Everything-PR measured 25 Indian travel and tourism brands across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews. IndiGo ranked No. 1. Airlines led every category.
IndiGo is the most-cited Indian travel brand in this Everything-PR modeled index at 87.4. Higher than Taj Hotels. Higher than Air India. Higher than every individual hotel chain, online travel agent, or state tourism board in the Indian travel ecosystem.
That's the headline finding of the Indian Tourism & Travel Visibility Index 2026, a directional modeling study of how five AI engines surface and rank Indian travel brands. 25 named entities. Five engines. May 2026 measurement window.
The chatbox sees Indian travel as four overlapping categories. Airlines (IndiGo, Air India, SpiceJet, Vistara, Akasa) lead the field with a 68.9 sector average. Online travel agents (MakeMyTrip, OYO, Yatra, Cleartrip, EaseMyTrip) follow at 59.8. Hotels (Taj, Oberoi, ITC, Lemon Tree, Sarovar, Pride, Lalit) average 58.6. State tourism boards (Kerala, Rajasthan, Goa, plus the national Incredible India brand) average 56.5. Airlines win on single-vertical entity clarity at scale.
This piece is part of the Citation Share Index, the country-and-sector visibility franchise from Everything-PR.
Methodology
The Citation Share scoring model is a composite 0 to 100 index across five weighted components: Citation Frequency (40%), Cross-Engine Breadth (20%), Query-Type Breadth (20%), Extractability (15%), and Crawl Access (5%). Each component is normalized to a 0 to 100 scale before weight-averaging. Full normalization formulas appear in the appendix.
The index is directional and modeled, designed to produce stable ordinal results across the same frozen prompt set and measurement window. Five engines: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews. Frozen query set: 60 buyer-intent prompts across four query-type buckets. Measurement window: May 1 to May 28, 2026. Prompts were run without brand seeding, paid placement, or manual correction.
The Indian Travel Top 25
One ranking. Twenty-five brands. The Indian travel companies that own the answer in this modeled index.
| # | Brand | Citation Share Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | IndiGo | 87.4 |
| 2 | Taj Hotels (IHCL) | 85.2 |
| 3 | Air India | 82.6 |
| 4 | Oberoi Hotels | 78.3 |
| 5 | MakeMyTrip | 76.5 |
| 6 | IRCTC | 74.1 |
| 7 | ITC Hotels | 71.8 |
| 8 | OYO | 69.4 |
| 9 | Kerala Tourism | 67.2 |
| 10 | SpiceJet | 64.6 |
| 11 | Vistara | 62.1 |
| 12 | Rajasthan Tourism | 60.5 |
| 13 | Goa Tourism | 58.9 |
| 14 | Mahindra Holidays (Club Mahindra) | 56.4 |
| 15 | Yatra Online | 54.2 |
| 16 | Cleartrip | 52.8 |
| 17 | Lemon Tree Hotels | 51.3 |
| 18 | Thomas Cook India | 49.6 |
| 19 | Akasa Air | 47.9 |
| 20 | EaseMyTrip | 46.3 |
| 21 | Sarovar Hotels | 43.4 |
| 22 | Pride Hotels | 42.1 |
| 23 | Sterling Holiday Resorts | 40.7 |
| 24 | Incredible India (national brand) | 39.4 |
| 25 | The Lalit Hotels | 38.2 |
Findings
- IndiGo dominates Indian travel AI citations. 87.4. Single-vertical clarity (low-cost domestic carrier with international expansion), heavy English-language press footprint, dominant market share inside the largest domestic aviation market in the world.
- Tata-owned travel brands collectively outscore single-asset rivals. Taj Hotels (85.2), Air India (82.6), Vistara (62.1) all sit under the Tata Group umbrella. Combined Tata-owned travel scoring averages 76.6, ahead of every non-Tata Indian hotel chain or airline.
- State tourism boards punch above expectations. Kerala Tourism (67.2), Rajasthan Tourism (60.5), Goa Tourism (58.9). Three state tourism boards score higher than mid-tier hotel chains. Government brand authority and decades of English-language tourism marketing translate into citation share.
- OTAs edge out the hotel category as a whole. MakeMyTrip (76.5), OYO (69.4), Yatra (54.2), Cleartrip (52.8), EaseMyTrip (46.3) average 59.8, against 58.6 for the seven hotel chains. The aggregator citation surface outperforms most individual hotel brands except for the heritage majors.
- IRCTC ranks higher than most private travel brands. 74.1. The state-owned Indian Railways Catering & Tourism Corporation surfaces strongly because Indian Railways is a category-defining entity in AI engine answers about Indian travel logistics.
- Heritage hotels separate from chain hotels. Taj (85.2), Oberoi (78.3), ITC Hotels (71.8) form a heritage top tier. Chain hotels (Lemon Tree, Sarovar, Pride, Lalit) sit 25 to 45 points below. The Indian hospitality category is sharply bifurcated in AI retrieval.
- Akasa Air's emerging-brand citation is real. 47.9. Despite being India's newest airline (launched 2022), Akasa scores ahead of two mid-tier OTAs and several smaller hotel chains. New-entrant communications converts directly to citation share even at sub-scale revenue.
- The national Incredible India brand underperforms state boards. 39.4. The Ministry of Tourism's flagship brand scores below all three named state tourism boards.
Why This Matters for CMOs
- Single-vertical clarity beats multi-vertical breadth in travel. IndiGo's 87.4 is the highest score in the index, achieved through clear single-category identity. Hotel chains and OTAs trying to be all things to all travelers score below airlines that pick one lane and hold it.
- The Tata umbrella is a travel citation multiplier. Taj, Air India, and Vistara all benefit from Tata Group's cross-vertical entity authority. Travel brands inside multi-sector conglomerates should publish both the operating-brand entity and the holding-company entity in primary materials.
- State tourism marketing outperforms national tourism marketing. Kerala, Rajasthan, and Goa all outscore Incredible India. Destination-specific narrative (backwaters, palaces, beaches) converts better than national-scale "everything" marketing.
- OTA aggregator surface compounds. MakeMyTrip at 76.5 outscores every Indian hotel chain except Taj. The aggregator category benefits from breadth.
Appendix: Normalization Detail
Each component normalizes to 0 to 100 before weighting:
- Citation Frequency: observed citations divided by the maximum possible across the prompt set and engine count (60 prompts × 5 engines = 300 citation slots per brand).
- Cross-Engine Breadth: (engines citing brand at least once) ÷ 5 × 100.
- Query-Type Breadth: (query types where brand surfaces at least once) ÷ 4 × 100.
- Extractability: scored 0 to 100 by a deterministic 15-point schema and entity-surfacing audit rubric.
- Crawl Access: binary 100/0 per engine, averaged.
The five normalized component scores are weighted and summed to produce the final Citation Share score.
Sample Prompts
- Best Indian airlines 2026
- Top luxury hotels in India
- Best online travel agents in India
- Compare IndiGo vs Air India vs SpiceJet
- Best places to visit in India
- Top heritage hotels in Rajasthan
- Best Indian state tourism destinations
- Largest hotel chains in India
- Best way to book trains in India
- Top luxury travel experiences in India
Methodology Disclosure
Part of Everything-PR's Citation Share Index and generative engine optimization research.
