GEO for Croatia: How AI Search Visibility Is Powering Tourism and Export Growth

Why Croatia Needs to Think Beyond Google
What Is GEO and Why Does It Matter for Croatian Businesses?
How AI Search Is Reshaping Tourism Discovery
GEO for Croatian Exports: Getting Found in AI-Driven B2B Research
5 GEO Strategies Croatian Brands Should Implement Now
The Role of AI-Powered Marketing in Scaling GEO
Conclusion

The Search Landscape Has Changed — Has Croatia Kept Up?

Every year, millions of travellers research Croatian destinations before booking. Procurement managers across Europe investigate Croatian wine, olive oil, shipbuilding, and pharmaceutical exports. And increasingly, none of them start that research by typing keywords into Google. They open ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Mode, type a natural-language question, and trust the AI to synthesise an answer — complete with source citations.

For Croatian tourism boards, hospitality brands, and export-focused businesses, this shift is not a distant trend. It is already reshaping who gets visibility, who gets cited, and ultimately, who gets the booking or the purchase order. The discipline that governs this new reality is called Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), and it is quickly becoming as essential as traditional SEO was a decade ago.

This article explains what GEO means specifically for Croatia's two most economically significant outward-facing sectors — tourism and exports — and gives you a practical roadmap for making your brand visible where today's decisions are actually being made: inside AI-generated answers.

Why Croatia Needs to Think Beyond Google {#why-croatia-needs-to-think-beyond-google}

Croatia's economy is deeply intertwined with international perception. Tourism alone contributes roughly 20% of GDP, and the country's export sectors — from agri-food products to nautical equipment — depend on being discovered and trusted by buyers across the EU and beyond. For years, Google rankings were the primary battleground for that discovery. That battleground has expanded significantly.

Research from Higher Visibility found that over 71% of people now use AI tools for search-related activities. Statista projects that 36 million Americans alone will use AI as their primary search tool by 2028, up from 15 million in 2024. These are not fringe users — they are the early-adopting travel planners, B2B procurement officers, and digitally fluent consumers who represent premium spending power. If your brand does not appear in the AI-generated answers they receive, you are invisible to a fast-growing and high-value segment of your market.

For Croatia, the stakes are concrete. A traveller asking ChatGPT "what is the best coastal town in Croatia for a sailing holiday with family" will receive a curated answer. The destinations, hotels, and charter companies cited in that answer will win consideration. Those not cited will not exist in that moment of decision. The same logic applies to a European food buyer asking Perplexity to compare Croatian and Greek olive oil producers.

What Is GEO and Why Does It Matter for Croatian Businesses? {#what-is-geo}

Generative Engine Optimisation is the practice of making your content machine-readable, contextually credible, and structured in ways that large language models (LLMs) can extract and cite when answering user queries. It differs from traditional SEO in a fundamental way: instead of competing for a position on a results page, you are competing to become a trusted source that an AI model actively references in its synthesised response.

For Croatian businesses, GEO is not just a technical exercise. It is a strategic reorientation of how you communicate your value online. It requires clarity about who you serve, what questions they ask, and whether your existing digital content can answer those questions in the structured, authoritative way that AI engines prefer.

The good news is that Croatia has genuine competitive advantages to leverage — a compelling geographic identity, rich cultural narrative, world-class natural assets, and niche export products with strong provenance stories. GEO is the mechanism for translating those advantages into AI search visibility.

How AI Search Is Reshaping Tourism Discovery {#ai-search-tourism}

Travel planning has always been research-intensive, but AI search has compressed and transformed the research phase in ways that matter enormously to destinations and hospitality brands.

When a potential visitor asks an AI engine about Croatian islands, sustainable travel options on the Dalmatian coast, or the best time to visit Dubrovnik without crowds, the AI does not send them to a list of blue links. It synthesises an answer from multiple sources and presents it as a coherent recommendation. The sources it draws from are those that have answered similar questions clearly, authoritatively, and in formats that LLMs can parse.

This means a boutique hotel in Hvar with a well-structured website, rich FAQs, and clear content about its unique offering has a genuine chance of being cited alongside major OTAs and travel publications — provided its content is built with GEO principles in mind. Similarly, a tourism board that publishes detailed, query-aligned content about regional experiences, travel logistics, and seasonal highlights is more likely to appear in the AI responses that shape first impressions of the destination.

The shift also favours specificity. Generic content about "Croatia as a tourist destination" is far less likely to surface in AI citations than content that directly answers questions like "is Korčula suitable for cycling holidays" or "what local food should I try in Istria." AI engines reward precision and contextual depth.

GEO for Croatian Exports: Getting Found in AI-Driven B2B Research {#geo-croatian-exports}

The export sector presents an equally significant GEO opportunity, and one that is often overlooked in discussions that focus on consumer-facing tourism.

B2B buyers increasingly use AI tools to conduct supplier research, compare product origins, and evaluate quality credentials before initiating contact. A procurement manager sourcing premium olive oil for a European supermarket chain, or a yacht charter operator researching Croatian shipbuilders, may ask an AI engine for a shortlist of credible suppliers. The companies that appear in those AI-generated shortlists have a first-mover advantage that is difficult to overcome later in the sales cycle.

For Croatian exporters, GEO strategy should focus on making provenance, quality certifications, production processes, and customer testimonials accessible and structured in ways AI engines can reference. Content about Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status for Croatian products, industry association memberships, and third-party validation needs to be online, well-structured, and clearly attributed. If this information only exists in PDF brochures or trade show materials, it is invisible to AI systems.

Multilingual content is also critical in the export context. AI engines serve queries in the buyer's native language. Croatian exporters targeting German, French, Italian, or Scandinavian buyers need GEO-optimised content in those languages, not just English translations.

5 GEO Strategies Croatian Brands Should Implement Now {#geo-strategies}

1. Answer the Exact Questions Tourists and Buyers Are Asking {#answer-questions}

The foundation of any effective GEO strategy is understanding the specific, contextually rich questions your audience is asking AI engines. These are not short keywords — they are full sentences like "what is the best family-friendly resort in Dalmatia with a marina" or "which Croatian food exporters have EU organic certification."

Map out these questions by drawing on customer service records, sales call transcripts, review platforms, and tools like AlsoAsked. Then create content that answers each question directly and completely. Structure headings as natural-language questions, lead with a concise answer in the first two sentences, and follow with supporting detail. This mirrors how AI engines extract and cite information, dramatically increasing the probability of your content being referenced in a relevant response.

2. Build Authority Through Data, Citations, and Expert Voices {#build-authority}

AI engines weigh credibility heavily. For tourism brands, this means publishing content that references verifiable data — arrival statistics, sustainability certifications, heritage designations, award recognitions — and attributing that data to credible sources. For exporters, it means citing quality standards bodies, laboratory test results, and industry association endorsements.

Beyond on-site content, brand mentions across authoritative external sources significantly boost GEO visibility. Earning features in recognised travel publications, B2B trade media, and sector-specific databases signals to AI models that your brand is worth citing. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) works in tandem with GEO here — optimising your content to appear in direct answer formats across both traditional and AI-powered search.

3. Structure Content So AI Can Extract and Cite It {#structure-content}

Even excellent content fails GEO if it is buried in poorly structured pages that AI crawlers struggle to parse. Croatian businesses should audit their websites for clear heading hierarchies, logical content flow, FAQ sections with schema markup, and concise paragraphs that isolate individual facts or claims.

Tables comparing product specifications, bullet lists of key features or highlights, and clearly labelled sections all help LLMs identify and extract the most relevant passages. Technical health matters too — fast load times, mobile optimisation, and proper indexability ensure AI systems can actually access your content. Think of good structure not just as a user experience improvement, but as the infrastructure that makes GEO possible.

4. Expand Your Digital Footprint Across Platforms and Languages {#expand-footprint}

AI engines do not restrict themselves to websites. They pull from review platforms, forums, social media, video descriptions, and news articles. A Croatian tourism brand that is actively discussed on TripAdvisor, featured in travel blogs, mentioned in Reddit communities, and visible on YouTube has a far richer AI presence than one that relies solely on its own website.

For exporters, appearing in industry directories, being quoted in trade press, and maintaining active profiles on B2B platforms all contribute to the kind of distributed credibility that AI systems recognise and reward. Social media activity plays a supporting role here — not just as a marketing channel, but as a source of brand narrative data that AI engines incorporate into their understanding of who you are and what you offer.

5. Monitor How AI Engines Represent Your Brand {#monitor-ai}

One of the most overlooked aspects of GEO is active monitoring. Businesses need to regularly query major AI engines with the questions their target customers would ask, and evaluate whether their brand appears, how it is described, and whether the description is accurate and favourable.

This monitoring reveals gaps and misalignments that no traditional SEO tool will surface. If ChatGPT describes your olive oil brand without mentioning its PDO certification, or if Perplexity recommends a competitor hotel over yours for a query you should own, you have actionable intelligence. Monitoring tools that track AI citations, brand sentiment in LLM responses, and share of voice in AI-generated answers are becoming essential components of the modern marketing stack.

The Role of AI-Powered Marketing in Scaling GEO {#ai-powered-marketing}

Implementing GEO effectively across a tourism brand's full digital presence, or across a portfolio of export product lines, is not a one-person job. It requires coordinated content creation, technical optimisation, authority building, multilingual execution, and ongoing monitoring — simultaneously and continuously.

This is precisely the operational challenge that AI-powered marketing solutions are designed to solve. Rather than hiring multiple specialists across content, SEO, and digital PR, Croatian businesses can access a fully managed capability that combines proprietary AI agents with experienced human strategists — the kind of setup that makes GEO execution practical at scale.

For instance, an AI SEO system that publishes ranking-ready, GEO-optimised articles daily can ensure consistent content coverage across target queries without the bottleneck of manual production. An AI Chat solution can engage site visitors in real time, capturing intent signals that inform ongoing GEO strategy. And a managed approach to influencer marketing can generate the kind of authoritative third-party mentions that strengthen a brand's position in AI citations.

For Croatian tourism operators and exporters exploring Local SEO and broader digital growth, the question is not whether to invest in GEO — it is whether to build that capability in-house or leverage a partner that has already operationalised it. Given the pace at which AI search is evolving, the latter option increasingly makes strategic sense.

Conclusion {#conclusion}

Croatia stands at a pivotal moment in its digital visibility story. The travellers planning their next Adriatic holiday and the buyers sourcing premium Croatian products are already using AI search tools to make decisions. The brands and destinations that understand Generative Engine Optimisation and act on it now will build a durable competitive advantage in AI-generated answers — while those who wait will find themselves structurally excluded from the conversations that matter most.

GEO is not a replacement for traditional SEO or broader digital marketing — it is an essential expansion of the playbook. By answering specific questions with authority, structuring content for machine extraction, building credibility across the web, and actively monitoring AI representation, Croatian businesses can ensure they are not just present online, but influential inside the AI responses shaping international demand.

The window to establish early GEO authority is open now. The question is whether your brand will be the one AI engines cite — or the one they overlook.

Ready to make your brand visible in AI search answers?

Hashmeta AI delivers a fully managed GEO and AI SEO capability — expert strategy, daily content production, and continuous optimisation — at a fraction of the cost of building it in-house. If you are serious about capturing AI-driven visibility for your tourism brand or export business, explore what Hashmeta AI can do for you.