St Andrews is one of the most searched golf destinations in the world, and a good test of how AI assistants recommend hotels. So we did what a traveller would do: asked ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Anthropic Claude where to stay, with their web search on, and counted the answers.

What we asked

Sixteen questions, written the way real travellers ask. Eight from British travellers, mostly families and couples where one partner doesn't play ("I'll be on my own without a car while my partner golfs in St Andrews. Which hotels have spa facilities?"). Eight from American golfers, from bucket-list trips to foursomes booking through a specialist ("Which St Andrews hotels have great views of the links and are convenient for early tee times?"). Two of the questions set a budget. We asked each question twice on each assistant: 96 answers in all.

Three hotels take most of the answers

On average an answer recommended three or four hotels, and 75 different hotels were recommended at least once. But the top of the list was remarkably stable:

Hotel	Recommended in	Named first	ChatGPT	Gemini	Claude
Old Course Hotel, St Andrews	69 of 96	37	24	24	21
Fairmont St Andrews	47	15	14	14	19
Rusacks St Andrews	38	17	13	18	7
Gleneagles (Perthshire)	16	8	5	4	7
Trump Turnberry (Ayrshire)	15	0	6	5	4
Hotel du Vin St Andrews	12	0	4	5	3
Kinnettles Hotel and Spa	11	3	3	4	4

Answers in which each hotel was recommended (not just mentioned), out of 96: 32 per assistant. "Named first" counts answers where the hotel was the first recommendation. Asked on 29 September 2026.

The Old Course Hotel was recommended in almost three answers out of four, and named first in 37 of them. Fairmont St Andrews and Rusacks St Andrews follow. All three are large, well-known golf hotels, but their order depends on the assistant: Claude recommended the Fairmont almost as often as the Old Course Hotel, while Gemini favoured Rusacks and recommended it more than twice as often as Claude did.

The assistants send people elsewhere

For open questions ("Where in Scotland should I base myself?"), the assistants often looked beyond St Andrews: Gleneagles in Perthshire, Trump Turnberry in Ayrshire, and on the East Lothian coast Marine North Berwick and Greywalls. For a St Andrews hotel, that's competition that doesn't show up in a local search.

Budgets change everything

The two questions with a budget got entirely different answers: smaller hotels in and around St Andrews, and chain hotels in Dundee. A hotel that wants those travellers has to state its prices plainly, because the assistant matches on them.

The hotels' own websites matter most

The most cited websites across all answers were the hotels' own: oldcoursehotel.co.uk appeared as a source in 36 answers, fairmont.com in 32. Then came booking.com, the golf travel specialist golfbreaks.com, and travel guides. The assistants behave differently here too:

ChatGPT leaned heavily on hotel websites: it cited the Old Course Hotel's own site in 24 of its 32 answers.
Claude used more travel specialists and guides, such as golfbreaks.com and luxury travel editorials.
Gemini cited the fewest sources, about two per answer, and relied more on booking.com and Expedia.

What this means for a hotel

Your own website is the first thing to get right. The hotels recommended most were also the ones whose own sites the assistants read most.
Each assistant is different. Being strong on ChatGPT says little about Gemini or Claude, so check all three.
Say who you're for. Families with a pool, a partner who doesn't play, a foursome needing transfers: the assistants match hotels to these situations, so pages that address them directly give the assistant something to quote.
Your competition may be 100 km away. For open questions, the assistant compares you with the best-known hotels in the whole country.

How we measured

All questions were asked on 29 September 2026 through each assistant's API with web search on, from the UK and US markets, twice each. We counted a hotel only when the answer recommended it, not when it was merely mentioned, and merged different spellings of the same hotel. The questions lean towards golf and upscale travel, so this is a picture of those travellers, not a ranking of hotel quality. AI answers vary from day to day; a repeat next month could look different, which is exactly why we track them monthly.

Want to know how often the assistants recommend your hotel, club or firm? Run the free check: one real question, answered by ChatGPT, in about a minute.