How GEO helped Hertz Iceland grow bookings from AI search by 50%

Hertz Iceland picked one topic it could own in AI answers, winter driving in Iceland, and in three months grew its share of voice by 67% in ChatGPT and 70% in Google AI Mode. That visibility turned into revenue: AI referral traffic rose 81% and bookings from AI sources rose 50%.

The challenge

Iceland is a country of extremes. Long summer days give way to dark, hard winters, and travelers want a rental company that knows local conditions.

Hertz Iceland had already built its strategy around that local knowledge. Its site carried a deep content library and more than 200K backlinks. By classic SEO standards it was an authority.

Then discovery moved. Travelers adopted AI fast, and the source cites Booking.com research showing 67% already use it in some way. Thousands of potential customers were asking ChatGPT and Google AI Mode which rental company to use in Iceland. Hertz Iceland had no view into those answers. It did not know if it showed up at all, or how it was described.

That put market share and years of brand equity at risk. With winter approaching, the team saw a short window.

"As tourism boomed in Iceland, we saw AI change how travelers research trips. We needed to capture this new channel before our competitors did."

Yuet Tan Lau, Head of Digital Marketing at Hertz Iceland

What they changed

The team set one goal: own the AI conversation about winter driving in Iceland. The work ran in four steps.

1. Track the prompts that matter. They built a library of buyer prompts and tagged them by vehicle type, such as 4x4s, so they could see performance by segment. The baseline also won buy-in from global leadership.
2. Find the gaps against competitors. The baseline showed 21% share of voice in ChatGPT and 23% in Google AI Mode. Solid, with room to grow. Comparing answers with top competitors exposed thin coverage on winter driving accessories and terrain considerations.
3. Fix and publish content fast. They refined existing pages and wrote new articles aimed at those gaps, scoring each piece before it went live.
4. Plan the off-site layer. The next moves on the roadmap were community building on Reddit and wider topic coverage through collaborations with Guide To Iceland, because AI engines lean on third-party sources as much as your own site.

The content won visibility on high-intent 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?"

The results

Over three months, AI visibility grew and the gains flowed through to the business:

Metric	Result
Share of voice in ChatGPT	+67%, from 21% to 35%
Share of voice in Google AI Mode	+70%, from 23% to 39%
Citations across ChatGPT and AI Mode	+59%
AI referral traffic	+81%
Bookings from AI sources	+50%

Prompt tracking also saved the team weeks of manual setup, and ongoing analysis now takes far less time.

"Most importantly, we're building a repeatable approach. What we did for winter prompts, we can do for summer, or for any segment," said Yuet Tan Lau.

What you can copy

Pick a topic you can credibly own. Hertz Iceland did not chase every rental query. It went after winter driving, where its local expertise was real and competitors were thin.

Measure share of voice before you write. A tagged prompt set gave the team a baseline, a competitor gap list and the numbers leadership needed to fund the work.

Write for the exact question buyers ask. The winning prompts are specific: winter tires, SUVs for rough terrain, trusted picks for winter trips. Pages that answer those questions directly are the ones AI cites.

Plan for third-party sources. Your own pages are half the picture. Reddit threads and trusted partner sites shape what AI says about you too.

Tie visibility to revenue. Track the full path from share of voice to AI referral traffic to bookings, not just mentions.