HOTEL AND TOURISM SEO ROOM RENTALS AIRBNB BOOKING
Get to the top of Google and AI for your hotel or tourist accommodation!
Hi, guys.
This is Yannis Divramis #divramis.
We’re an International SEO agency based in Greece.
Our topic is hotel and tourism SEO and SEO services.
What can we do to rank on the first page of Google for, touring, hotels, rentals, Airbnb, Booking, etc?
My name is Yannis Divramis.
I’m an SEO expert in Divramis SEO agency.
You can get our newsletter by subscribing with your email, or you can ask for a quote if you want to rank the first page of Google today.
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What can you do to get to the top of Google and AI for your hotel or tourist accommodation?
1. WHY DO SEO FOR YOUR HOTEL TOURIST ACCOMMODATION AIRBNB ROOM RENTAL?
The first question is why to do SEO for your hotel or tourist accommodation or hotel room or a villa or apartment or booking or Airbnb or whatever you have.
The same also applies for any other tourist company, like tours, bus tours, or rent a car, rent a bike, rent a bike, or rent a villa or whatever.
And I have 8 good reasons here.
1.1 MORE ECONOMIC THAN BOOKING AIRBNB AND ANY OTHER BOOKING SYSTEM
The first is that SEO is more economical than Booking, Airbnb and any other booking system.
SEO is better, is more effective, more efficient, and has better targeting.
Why?
Because you have to pay this system’s 20 or 30% or annual fee for advertising without doing anything, just to list you on the top and avoid getting scammed with bad reviews.
How do I know that?
Because of my own experience from clients that I have here in Greece.
In Greece, believe me, it’s one of the top destinations for tourism.
And we’re accepting 35.000.000 tourists per year, I think, at this current moment.
And the trend is going up and up all these years.
In the next decade, we’re gonna have more than 50.000.000 tourists, before 2030.
Also read: START UP SEO FROM ZERO TO HERO.
1.2 DIRECT COMMUNICATION WITH THE CUSTOMER (THE CUSTOMER IS YOURS AND DOES NOT BELONG TO THIRD-PARTY PLATFORMS)
The second good reason to do SEO is direct communication with the customer.
The customer is yours and does not belong to third party platforms.
And let’s do a small research here and, go to Google and search Rhodes hotels.
Rhodes is a Greek island.
It’s a very famous island and popular tourist destination.
It’s a big island as well.
And you can see the first results are sponsored like Booking, Pearl Hotel , Skyscanner, Kayak, kayak, Tripadvisor, etc.
The second results are Google Business Profiles or the Google Maps or the local pack or the trip pack.
And here we can see different hotels prices commencing from €66 to €1,000 for one day in a hotel.
Then you have the places sites, like booking.com, Jet2holidays, Tripadvisor, Agoda, Greg Hotel, HotelsCombined, Expedia, Media Hotels, On The Beach.
And then on the pure organic results, we have booking, Jet2Holidays, TripAdvisor, hotels collection, TUI.
These results are only for international results and not for quick results here.
And people also ask then, Rhodes Palace is the first hotel you can find in the first page of Google.
As in the first page, Tripadvisor etc.
And we’ll have the people also search for section.
If you see that we have more than two folds before the pure organic results starts, and, also, Google Places or the Places sites were a feature, that have been replaced by Google My Business and which have been replaced with Google Business Profile.
It’s the same thing that it was 10 years ago, almost the same, like Google Maps.
So you can see that there are many, many, websites, especially booking sites.
That means that competition is fierce.
1.3 YOU CAN OVERRUN THE COMPETITION AND BE IN THE FIRST PLACE
The third reason you need to have your own website is that you can overrun the competition be in the first place.
That’s obvious.
After all these things, you will be first, like, Booking or the hotels we find in the first place.
Then you can have direct bookings.
1.4 DIRECT BOOKINGS
1.5 PRESTIGE
Prestige is a must because people think you are more prestigious because you have done something in order to rank first.
That you are of better quality.
High rankings means more bookings.
I don’t know how many, but more.
1.6 BETTER PRICES
1.7 MORE BOOKINGS
1.8 FEWER NEGATIVE REVIEWS
The eighth reason is fewer negative reviews because you have a report with the client.
It’s a direct client to you instead of talking negative to other persons.
They can talk to you directly.
And if you have a complaint, you can ask them to solve it before he makes a review.
If you use another platform that is not and you don’t have personal rapport or personal communication with a client, maybe they will put a negative review.
Negative is something less than five stars review.
2. DO KEYWORD RESEARCH
The second step is to do keyword research.
Also read: GONE! MY SITE DISAPPEARED FROM GOOGLE NOW WHAT?
Because you need a professional SEO agency that has many years of experience in order to do proper SEO for your site.
You need to do keyword research.
What kind of keyword research you need to do?
First, do a competition analysis what’s out there, in your industry on Google.
Go there and search, for instance, Ios Hotel.
Ios is another Greek island, a small island for aan lternative vacation.
It’s in Cyclades, Greece.
Also a great place to go there.
2.1 DO A COMPETITION ANALYSIS WHAT’S OUT THERE YOUR INDUSTRY ON GOOGLE
And you can see the same thing happens here because Google doesn’t start with all results, but starts with lodging.
That means hotels.
And you can see the sponsored, that is SkyScanner, Booking, Tripadvisor.
Then it’s the Google Maps, Farout Beach Hotel with 2,200 reviews and other hotels.
Everyone tries to find something expensive to attract the rich.
That’s, the reason that many people are avoiding Greece right now and want to go to Vietnam, for instance for vacation.
Then when the real results start, Booking is the first result, then Tripadvisor, then Ios Palace Hotel, on the first page.
Google has also accommodations.
We can see that in Ios, we have less competition, but still not too many websites that are standing along the crowd.
So this is called a competitive keyword analysis.
2.2 FIND ALL RELATED SEARCHES ON GOOGLE
So, we have to find already related searches on Google.
That means that you will have to find search like Ios hotels Greece, Ios hotels five stars, best Ios hotels, Ios hotels cheap, relax Ios hotel, use hotels Milopotas Beach, use hotels luxury, Ios hotels all inclusive.
And in Google Suggest we have Ios Airbnb, where to stay in Ios for nightlife.
Is Ios a party island?
Is Ios worth it in Greece?
Where it is best to stay in Ios?
You need to find everything about this.
And then you can note it down and make a list in Excel about every keyword that is relevant with your website, with your hotel, with your apartment, with your room.
And then you can go on searches with location area.
That is the base keyword.
We need the base money keyword because every other informational based keyword fires the AI and you are losing traffic.
For instance, if you go people also ask where it is best to stay in Ios, AI overview starts.
And then other websites, like Adventurely, Wixitravel, Urban Wonders are matching the results plus videos.
You need to rank first for your lodge, for your apartment, for your hotel with the main keywords and stop using phrases.
Phrases now it’s the least possible terms to rank.
2.3 SEARCHES WITH LOCATION AREA (Location-based keywords)
E.G. HOTELS ATHENS
You need search with location area.
This is the base.
The first you have to do.
2.4 SEARCHES WITH CRITERIA E.G. HOTELS WITH POOL RHODES
2.5 SEARCHES BASED ON QUALITY E.G. FIVE STAR HOTELS CHANIA
2.6 SEARCHES WITH KEY PHRASES E.G. HOTELS FIRST PLACE SEA CORFU ETC
Let’s let’s do a search about this right now because we have the time we can do it.
People also ask hotels in Corfu.
Not the best searches.
You need them, but not the first choice.
So you have to optimize for the basics location area search, both in video.
You need to do a video about this location.
3. CREATE YOUR PROFILE ON GBP GOOGLE BUSINESS PROFILE
And the third step is to create your profile on Google Business Profile.
3.1 FILL IN YOUR NAME CORRECTLY, YOUR PHONE NUMBER AND LOCATION NAP (NAME ADDRESS PHONE)
The first thing to do is to fill in your name correctly, your phone number and location, your NAP (name, Address, Phone).
You need consistency in order to build citations because citations are brand mentions and have the same value as backlinks in local SEO for Google and other search engines, AI SEO, Bing etc.
Also, you have Bing places you can use it.
Only 1% takes advice from Bing and ChatGPT, because it’s blocked from Google bots, takes information from DuckDuckGo and Bing and Yahoo.
So if you want to optimize for ChatGPT, you need to optimize for Bing.
So you need, Bing Places.
I haven’t used it till now.
You can use it if you are in other place in United States or UK.
Please be careful when you’re using your Google Business Profile.
You need to have the same IP from your mobile phone or your computer from your own Gmail.
Never let anyone else share information and do anything else because you’re gonna get banned from Google forever.
And you are going to lose everything in Google Business Profile.
Be very, very careful.
It’s an automatic procedure.
It happens every time, and it happened to me many times before.
So be careful.
Also read: INHOUSE SEO EXPERT VS SEO AGENCY WHICH IS THE BEST FOR YOUR NEEDS?
3.2 FILL IN ALL THE INFORMATION CORRECTLY AND THE CATEGORY YOU BELONG TO E.G. HOTELS, ROOMS FOR RENT ETC.
If we go to Ios hotel and have a look on the Google Map, you have Farout Beach hotel and other hotels.
You need to complete and fill in the best fit for yourself, for your category.
You need it to do it properly.
3.3 UPLOAD PHOTOS AND VIDEOS EVERY WEEK PLUS ARTICLES
You need one post every week at least, but you need to fill your Google Business Profile with nice videos, nice articles, nice photos.
3.4 ENCOURAGE REVIEWS
Encourage reviews or bribe people to review your site, your Google Business Profile.
Buy them drinks, offer something free, free pictures, free massage, free breakfast, free ride.
Help them to feel as their home and the current reviews.
You need 5 star reviews.
Don’t ask for 4 star in order to have a variety.
You need only 5stars reviews because many people were put 1 star reviews on purpose.
3.5 UPLOAD FAQ WITH ALL THE NECESSARY INFORMATION
Upload an FAQ with frequently asked questions with all the necessary information, why people need to visit you, how can they find you, when, where, what, why, whatever.
Write everything and don’t use ChatGPT.
Use your own hand and your own mind.
You can use, of course, for instance, Gemini AI in order to gather information, but you need to think by yourself.
You need, to have a personal opinion and be human.
4. ON-PAGE SEO FOR HOTELS ON PAGE
The fourth step is the on page SEO for hotels or on page or on-site.
You need to create 1,000 word text with full videos, photos, and search in your website.
First, you need a website.
Be careful with that.
You need a domain name that is branded, for instance hotelyannis.
This is the best, I think, to have a branded domain name plus keyword.
And you need to write everything.
Write everything that someone is going to search about you, don’t use ChatGPT.
Upload videos in YouTube, photo, shorts, etc.
Embed them in your website.
Include them up correctly.
Consistency is a must.
You need to include every comma, every capital letter, whatever.
Also, the category in your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) plus the category in the name.
Also read: Google Entity Stacking How to make the most of Google to rank first on Google!
4.1 CREATE 1000 WORD TEXTS WITH FULL VIDEOS, PHOTOS AND SHORTS
4.2 INCLUDE THE NAP CORRECTLY
4.3 OPEN PAGE WHO WE ARE, CONTACT, COMPLAINT FORM AND TERMS OF USE ETC
You need them all for your site because that means that you’re a real site, a real person, a real business, and have dedicated some more time in order to do things, and you are not someone that made a quick site.
4.4 INCLUDE YOUR CLEAR PROPOSAL CALL TO ACTION
If you go to Booking, and you can see we have a call to action like search, register, sign in, see availability, and book now.
You need to have a call to action, like book now.
It’s very easy to do it.
4.5 MOBILE FIRST DESIGN
Be careful in the mobile first design.
Everyone is using their mobile phone.
Don’t expect people to have their laptops in their hands on the airport or in their travel.
Nobody has any laptops right now, apart from professionals like me, SEO professionals, architects, or people that are professionals and use Internet every day.
99% of the people are not using laptop or another PCs.
4.6 PUT ALL THE AWARDS AND WHAT MAKES YOU STAND OUT FROM OTHERS POSITIVE CHARACTERISTICS
You have the greatest view, the greatest breakfast, the greatest smile, the greatest room, the cleanest, the better, whatever.
Put it in your website.
4.7 CREATE AT LEAST ONE ARTICLE PER WEEK
Be careful with the cannibalization.
Be careful with the keywords.
Be careful with the phrases.
Be careful with the AI in general.
4.8 OPEN A NEWSLETTER
Someone comes to you and never hears from you again.
You need a newsletter to send them message from you, welcome message, or whatever.
Maybe they will come back later or they’re going to refer people to you.
But if you don’t have a contact point, then you lose them.
You’re gonna lose them forever.
It is cheaper to keep the same client than to find a new one.
I think it’s five times cheaper to retain a client, a client that comes back again and again in the same hotel.
And there are many people I think that they are going back to Rhodes again and again, the same hotel, or in Carpathos in Greece.
But there are people that are coming back and back again on the same hotel, eating the same things, and asking for the same waiter to serve them.
And it happened to me because I was working in Milos, Cyclades, Greece, and we had the same people every year, both Germans, both Italian, both Greeks all over the world.
Some of them, they’re coming every three years, but many people, they’re coming every year.
5. OFF PAGE SEO OFF PAGE HOTEL SEO
What do you need to do?
5.1 OPEN CORRECT SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILES
FITTYX SYSTEM
FACEBOOK
INSTAGRAM
TIKTOK
THREADS
X
First, open correct social media profiles with your hashtag, like my own hashtag #divramis.
Follow me in every social media.
Most of them are in Greek, but you can find me in YouTube, Yannis Divramis SEO International.
You need the FITTYX system, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, X.
Plus you can also open any other profile.
You need consistency in the profile name that you have, like, Divramis, SEO agency, for instance, or Divramis hotel or whatever.
It’s better to open more than 5 – 6, for instance VKontakte if you have Russian clients or Russian speaking clients or Gravatar, Medium, Quora, Tumblr.
You need them all.
5.2 OPEN ALL POSSIBLE COMMUNICATION CHANNELS
VIBER, WHATSAPP, ETC
Avoid the chat or the chat apps.
It’s a waste of time, but you need to have all the other channels open.
5.3 REGISTER ON ALL TOURIST SITES BOOKINGS
TRIPADVISOR
BOOKING
GETYOURGUIDE
VIATOR
ETC
5.4 REGISTER IN ALL LOCAL GUIDES AND TOURIST SITES
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
XO
VRISKO ETC
In America, maybe it’s Better Business Bureau.
You have to register for free in every guide you have.
Be careful with these steps, because 70% of the rankings comes from the off page SEO, but there are backlinks and these are quality backlinks that everyone can get is the low hanging fruit for everyone in SEO.
5.5 REPLY TO ALL REVIEWS AND CRITICISMS
Reply to all reviews, negative and positive, ask them to change the review, contact them, and bribe them in order to change the review.
If someone, puts a 1 star negative review and isn’t your client, answer them politely.
Ask politely, and, people will see that many businesses, are getting destroyed by the competition, with negative reviews.
Did you came to a hotel or you have mixed it up with another place?
In fact, Google does nothing about this.
Believe me.
5.6 CREATE BACKLINKS FROM THIRD-PARTY SITES
You need an SEO agency to build some backlinks.
You can go to tourist magazines and whatever other sites are in your industry and get listed there.
Some it’s free.
Some it’s paid.
You need at least to get in the free ones and then see your budget, what can you pay.
GUEST POSTS, SEO, BOOKMARKS ETC.
6. EVALUATE WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOESN’T
And the sixth step is evaluate what works and what doesn’t.
Kill everything that doesn’t work.
But what do you need to do first?
Install Google Analytics.
You need to see where the traffic comes from.
6.1 INSTALL GOOGLE ANALYTICS
6.2 MEASURE PERFORMANCE EVERY MONTH, QUARTERLY AND YEARLY AS WELL AS RANKING
6.3 KILL WHAT’S NOT WORKING AND FOCUS ON WHAT’S WORKING
And what does it mean?
You need to do to see how many people are coming from Booking, how many from digital guide, how many from TripAdvisor, what kind of people, what quality of traffic are coming, and persist and insist in what is working and kill what is not working.
For instance, if Booking is not working, stop using Booking in general or stop putting information in Booking and go somewhere else and do something else.
Your time is very precious.
7. IF YOU ARE AN SEO BEGINNER, DON’T DO ANYTHING, ASK FOR HELP FROM THE EXPERTS AND ONLY THEN!
And the cardinal SEO advice that I I’m always giving to everyone is if you’re not relevant with SEO, don’t do anything.
Ask for help from for help from the experts and only then do SEO.
If you’re a beginner in SEO or you have a cousin who knows SEO but it’s not a professional, do nothing..
You have to be professional and ask for professional advice.
These people are us, so you can request a quote for today or call us.
It’s a WhatsApp number as well, or send us an email, and we’re gonna help you in ranking on the first page of Google.
What A Hotel SEO Agency Actually Changes About Your Bookings
The measure is not traffic, it is the share of your bookings that arrive without a commission attached.
Every room sold through a portal costs between fifteen and twenty-five percent of the rate. A hotel SEO agency should open with that number rather than with a traffic chart, because it is the only figure an owner recognises, and the SEO case is built on it.
Commission is the benchmark
A property paying six figures a year in commission has an obvious budget for direct acquisition. A hotel SEO agency should put those two numbers side by side in the first meeting, and the cost question answers itself. Framing the engagement against that number, rather than against a marketing budget, is what gets it approved. US properties run that comparison more readily than most.
The guest is the same guest
Most direct bookings are people who found the property on a portal and then searched the hotel name. A hotel SEO agency should be capturing that search deliberately, and ranking first for your own name is the cheapest revenue in the business. Owning that branded result, with a better offer than the portal shows, converts a booking you were going to pay for anyway.
Where the growth actually comes from
Partly from branded searches, partly from unbranded queries the portals dominate, and partly from questions nobody answers well: accessibility, parking, early check-in, family rooms, what is walkable. A hotel SEO agency should map all three with proper keyword research rather than assume the branded layer is enough.
What it cannot do
It will not displace the portals on generic city searches. A hotel SEO agency should be honest about that before the contract rather than in month six, and the case for hiring an agency rests on that honesty. Anybody promising that has not looked at the results, and our audit starts by showing the client exactly which terms are and are not winnable.
Your Real Competitor Is The Portal, Not The Hotel Down The Road
On almost every search that matters, the property is competing against the platform it also sells through.
The portals occupy the top of city and area searches with enormous authority and complete inventory. A hotel SEO agency should say that plainly rather than take a budget to fight it, which is one of the misconceptions that wastes the most money in hospitality. A hotel SEO agency that treats them as a competitor to outrank will spend the budget and lose.
Where portals are unbeatable
Generic city and destination terms, price comparison, and anything requiring a full inventory of every property in a market. A hotel SEO agency should concede that ground explicitly so the budget goes where it can win, which is what focusing on a niche actually means here. That ground is not contestable by a single hotel.
Where portals are weak
Anything about your specific property, your neighbourhood, your facilities, your policies and the practical questions a guest asks before arriving. A hotel SEO agency should build a page for each of those rather than a single overview, and on-page structure decides whether they rank. Portals publish a template; you can publish an answer. Marketplace-dominated categories reward the same approach.
The branded search you should own
People search the hotel name plus a question: parking, breakfast, check-in time, airport transfer, whether pets are allowed. A hotel SEO agency should publish an answer page for every one of those, because the alternative is a review site answering on your behalf. Every one of those is a page, and every one of them is currently answered by a portal or a review site.
Being listed and being ranked
Presence on the portals is a distribution decision and it does not remove the need to rank yourself. A hotel SEO agency should be measuring both channels rather than arguing about which matters, and listing consistency supports both. A hotel SEO agency should be improving both rather than treating them as alternatives, which is the same logic our online reputation management work applies to third-party profiles.
Rate Parity, Metasearch And The Direct Booking Argument
A guest who finds you and then sees the same price on a portal has no reason to book direct.
Rate parity clauses, metasearch placement and what the booking engine actually shows determine whether organic visibility converts. A hotel SEO agency should audit all three before commissioning content, and the audit is where that surfaces. A hotel SEO agency that ignores the commercial layer is delivering traffic to a page that cannot win.
What you can offer instead of price
Where parity restricts the rate, the direct advantage has to be something else: room choice, upgrade priority, flexible cancellation, a welcome extra, loyalty credit or simply the ability to speak to somebody. A hotel SEO agency should be testing which of those actually moves the booking rather than listing all of them. That has to be visible before the booking step.
Metasearch and the comparison moment
The decision frequently happens inside a comparison panel where the property appears alongside the portals. A hotel SEO agency should be reporting metasearch performance alongside organic, because the guest experiences them as one moment. Being present there, with a competitive direct rate, captures guests at the exact moment of choice. Platform economics decide what that placement costs.
The booking engine is part of SEO
A slow, clumsy or mobile-hostile booking engine loses the guest after the content has done its work. A hotel SEO agency should be testing it on a phone on a poor connection, which is what mobile optimisation actually requires. Measuring it is part of the job, and it is ordinary technical SEO applied to the only page that takes money.
Making the argument to revenue management
Direct booking strategy sits with revenue management rather than marketing, and a hotel SEO agency that never speaks to that function is optimising around a decision it cannot influence.
Room Types, Rate Plans And The Pages Nobody Builds
Guests search for a specific kind of room, and almost every hotel site has one page listing all of them.
Family rooms, connecting rooms, accessible rooms, suites with a view, rooms with a balcony, quiet rooms away from the lift. A hotel SEO agency should build a page per type the property genuinely sells, with real photographs rather than a rendering.
Why room type pages convert
Somebody searching for a family room in your area has a requirement rather than a preference. Money keywords look like this rather than like head terms. A hotel SEO agency should be treating that as the highest-intent traffic on the site, and conversion work belongs on those pages first. A page describing that exact room, with photographs, dimensions, occupancy and what is included, matches the search and answers the question in one step. A hotel SEO agency should build twenty of those before it builds a single blog post, and content quality here means specificity rather than length.
Accessibility deserves a real page
Step-free access, bathroom layout, door widths, lift availability and parking distance are searched by people who cannot book without the answer. A hotel SEO agency should insist on that page even when nobody has asked for it, and a properly built site carries it in the main navigation. Publishing it properly is both a commercial and an ethical improvement. A hotel SEO agency should treat it as a basic site requirement rather than an optional page.
Packages and stay types
Weekend breaks, long stays, business rates and seasonal packages each attract a different guest and each deserves its own page rather than a line on a rates table. A hotel SEO agency should be building them from the revenue calendar rather than from a marketing plan.
Facilities as search demand
Pool, spa, restaurant, parking, gym, meeting rooms and pet policy are all searched alongside the location. A hotel SEO agency should check which of those the property is currently invisible for, and the site audit answers that in an afternoon. A hotel SEO agency should treat each facility as a page with genuine detail rather than an icon in a list.
Seasonality, Lead Time And When To Publish
Guests research months before they book, and content published in season arrives after the decision. A hotel SEO agency should be working two quarters ahead, and an editorial calendar built any other way misses every window.
Summer bookings are researched in winter, Christmas is researched in autumn, and events are researched as soon as dates are announced. A hotel SEO agency should be publishing two quarters ahead of the demand it is targeting.
Booking window by segment
Business travel books days ahead, leisure books weeks ahead, and destination stays book months ahead. A hotel SEO agency should publish against the longest window first, because that is the content that takes longest to rank. Each window needs its content live and ranked before it opens.
Event-driven demand
Conferences, festivals, sporting fixtures and local events create sharp, predictable spikes with published dates. A hotel SEO agency should hold that calendar and commission against it, which is basic campaign timing applied properly. A page per major event, live months in advance, captures demand the portals serve generically. A hotel SEO agency should build one per fixture the destination actually hosts, and the language should match how attendees search rather than how organisers brand it.
Shoulder season content
The quiet months are where occupancy is actually won, and the content that fills them is about reasons to come at that time of year rather than about the property. A hotel SEO agency should be commissioning that in the busy season, and evergreen structure keeps it working every year.
Building the calendar
Every date that will drive demand next year is already known. Learning to plan against a calendar is most of the skill here. Turning that into a publishing schedule is straightforward planning that almost no property does, and it is exactly what our content for organic search briefs are built around.
Groups, Weddings And Meetings: The Revenue Nobody Optimises
Group business is high value, booked directly, and almost never served with content.
Weddings, corporate meetings, training days, conferences and family gatherings are researched by somebody with a brief and a budget. A hotel SEO agency should build a page per event type rather than a single function space page, and local visibility carries most of that demand. A hotel SEO agency should be building for that reader because portals barely compete for it.
What a group enquirer searches
Capacity, room configurations, catering options, audio-visual provision, parking, accessibility and whether the space can be held exclusively. A hotel SEO agency should publish all seven with numbers rather than adjectives, because this reader is building a comparison sheet. Practical questions with no emotional content. B2B buyers read the same way.
Weddings are their own market
Capacity, ceremony licensing, photograph locations, accommodation for guests, packages and pricing. A hotel SEO agency should be publishing indicative pricing here, and the copywriting has to serve somebody planning the largest event of their life. Researched over months by somebody comparing venues rather than hotels.
Meetings and corporate
Room dimensions, layouts, connectivity, day delegate rates and how quickly a quotation arrives. A hotel SEO agency should be measuring quotation turnaround as part of the programme, because a slow response undoes the ranking. This buyer books repeatedly, which makes the acquisition unusually valuable. Other repeat-enquiry sectors justify the same investment.
Why this converts direct
Portals do not sell function space, so the entire enquiry arrives without commission. A hotel SEO agency should quantify that in the first meeting, because it usually reorders the whole priority list. A hotel SEO agency that builds this cluster is adding revenue with no channel cost attached, which is the same commercial logic our conversion work applies everywhere.
Multi-Property Structure And Brand Sites
Groups with several properties usually build one site that ranks for none of them.
A brand page listing twelve hotels competes with each individual property and satisfies nobody searching for a specific location. A hotel SEO agency should resolve that before publishing anything, and multi-unit programmes face the identical problem.
Property pages as real sites
Each property needs its own depth: rooms, facilities, area content, events, reviews and local detail. A hotel SEO agency should be sourcing that detail from each general manager rather than generating it centrally. A shared template with the name swapped ranks for nothing. Programmatic techniques only work where the underlying detail differs.
What belongs at brand level
Loyalty, standards, booking policy, careers and corporate content. A hotel SEO agency should keep those at brand level, and enterprise structures work the same way. Everything a guest asks about a specific stay belongs on the property.
Internal linking between properties
Guests searching one city occasionally convert in another. A hotel SEO agency should build that mesh deliberately, and internal links are the cheapest lever available. A deliberate structure between properties captures that without the brand page cannibalising anything.
Local profiles per property
Each hotel is a physical business with its own listing, reviews and photographs. A hotel SEO agency should audit every one of them, because a wrong category on a single property costs that property its local visibility. Managing them centrally but distinctly is exactly the discipline our Google Business Profile work applies.
Reviews, Reputation And The Branded Search Result
Somebody searching your hotel name sees review sites, portals, maps and photographs before they see your own page.
That result is the last thing a guest looks at before booking, and most of it is written by other people. A hotel SEO agency should audit it monthly, and reputation management is the discipline for the parts you cannot rank. A hotel SEO agency should be treating it as a surface to manage rather than a page to rank.
Review velocity beats review count
Recent reviews carry more weight than a high average from three years ago. A hotel SEO agency should build the request into the checkout process rather than running a quarterly campaign, and reputation building is exactly that discipline.
Responding properly
A considered response to a critical review is read by future guests rather than by the reviewer. A hotel SEO agency should be writing the response policy, and knowing when a review can be removed is part of it. It is the cheapest reputation work available and it is usually delegated to nobody. The social channels need the same policy.
Photographs decide clicks
Guests choose visually. Current, professional photographs of real rooms outperform stock imagery everywhere they appear, and they carry across the site, the profiles and the portals. A hotel SEO agency should budget for that shoot, and optimising the files keeps the pages fast afterwards.
Managing what you cannot control
Third-party pages about the property will rank whatever you do. A hotel SEO agency should be improving what those pages say rather than trying to remove them. Ensuring the accurate, current version is among them is the achievable objective, and it is where a hotel SEO agency should be spending time rather than fighting the platforms.
AI Search And The Travel Question
Guests now ask assistants where to stay, and the answers are assembled from sources most hotels have never checked.
A question about a family hotel near a landmark returns a synthesised recommendation drawn from portals, review platforms and destination content. A hotel SEO agency has to plan for citation as well as ranking, which our generative engine optimization work treats as its own discipline.
What gets cited
Clear, specific, current factual content: policies, facilities, distances, accessibility and what is genuinely nearby. A hotel SEO agency should publish that set as plain structured facts, and AI-first search rewards exactly that. Marketing language is skipped entirely. Where search is heading makes that permanent.
Structured facts
Check-in times, pet policy, parking, distances to landmarks and facility hours are exactly the details assistants extract. A hotel SEO agency should publish them as structured facts, which is what AI search readiness actually requires. Publishing them plainly, in one place, makes the property quotable.
Being in the recommendation
Assistants draw on the same third-party sources guests do. A hotel SEO agency should be correcting those sources rather than only publishing on the owned site. A property missing or outdated on those platforms is missing from the answer, and our ChatGPT SEO work addresses that visibility directly.
Correcting what is wrong
Assistants repeat outdated facts about renovations, closures and facilities. A hotel SEO agency should audit that quarterly, and winning AI search begins with correcting the sources. Checking quarterly what is being said, and correcting the underlying sources, is work nobody has been assigned.
What A Hotel SEO Agency Should Report
Occupancy and channel mix are the outcomes; sessions are not.
The measure is direct bookings, direct revenue, commission avoided and the share of bookings arriving without a portal in the path. A hotel SEO agency should agree that set before the first month, and the programme should be built around it. A hotel SEO agency reporting traffic is describing something no general manager can act on.
Direct share and commission avoided
The clearest single number is the proportion of bookings taken directly, tracked monthly against the same period last year. A hotel SEO agency should lead every report with it, and the opening audit should establish the baseline. Multiplied by the commission rate, it converts organic into a figure the owner recognises.
Revenue per available room
Direct bookings frequently carry a better rate and a longer stay. A hotel SEO agency should be reporting revenue rather than booking counts for that reason alone. Reporting the revenue rather than the booking count captures that difference.
Enquiries by segment
Group, wedding, meeting and leisure enquiries behave differently and should be reported separately rather than blended into a form-fill total. A hotel SEO agency should classify every enquiry at the point it arrives, and B2B segmentation is the closest analogue.
Reporting against the market
Occupancy moves with the destination, the season and the economy. A hotel SEO agency should carry the market line in every report, and our FAQ explains why a raw traffic number misleads. Reporting performance without that context produces credit in a strong year and blame in a weak one, which is why our performance SEO reporting always carries the market line.
What Twelve Months With A Hotel SEO Agency Looks Like
An honest sequence for a property with a booking engine, a portal dependency and a website nobody has updated in three years.
What follows is how a serious engagement runs, and what a hotel SEO agency should be willing to write into an agreement rather than describe in a pitch.
Months one to three
Technical audit including the booking engine. A hotel SEO agency should test it on a phone before anything else, because that is where the revenue is lost. Booking source tracking implemented. A hotel SEO agency should insist on that before commissioning content, because without it nothing that follows can be measured. Local profiles corrected and photographs refreshed. The audit should list every profile before any of it starts. Room type pages built. Branded question pages published. Review request built into checkout.
Months four to six
Facility and package pages live. A hotel SEO agency should have the first measurable movement in direct share by this quarter. Area and neighbourhood content published. A hotel SEO agency should source that from the front office rather than from a travel guide, and the briefs should specify who is interviewed. Event pages built ahead of the calendar. Local coverage around those events earns links no outreach would. Accessibility content published properly. Metasearch presence reviewed with revenue management.
Months seven to nine
Group, wedding and meeting cluster built. A hotel SEO agency should be seeing commission-free enquiries arriving by this stage, and training the internal team should start here. Shoulder season content published ahead of the window. A hotel SEO agency should be commissioning it while the property is busy, and long-term performance depends on that discipline. Multi-property structure resolved where it applies. Any restructure has to preserve what already ranks. Assistant answers audited and corrected.
Months ten to twelve
Competitive unbranded terms contested where they are winnable. A hotel SEO agency reaching this point has earned it, and the portfolio should show comparable properties. Reporting stable on direct share and commission avoided. A hotel SEO agency should hand that reporting to the internal team rather than keeping it, and the delivery model should make that possible. Publishing handed to the internal team with a written standard.
What will not have happened
The portals will not have been displaced on generic destination searches, and they will not be in year three either. Saying that at the outset is what separates a hotel SEO agency that keeps clients from one that wins pitches.
How To Choose A Hotel SEO Agency
The question is whether they understand distribution, not whether they can write about hospitality.
Ask what they would do about the portals
A provider promising to outrank the major platforms on destination terms has not looked at the results. Ask any prospective hotel SEO agency which terms it is actually targeting, and the usual checks apply. The honest answer names where you can win and where you cannot. Hiring an agency is worth it only when that answer is given first.
Ask how they will measure it
Direct booking share and commission avoided, or sessions. A hotel SEO agency should answer that question in one sentence, and the common mistakes start with reporting the wrong thing. A hotel SEO agency that cannot connect its work to the channel mix is not measuring the thing that pays for it.
Ask whether they will speak to revenue management
Rate parity, direct incentives and metasearch decisions sit outside marketing. A hotel SEO agency should be asking for that meeting in week one, and an in-house team would face the same requirement. A provider planning to work only with the marketing contact is optimising around the decisions that matter.
Ask about photography
Guests book visually. A hotel SEO agency with no view on the imagery is ignoring the strongest conversion lever on the site, and the design carries as much weight as the copy.
Ask what they would refuse to do
A serious provider names what it will not do: chase generic city terms, publish thin pages for towns the property is not in, or promise rankings above the platforms it also distributes through. A hotel SEO agency with no boundaries will do all three, and the damage from the second outlasts the engagement.
Common Failures A Hotel SEO Agency Sees
The same mistakes account for most underperforming hotel websites.
One page listing every room
A rates table where there should be a page per room type, each answering a specific requirement a guest searched. A hotel SEO agency should rebuild that first, and pruning handles whatever cannot be rebuilt.
No answers to the practical questions
Parking, check-in times, accessibility, pets and breakfast left to a review site to explain, on the searches that decide the booking. A hotel SEO agency should publish a page for each, and question-led search lands on exactly this content.
Old photographs
Images from a refurbishment two renovations ago, which undermine every other signal the property is sending. A hotel SEO agency should raise that before proposing content, because no amount of copy compensates for it.
Ignoring group business
Publishing nothing for weddings, meetings and events, the revenue that arrives without commission attached. A hotel SEO agency should build that cluster before chasing any destination term, and other high-value enquiry sectors behave the same way.
Reporting sessions
Presenting traffic growth to an owner who measures the business in occupancy, rate and channel cost. A hotel SEO agency should be reporting in the owner’s language from the first month, which is what performance reporting means.
Frequently Asked Questions About Hiring A Hotel SEO Agency
What does a hotel SEO agency actually do?
It builds room type, facility and package pages that match how guests actually search, answers the practical booking questions currently left to review sites, publishes area and event content ahead of the demand window, builds the group and wedding cluster that arrives commission free, manages the branded search result and the review profile, and reports direct booking share rather than traffic. A hotel SEO agency also handles the platform work underneath it, whether the site runs on a custom build or on WordPress.
Can we outrank Booking.com?
Not on generic destination searches, and you do not need to. You win on your own name, your room types, your facilities, your neighbourhood, your events and the questions the portals answer with a template. A hotel SEO agency should name those six as the plan rather than promising the head term.
Is this worth it if most bookings come from portals?
That is precisely when it is worth it. Every point of direct share recovered is commission that stays with the property, and the arithmetic against your current commission bill is easy to run. A hotel SEO agency should run it in the pitch, and the quote should be measured against it.
How does rate parity affect this?
It limits price as a direct incentive, so the advantage has to be something else: room choice, flexibility, upgrades or extras. Those have to be visible before the booking step or the traffic converts on a portal instead.
Do we need new photography?
Almost always. Guests book visually, images carry across the site, the profiles and the portals, and outdated photography undermines everything else the property publishes. A hotel SEO agency should be commissioning the shoot in the first quarter, and the build budget should carry it.
What about group and wedding business?
It is usually the largest unserved opportunity. A hotel SEO agency should quantify the function space revenue alongside the room revenue, because the two budgets are frequently held by different people. Portals do not sell function space, the enquiries arrive direct, and almost no property publishes the capacity, layout and pricing detail those buyers search for.
How long does hotel SEO take?
Branded and room type searches move in two to four months. A hotel SEO agency should say so before the contract, and a smaller budget simply narrows the scope rather than the timeline. A hotel SEO agency promising faster is describing paid search, and any honest consultant will say the same. Area and event content ranks in three to six. Additional language markets add their own timeline on top. Competitive unbranded destination terms take a year or more where they are winnable at all.
What does a hotel SEO agency cost?
Programmes typically run from around two thousand US dollars monthly for a single property to considerably more where several properties, function space and multiple languages are in scope. A hotel SEO agency should price photography separately, and the packages should say which language markets are included.
Should we still list on the portals?
Yes. They are a distribution channel and a discovery source, and a great many direct bookings begin with a guest finding the property there and then searching the name. A hotel SEO agency should be improving both rather than treating them as rivals, and international visibility usually depends on the portals for discovery.
Who should we involve internally?
Revenue management, front office and whoever owns the booking engine. A hotel SEO agency that works only with marketing cannot change the things that decide whether the traffic books, and our team asks for those introductions in week one. A programme run entirely through marketing cannot change the things that decide whether the traffic books. A hotel SEO agency should ask for those introductions in week one, and a standing session with them keeps the programme moving.
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