Hertz Iceland took advantage of fast-growing tourist numbers and AI search usage. Their share of voice gains of 70% in AI Mode and 67% in ChatGPT flowed on to 50% more rental reservations.
Fragmented data and optimization practices
Hertz Iceland targeted winter car rental queries and grew their visibility over 3 months, with this flowing on to higher referral traffic and bookings.
- +70% share of voice in AI Mode
- +67% share of voice in ChatGPT
- +59% more citations across ChatGPT and AI Mode
- +81% AI referral traffic
- +50% more bookings from AI sources
Splintering search and unknown brand positioning
Iceland is a fast-growing tourist destination that’s a location of extremes. Summer’s extensive days are offset by the darkness and challenging conditions of winter.
This creates a seasonal split for Iceland’s tourism industry and a positioning need for the businesses within it. Potential customers seek local knowledge and understanding of the country’s unique requirements.
Hertz Iceland built their strategy around being the provider for Icelandic driving conditions, not a one-size-fits-all operator. It’s seen them build hertz.is into an authoritative site backed by a robust library of content. Positive traffic trends and more than 200K backlinks prove this.
Then discovery changed. AI search’s emergence rapidly reshaped both their strategic approach and customer behavior.
As travelers proved to be keen adopters of AI, (Booking.com's research shows 67% already use it in some capacity), thousands of potential customers were now asking ChatGPT and Google AI Mode which rental company to use for Iceland.
Hertz Iceland had no visibility into these conversations, whether they appeared at all or how responses framed them. They faced the two-fold risk of losing considerable market share and the brand equity they had built.
As tourism boomed in Iceland, we saw AI change how travelers research trips. We needed to capture this new channel before our competitors did. With the winter season and its unique driving conditions approaching, we saw a window to establish ourselves as the authoritative voice.
Head of Digital Marketing
Becoming AI search’s #1 for local conditions
The Hertz Iceland team chose to move with a clear goal: own the conversation around winter driving in Iceland. This required visibility, agility, and the ability to prove impact to justify the investment.
Enterprise AI Optimization (AIO) enabled them to achieve even more, in just 3 months.
AIO provided the end-to-end capabilities to do just that.
Prompt tracking
The first step was setting up prompt tracking and understanding the opportunity size. Without baseline data, the team was flying blind. Here they defined a library of prompts in AIO, tagging these to zoom into performance for specific vehicle types like 4x4s.
With prompts and tags added, Hertz Iceland could now produce executive-ready reports in moments rather than days of inexact manual setup.
As one of Hertz’s first teams to engage with AI search, this data secured immediate buy-in from global leadership. With Hertz leadership’s support, it also formed the foundation of Head of Digital Marketing, Yuet Tan Lau’s, presentation at Digital Travel Summit.
With AIO, we weren't guessing anymore. We could see exactly how we performed against competitors and forecast visibility and traffic increases from optimizing pieces of content.
This data clinched buy-in when we presented our AI search strategy to leadership. We were among the first to tackle AI search because AIO meant we could prove performance.
Head of Digital Marketing
Source analysis
Now tracking was in place, Hertz Iceland could start building their strategy. Their Share of Voice for these target prompts sat at 21% for ChatGPT and 23% for Google AI Mode. Strong but with plenty of opportunity to grow.
AIO enabled direct comparisons against top competitors, where they could see opportunities in refining their content around topics like winter driving accessories and terrain considerations.
The team could then analyze the topic volumes of these gaps to quantify the rising interest and forecast their visibility gains. These projections meant they now had a clear compass for prioritizing their content production
Content optimization
After identifying the key content opportunities, Hertz Iceland leveraged AIO’s Content Optimization capabilities to deliver content that covered SEO and AI search comprehensively. Using the editor, they could refine their current pages or produce new articles supported by real-time scoring.
The team confidently scaled up their content efforts and this faster publishing was a competitive advantage. With these capabilities behind them, they won visibility across winter prompts like:
- Which Iceland car rentals include winter tires automatically?
- Which rental companies offer the best SUVs for Icelandic terrain?
- Which car rental companies are the most recommended for Iceland trips in winter?
Improve AI Visibility
Lastly, the team ran AIO’s Improve AI Visibility automation to ideate on further content to produce and find vital third-party placements. Next steps would be community-building on Reddit and amplifying their topical coverage through collaborations with Guide To Iceland.
With scoring for the projected impact, they could develop an ongoing AI search roadmap that was grounded in data.
Competitors frozen out, customers flowing in
Over the course of three months using AIO, Hertz Iceland were able to improve their AI visibility considerably, with this flowing on to measurable gains in referral traffic and rental reservations.
- 67% - 70% rise in AI share of voice
Hertz Iceland’s targeted approach helped them win out over competitors, with share of voice in ChatGPT up +67% (from 21% to 35%) and AI Mode lifting +70% (from 23% to 39%).
- 59% more AI citations
Refining their content also paid dividends, as their combined citations in ChatGPT and AI Mode grew.
- 81 % higher AI referral traffic
Improved AI visibility had tangible effects on traffic to their domain, with AI referrals rising considerably.
- 50% growth in AI search bookings
Improved visibility and stronger seasonal positioning drove measurable uplift in bookings, with reservations attributable to AI placements rising.
- Weeks of time saved
Prompt tracking saved the team weeks of manual set up time, ongoing analysis and content are now also significantly more efficient.
70% higher AI visibility flowed into 50% more bookings from AI referrals, validating our strategy. AIO enabled us to establish ourselves as a leader in a channel that's becoming core to travel planning.
Most importantly, we're building a repeatable approach. What we did for winter prompts, we can do for summer, or for any segment.
Head of Marketing
Hertz Iceland built their data-backed blueprint
Hertz Iceland embraced the challenge of a new channel. Empowered by AIO, the team set up tracking, secured buy-in from global leadership, and set about optimizing their key pages.
3 months later, the team had achieved more than their visibility goals. Their improved AI search performance led to greater customer acquisition and now they continue to secure their perception as the market’s go-to car rental service in Iceland.
Hertz Iceland’s measurable results show that AI search optimization isn't a hypothetical or nice-to-have. For brands starting their AI search journey, Hertz Iceland provides a clear blueprint: move first, invest in data, and scale what works.
Yuet Tan Lau
Head of Digital Marketing
