Fresha reports that one in four appointments in some markets now originates from AI tools like Google Gemini, signaling a broader shift in how consumers discover and book local selfcare services.
Fresha says a growing share of beauty and wellness appointments are no longer being booked through traditional search or social media, but through artificial intelligence tools. The London-based booking and payments platform reports that referrals from large language models such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT and Claude are increasing by roughly 50% month over month, with AI-driven sources now accounting for a significant portion of new bookings.
The scale of that shift is notable. Fresha processes more than 30 million appointments each month, valued at over $1.5 billion, across salons, barbershops and spas worldwide. In parts of the Asia-Pacific region, the company says one in four online booking referrals now comes directly from Google Gemini and related tools, compared with about one in seven two years ago.
Much of this growth appears tied to Fresha’s integration with Google’s booking infrastructure, which allows consumers to reserve services directly from search results and maps. More than 30,000 partner businesses use this system monthly, generating over a million appointments. By structuring its marketplace data so that it can be accessed by AI systems, Fresha is positioning itself as a bridge between conversational search and real-time transactions.
The implications extend beyond selfcare. As AI assistants become embedded in everyday digital life, they are beginning to collapse the gap between discovery and purchase. Instead of browsing multiple websites, a user can ask a conversational interface for “a highly rated haircut nearby tomorrow evening” and receive bookable options instantly. For service-based businesses, visibility within these AI systems may become as important as traditional search rankings once were.
Fresha reports that its marketplace generated more than 3 million new client connections in 2025, with strong rebooking rates and a median ninefold return on investment for participating businesses. Whether these gains represent a lasting transformation or an early spike in AI experimentation remains to be seen. What is clear is that the path from question to checkout is becoming shorter—and increasingly automated.
