Eurostar is now inside ChatGPT. Here's what that means for your business

What Eurostar did

Eurostar launched its official app inside ChatGPT, available internationally. Travellers look up a train journey and arrange it straight in the AI conversation. Emerce reported the news.

One sentence, big consequence. Booking moves to the place where the customer is already typing. Someone who wants to go to London ends up with a ticket without ever clicking through to eurostar.com.

Large companies go first. They have teams who can build this kind of connection. You don't, and that's fine. What matters is what sits underneath.

Why 'is my business visible in ChatGPT' becomes the new question

For years, being found came down to one thing: do you rank high in Google. That question sticks around for a while yet. A second one is joining it. Can an AI genuinely help your customer on your behalf?

The difference is bigger than it looks. Google sends people to your site and they do the rest themselves. An AI conversation works differently. The customer asks, an answer comes out. If your information isn't in there, you simply don't exist in that conversation.

Owners are already asking me about being findable in AI search. Fair question. The answer just doesn't start with technology.

You don't need your own app in ChatGPT

What Eurostar did costs a team and months of work. Your route doesn't have to look like that. What counts is whether your business can answer the moment someone asks something.

In practice that means:

• Your information sits somewhere a machine can read it. Opening hours, prices, what you do and don't do, how long it takes. Plain text, on your own site, up to date.
• There is a place where something can actually be arranged. An appointment, a quote, a call-back request. If you want customers booking through AI, there first has to be something bookable that works online.
• Someone keeps it current. A calendar that's wrong is worse than no calendar.

This isn't an AI project. It's homework you already owed yourself. It just happens to count double now.

What I'd have you do tomorrow

Start small. Pick up your phone and ask ChatGPT the question your customer would ask. 'Where can I go in my town for the thing you do?' See what comes back. If you're not in it, you know where the work is.

Then look at your own process. How do I connect my calendar to AI is a question I hear a lot, and usually the calendar itself turns out to be the problem. Clean that up first. Put your common questions on your site with real answers. Make sure a new customer can tell within a minute whether you can help them.

This is the kind of work I do for business owners. It gives you your evenings back, and that's the whole reason.

Eurostar is news today. Before long it's simply how things work. You have time. Use it to get your basics in order. Stuck? Email me at info@mia-automation.com.