Cote Hospitality – Enhancing Digital Experiences and AI Visibility Across Its Properties

Cote Hospitality has proudly managed iconic resorts for over a century, bringing memorable experiences to guests across diverse destinations. From the serene shores of Gull Lake to the sprawling deserts of Tucson, Cote Hospitality’s legacy is steeped in hospitality, offering unique experiences across three standout properties: 

Grand View Lodge: Nestled on 2,500 feet of shoreline on Gull Lake in Minnesota, Grand View Lodge has been a beloved destination for generations, offering lakeside relaxation alongside world-class dining, a rejuvenating spa, and a championship golf course. 

Tanque Verde Ranch: Located in the majestic deserts of Tucson, Arizona, Tanque Verde Ranch, established in 1868, offers 60,000 acres of natural beauty, plush accommodations, and a wide range of outdoor adventures, from horseback riding to desert hiking. 

Camp Lincoln & Camp Lake Hubert: These brother-sister camps in Minnesota’s lake country provide separate, yet complementary, facilities for boys and girls, offering lifelong memories for young campers, focusing on personal growth, adventure, and camaraderie. 

Goals for the Project

Cote Hospitality wanted to elevate the digital presence of all of its properties, ensuring they stood out on AI engines, while preserving the distinct experiences each destination offers. 

While Cote Hospitality resorts were well-known for their traditional excellence in hospitality, they faced the challenge of ensuring their online presence was optimized for AI-driven search platforms like ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Gemini. With increased reliance on conversational and generative search engines, it was essential to improve the discoverability of all the properties in the context of evolving search behaviors. 

The goal was to build a more holistic digital presence, ensuring that each resort’s unique offerings were easily found across AI platforms, while capturing a broader audience.Goals for the Project 

Cote Hospitality wanted to elevate the digital presence of all of its properties, ensuring they stood out on AI engines, while preserving the distinct experiences each destination offers. 

While Cote Hospitality resorts were well-known for their traditional excellence in hospitality, they faced the challenge of ensuring their online presence was optimized for AI-driven search platforms like ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Gemini. With increased reliance on conversational and generative search engines, it was essential to improve the discoverability of all the properties in the context of evolving search behaviors. 

The goal was to build a more holistic digital presence, ensuring that each resort’s unique offerings were easily found across AI platforms, while capturing a broader audience.

The primary objectives for Cote Hospitality were:

Deliver a Cohesive Digital Experience:

Create a unified digital platform for all the resorts, ensuring a seamless experience for visitors and easy access to information on activities, dining, accommodations, and more. This would enhance the overall guest experience and better reflect the quality of hospitality at each resort.

Enhance Discovery:

Optimize the digital presence of all the properties for AI engines like ChatGPT and traditional search engines, ensuring increased visibility and better lead generation.

Improve Customer Journeys:

Develop personalized customer journeys based on guest interests and behaviors, improving engagement and conversion rates by providing relevant content and recommendations.

Integrate Data:

Integrate key data sources, such as booking engines and CRM tools, to streamline the booking process and allow for real-time reporting and analytics. 

The Solution: Milestone’s AI-First Optimization Strategy

Milestone provided Cote Hospitality with a comprehensive digital strategy to increase visibility for Grand View Lodge, Tanque Verde Ranch, and Camp Lincoln & Camp Lake Hubert on AI search platforms. This involved a combination of GEO-first CMS implementation, targeted content development, and the optimization of brand presence across key AI platforms. 

Creating Holistic Digital Experiences:

All property websites were built using Milestone’s generative engine optimization (GEO)-First CMS, designed to be optimized for AI search platforms. The CMS features built-in schema, AI optimization, and seamless integration with omnichannel publishing, ensuring that each resort’s content was easily discoverable by search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

Milestone developed a single, integrated website using its GEO-First CMS platform. This CMS is designed to optimize content for AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, OpenAI, and Gemini, improving discoverability. The platform also integrates schema, enhancing search visibility and lead generation. 

Strategic Content Development:

Milestone crafted a content strategy for each resort that highlighted its distinct features. For Grand View Lodge, content focused on its lakeside accommodations, spa, weddings and events, and golf courses. Tanque Verde Ranch’s content centered around its historical significance, desert activities, group leads, and ranch-style luxury. Camp Lincoln & Camp Lake Hubert’s strategy showcased their unique summer camp experiences, fostering growth and outdoor adventure for boys and girls.

Delivering Personalized Experiences:

Milestone’s Personalization Engine helped create tailored customer journeys for each visitor, based on their behaviors and interests. This ensures that guests are shown relevant content, such as activities, spa treatments, event spaces, or dining options, improving engagement and conversion rates.

Integrated Data Solutions:

Milestone integrated various data sources, such as Synxis (for booking), Book4Time (for spa and activities), and OpenTable (for dining reservations). This integration streamlined the booking process, providing guests with seamless access to all resort offerings in one place. It also enabled real-time reporting, allowing Cote Hospitality to track performance and make data-driven decisions.

Content Creation at Scale:

Through Milestone’s AI Content Studio, high-quality, high-intent content was produced at scale for each property. This included blog posts, landing pages, and FAQs, all designed to target non-branded, high-value search queries relevant to families, adventure travelers, and guests seeking memorable experiences at the resorts.

LLM Visibility Strategy:

Milestone’s GEO Intelligence Platform was used to audit the visibility of each resort across 50 key AI search prompts. This in-depth analysis helped identify visibility gaps, allowing Milestone to refine the content and ensure that each resort’s offerings were aligned with generative search queries.

Prompt-Based Content Optimization:

Content was optimized to align with popular generative AI queries. For example, Tanque Verde Ranch optimized for queries such as “Best ranch weddings in Arizona,” while Grand View Lodge was optimized for “Top golf resorts in Minnesota” and Camp Lincoln & Camp Lake Hubert for “Best summer camps in Minnesota”.

FAQs & Blog Pages:

New FAQs and blog pages were created for each resort, addressing commonly searched queries and providing detailed answers. This content ensured each resort’s website appeared in AI-generated answers, making it easier for potential guests to find the information they needed.

Citations & UNAP Consistency:

Milestone Local ensured that Cote Hospitality resorts had consistent business information across all major directories, like Google and Apple Maps. This consistency enhanced local SEO and trust signals, improving visibility for each resort.

Results: Increased Visibility & Engagement

• On ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grand View Lodge now ranks for non-branded terms like “Best Resorts in MN.”

• On ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Tanque Verde Ranch is visible for “Best Dude Ranch in AZ.”

• On ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Camp Lincoln & Camp Lake Hubert appears for queries like “Best summer camps for boys and girls in Minnesota.”

Impact

By implementing a comprehensive strategy that leveraged Milestone’s GEO-First CMS, Personalization Engine, Generative AI for Content Optimization, and integrated data solutions, Cote Hospitality successfully increased the visibility and engagement of its resorts across AI search platforms.

The optimization not only improved search engine discoverability by 9% compared to pre-optimization levels for one of the resorts, but also positioned the company as a leader in hospitality innovation, ensuring the resorts reached the right audience at the right time. The improved customer journeys and streamlined operations have led to increased bookings and a better overall guest experience.

Cote Hospitality legacy continues to grow, now more discoverable and better aligned with evolving guest behaviors, thanks to Milestone’s AI solutions.

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