There’s a camper right now typing into ChatGPT: “Best family-friendly campground near Banff with full hookups and a playground.”
In seconds, the AI will recommend two or three campgrounds by name, with details about their amenities, their vibe, and what past guests have said. The camper will read those recommendations, trust them, and probably book one of those parks.
Is your campground one of them? For most operators, the honest answer is no.
The Way Campers Plan Trips Has Fundamentally Changed
AI-powered trip planning is no longer a novelty. It’s how a significant and fast-growing segment of travelers, especially younger ones, now researches where to go.
According to a January 2026 survey by Skift and Phocuswright, 41% of US travelers now use ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, or DeepSeek to plan or research trips. Among travelers under 35, that number jumps to 56%. Among those booking trips over $5,000, it’s 53%. This is mainstream behavior and not early adopter territory.
Camping specifically is no exception. The Dyrt’s 2026 Camping Report found that 33.6% of campers trust AI to recommend a campground. Only 10.3% have actually used it to plan a trip so far, but another 9.7% say they plan to in 2026. That adoption gap is closing fast.
Google has also made its intentions clear. At Google I/O 2026, the company announced what it called the biggest upgrade to its search box in 25 years. Google’s AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users, and the company is actively building toward agentic booking, which is AI that can not only recommend but initiate a reservation on a traveler’s behalf. Canvas, Google’s AI trip-planning workspace, already generates full multi-day itineraries with accommodation recommendations pulled from its AI search infrastructure.
The direction is unambiguous: AI is becoming the first place people look for campgrounds.
The Problem: Most Campground Websites Are Invisible to AI
Insider Perks analyzed over 28,000 campground websites in 2026. What they found was stark: fewer than 3% had optimized titles and descriptions across all their pages. Fewer than 1% had the comprehensive structured data that Google and AI assistants use to understand and recommend a property.
That means the overwhelming majority of campgrounds with great sites, loyal guests, and years of experience, are essentially invisible when an AI assistant is asked to recommend somewhere to stay.
When an AI like ChatGPT or Perplexity answers a travel question, it isn’t pulling from a magic database. It’s reading web content including your pages, your reviews, your listings on directories and then making a judgment call about which campgrounds to mention. The parks that get named are the ones the AI can actually understand. The parks with vague, thin, or technically inaccessible websites simply don’t come up.
Meanwhile, Google AI Overviews already appear at the top of roughly 7% of local search queries but they surface only about 32% as many businesses as the traditional local map pack. The funnel is getting narrower. And if you’re not optimized for it, you’re not in it.
How AI Actually Decides What to Recommend
Understanding what AI is looking for changes how you should think about your website. It’s not about tricks or hacks. It’s about being specific, machine-readable, and credible. Here are 4 things AI looks for:
1. Specificity beats generality every time. When an AI scans your website, it weighs content with specific, verifiable facts far higher than vague marketing language. “We have a great campground with lots of amenities” tells an AI nothing. “42 pull-through RV sites with 50-amp service, water, full sewer hookups, and sites 1 through 20 have direct waterfront views” tells an AI exactly what you offer and makes you matchable to specific traveler queries.
2. Structured data tells AI what your business is. Schema markup is code added to your website that explicitly communicates to search engines and AI systems: this is a campground, located here, with these amenities, open these hours, priced in this range, with these reviews. Schema.org has a dedicated Campground type and most campground websites don’t use it at all. When Google and Bing understand your business as an entity, that understanding flows through to AI recommendations.
3. Your FAQs are a direct line to AI answers. When someone asks ChatGPT “does [your park] allow pets?” or “what’s the check-in time?”, the AI pulls from pages that answer those questions directly and concisely. A well-structured FAQ page with proper schema markup puts your answers in front of AI systems exactly when they’re looking for them.
4. Reviews that mention specifics compound your visibility. AI systems read your reviews too. A review that says “great place” does nothing. A review that says “the pull-through sites near the lake were perfect for our 40-foot fifth wheel, and the shower facilities were spotless” is content the AI can use to match your park to future queries from guests with similar rigs and priorities.
The Content Gap Is Also a Visitor Problem
It’s worth stepping back and noting: this isn’t just an AI problem. It was a human problem first.
Let’s Camp runs an annual survey asking campers what they want to see improve. The same themes come up repeatedly. Campers say campground websites are outdated, short on detail, and missing the photos and information they need to make a confident booking decision. As one Ontario camper put it: “We want to see better websites with up-to-date pictures of cabins and sites, grounds, etc. One of the campsites we visited came as a shock as the pictures didn’t correspond with the actual conditions.”
A website that fails a human visitor also fails an AI. They’re looking for the same things: specific information, authentic photos, clear answers to common questions, and a sense of what it actually feels like to stay there. The fix isn’t separate for each, it’s the same work.
What a Modern, AI-Ready Campground Website Looks Like
Getting found by AI in 2026 means building a website that is detailed, structured, and trustworthy. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
Detailed accommodation and site pages. Not just “RV sites available” but a dedicated accommodations page outlining each site type with capacity, hookup specs, dimensions, specific features, and photos of the actual sites.
Comprehensive schema markup. At minimum: Campground or RVPark schema on your homepage with your full name, address, phone, geo coordinates, amenities, and hours. FAQPage schema on your FAQ page. AggregateRating schema tied to your guest reviews. ImageObject schema on your photo gallery. This is technical work, but it’s the difference between being visible and being invisible to AI search. Let’s Camp can help you get this set up on your website if you don’t already have it.
A thorough FAQ page. Answer the questions you get asked by phone every day: pet policies, hookup types and amp service, check-in and check-out times, cancellation policies, whether you have pull-throughs, what the cell signal is like. Structure these as direct question-and-answer pairs, the exact format AI systems pull from.
Authentic, high-quality photography. Real photos of your actual sites, facilities, and atmosphere. Not stock imagery. Not one photo of the entrance sign. Every photo is an opportunity to communicate something specific about your property.
Consistent, complete directory presence. Your Google Business Profile should be fully filled out and regularly updated. Add your listings on The Dyrt, Hipcamp, and other camping directories and make sure it matches the info on your website exactly. These aren’t just booking channels, they’re the content AI systems read when forming their recommendations about your park.
You Don't Have to Figure This Out Alone
The good news is that the same website that performs well for AI visibility also converts more human visitors into bookings. These aren’t competing priorities, they’re the same priority.
The harder truth is that building this kind of website takes real expertise. It requires understanding campground guests, knowing what information matters and how to present it, getting the technical structure right, and creating content that is simultaneously compelling to a first-time visitor and machine-readable to an AI assistant.
That’s exactly what websites by Let’s Camp are built to do. Before building Canada’s leading campground reservation software, the Let’s Camp team was designing websites and they’ve spent years listening to what campers actually want to see before they book. The result is a campground website service built from the ground up around the unique needs of outdoor hospitality operators: what to highlight, how to structure it, and how to turn a curious visitor into a confirmed reservation.
As AI changes the way campgrounds get discovered, the campgrounds that win will be the ones with websites built to be found by humans and by AI alike.
If your website isn’t working as hard as your campground is, it’s time to fix that. Learn more about Let’s Camp Websites →