and record who owns each capability.

Step

Prepare the digital session

Run this assessment as a facilitated evidence review with the people who manage the website, search presence, structured data and direct-booking path.

The questions are written to be asked aloud with follow-ups. A broad answer such as “the website is optimised” cannot be scored. A useful answer names the page or system, explains what was checked and when, identifies who can change it, and gives a real example of something working or failing.

The conversation also surfaces disagreements. If marketing believes a fact is updated everywhere on the same day but the web team says site changes are released monthly, that gap is a finding. Do not average the two accounts; keep both and resolve the evidence.

How to run it

Book one 90–120-minute session, or two shorter sessions. Bring the three or four roles that hold the evidence; an agency or corporate web counterpart may be one of them.
Work through the questions in order. Let the relevant owners join for their section rather than keeping everyone for the whole session.
Nominate one person to capture the evidence and, for each question, whether control sits with the property, corporate, an outsourced provider or a mix.
The 90–120-minute duration is provisional until the digital assessment has been tested in pilots.

XLSXReusable download

Digital readiness workbook

What it is: A structured workbook containing all 43 digital questions, the scoring key and an unscored responsibility-routing record.
When to use it: Use it whether the domain is controlled locally or by a brand, group or agency.
What you enter or decide: Record public and system evidence, the responsible party and the lower supported score band.
What it produces: A digital-readiness percentage calculated from accepted scores, evidence coverage and flagged input issues. A person interprets the findings and who must act.

The workbook does not crawl a website or independently verify a provider claim.

Download XLSX ↓

The workbook contains all 43 digital questions, the digital scoring key and an unscored routing record. Set the route to domain controlled; do not answer or score a separate gate.

Step

Bring the people who hold the evidence

This half concentrates in three or four roles rather than spreading across the property. Where a function is outsourced — and web, SEO and content very often are — bring the agency or the head-office team into the session, or send them the questions in advance.

Who	Roughly	What they will be asked about
IT, web, or whoever runs your website	~20 questions	Crawler access, page performance, structured data, HTTPS, booking links, whether anything blocks a machine from reaching your real content
Marketing	~22 questions	How the business appears online, guest stories and testimonials, hub pages, consistency of facts across channels, outside recognition
Revenue and distribution	~7 questions	Direct booking integrity, whether every room type and rate has a working direct path, whether an AI-assisted booking would be attributable
Owner, MD or GM	~6 questions	Accountability for AI visibility, who is responsible for checking what AI says about the business, named contacts and whether they are current
HR	~2 questions	Whether contact information and employee listings on external platforms are kept current

Counts overlap because many questions name two roles; they add to more than 43 for that reason. The point is who to invite, not an exact split.

Use the website, marketing, distribution and corporate roles named for each question. The person at the property need not guess what the provider’s systems do.

Step

Capture digital evidence

This is the part that determines whether the result is worth anything.

Record and transcribe it

Record the session and get a transcript if you plan to use the scoring prompt or GPT. A facilitator cannot reliably trace 43 answers, evidence details and disagreements while also leading the conversation.

The transcript becomes the evidence input for scoring. Whether a person or a language model scores it, use what was actually said rather than a later summary.

Tell people they are being recorded

Say at the start what the recording is for, who will see it and how it will be handled. Obtain any agreement required for the people and location involved.

Explain that the recording is there to capture the website and booking evidence accurately, not to assess individual performance.

Answer with specifics. Name the page, platform, feed, booking path or validation method; say when it was checked; describe what actually happens; and identify who can change it. General descriptions cannot be scored by a person or a machine.

Not scoreable

“Does every room type and rate plan link to a live direct booking path?”

“Yes, our booking engine is integrated.”

Scoreable

“Does every room type and rate plan link to a live direct booking path?”

“We tested all twelve room and rate links last week. Ten opened the live booking engine; two package links redirected to stale inventory. The revenue manager logged both for the web agency.”

The second answer identifies the test, date, result, failure and responsible party. The first does not contain enough evidence to place against a band.

A few rules the scoring follows

Score what is true today, not what is planned. “We're planning to” describes the current state.
The weakest evidenced part of the answer sets the score. If the homepage is complete but room pages are not, the assessment reflects the gap.
Adjectives are not evidence. “Optimised”, “seamless” and “fully integrated” carry no information. Named pages, systems, checks, dates and results do.
Where an answer sits between two levels, use the lower band unless stronger evidence supports the higher one.

Record who controls it

For every question, note whether the relevant website or channel capability is controlled by the property, decided at corporate level, run by an outsourced provider, or shared.

A low score on something you control is a task. The same score on something controlled by a brand or agency is a conversation with that party. The report should never tell a property to change something it cannot access.

If you cannot answer something

Leave it unscored and identify the role that can supply the evidence. Unanswered questions are removed from the denominator, never counted as zero.

If a question genuinely does not apply to the business model, mark it not applicable. Do not guess to fill a blank.

Protect the evidence

Before recording or sharing evidence

Use only the evidence needed for this assessment. Recording and AI-assisted scoring are choices, not a requirement to share personal or confidential information.

Explain the intended use first. Before the session, explain whether it will be recorded or transcribed, whether an AI service will be used, who will receive the material and how long it will be kept. Follow your organisation's recording rules and obtain any required agreement. Permission to record does not automatically authorise sharing with an AI provider.
Prepare a safe copy before uploading. Remove guest identifiers, unnecessary staff identifiers, sensitive personal information, passwords, access tokens and unnecessary confidential business details. Keep the facts needed to judge the workflow. Replace names with roles where useful, but remember that a role or incident may still identify someone. Do not send a raw transcript to an unapproved AI service just to have it redact the data.
Check the service and account. Use a service and account approved by your organisation. Check who can access uploads, whether they may be used for training, retention and deletion terms, and any connected tools or onward sharing. If personal data remains, confirm the lawful basis, provider arrangements and any international-transfer requirements with the person responsible for privacy before sharing.
Limit access and retention. Keep recordings, transcripts, workbooks and reports in approved storage with access limited to the people who need them. Set a retention period, then delete working copies and provider uploads when no longer needed, subject to applicable obligations and the provider's actual retention terms.
Use the manual route when sharing is inappropriate. Keep the assessment in approved local storage and have a person apply the workbook rubric. If recording is inappropriate, nominate an evidence recorder and confirm detailed, question-linked notes with participants. Leave any answer without enough evidence unscored. No upload to an AI service is required for manual scoring.

Where your information goes

This guide has no transcript-upload form. If you follow an AI-tool link or use another language model, any files you submit are handled by that service under its account settings and terms. These instructions are not a guarantee about a provider's practices or a substitute for your organisation's privacy review.

Guidance: ICO guidance on transparency in AI ↗; European Commission guidance on data-protection principles ↗.

All 43 digital questions

Trustworthiness · 3 questions

DIG-01

If someone searched your business name right now, would they find one page with your address, phone number and hours — all matching exactly across your site, Google, and social profiles?

Asked of: Marketing / Front Office

Reports to: Trustworthiness · Digital readiness

DIG-02

Does your website run on a secure, up-to-date connection (the padlock / HTTPS) with no browser warnings on any key page?

Asked of: IT / Web

Reports to: Trustworthiness · Digital readiness

DIG-41

Is that contact information actually kept current — verified and updated when someone leaves or changes roles — or could it still point to someone who hasn't worked there in years?

Asked of: Leadership / HR

Reports to: Trustworthiness · Digital readiness

Trustworthiness / AI Readiness (AEO) · 1 questions

DIG-03

If a guest asked an AI assistant to book directly with you, would they complete that booking with you — or get routed to a third-party site instead?

Asked of: Revenue / Marketing

Reports to: Trustworthiness / AI Readiness (AEO) · Digital readiness

Expertise · 2 questions

DIG-04

Can you point to a page that clearly names who founded or leads the business, with real photos and backgrounds — not just a stock 'Our Team' graphic?

Asked of: Marketing / Leadership

Reports to: Expertise · Digital readiness

DIG-05

Does your site explain, in your own words, why a guest should trust your expertise over a competitor's — not just list amenities?

Asked of: Marketing

Reports to: Expertise · Digital readiness

Experience · 2 questions

DIG-06

Do you have guest stories or testimonials online that name a real, checkable guest or event — not just a star rating?

Asked of: Marketing

Reports to: Experience · Digital readiness

DIG-07

If an AI assistant were asked 'has anyone actually stayed here, and what was it like,' could it find a specific, detailed account on your own site to answer from?

Asked of: Marketing

Reports to: Experience · Digital readiness

Authoritativeness · 2 questions

DIG-08

Has your business, or anyone on your leadership team, been mentioned or quoted by a reputable outside source — press, industry publication, podcast — in the last year?

Asked of: Leadership / Marketing

Reports to: Authoritativeness · Digital readiness

DIG-09

Do other reputable websites (not directories you paid for) link to or reference yours?

Asked of: Marketing

Reports to: Authoritativeness · Digital readiness

AI Readiness (AEO) · 7 questions

DIG-10