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Industry · Hospitality

Direct bookings and a stronger position against intermediaries.

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The challenges

What makes growth hard in hospitality.

  1. 01

    Online travel agencies bid on the property's own name and charge commission on guests who were already looking for it.

  2. 02

    Occupancy swings with season, events and weather, so a flat marketing plan is wrong for most of the year.

  3. 03

    A handful of reviews on a few platforms can change booking rates more than any campaign.

  4. 04

    Booking engines are often third-party tools that are slow, poorly tracked and hard to change.

Search behaviour

How buyers search and decide.

Guests discover properties through maps, online travel agencies, social content and, increasingly, AI trip planning. Every booking won directly improves margin, and reviews shape all of it.

Demand generation

Where demand comes from.

Hospitality demand is discovered on maps, travel platforms and social media, and confirmed in reviews. Guests often find a property through an intermediary and then search for it by name, which makes brand search the cheapest place to win a direct booking. Local and map visibility captures people searching by area and occasion. Visual content on Instagram and short video creates the wish to visit, and email brings previous guests back in quieter periods. Restaurants and venues follow the same pattern over a much shorter decision time.

Content needs

What hospitality buyers expect to find.

  • Room, suite and venue pages with honest photography and complete details
  • Location content: how to get there and what is nearby
  • Menus, event spaces and packages kept up to date
  • A clear statement of why booking direct is worthwhile
  • Seasonal and occasion-led pages planned ahead of each booking window

Each of these is written or reviewed by someone who knows the subject. AI speeds up research and drafting. It does not decide what is accurate.

Conversion challenges

Where interest is lost before it becomes business.

  • 01

    Booking engine handover

    The step from the website to the booking engine is where tracking breaks and guests drop out. It should feel like one journey.

  • 02

    Rate confidence

    Guests check whether the direct price matches the intermediary's. If it does not, or they cannot tell, they book elsewhere.

  • 03

    Mobile booking

    Many bookings are made on a phone, sometimes on the day. Date selection and payment need to work with one thumb.

  • 04

    Review response

    Prospective guests read how management replies to criticism. A considered response is part of the conversion path.

The SERPMOZ approach

Three priorities for hospitality.

  1. 01

    Direct booking path

    Brand and local search presence plus a booking experience that competes with the aggregators.

  2. 02

    Reputation

    Review monitoring and response across the platforms that guests check.

  3. 03

    Seasonal demand

    Campaigns and content timed to booking windows for each market.

Relevant services

Typically involved.

In practice

The kind of work this leads to.

Examples of what we would build for a hospitality business. They describe work, not outcomes. What is right for you is decided after the diagnostic.

  1. 01

    A brand search campaign and landing experience designed to bring guests who know the property's name to the direct booking path.

  2. 02

    A seasonal content and campaign calendar built from the property's own booking lead times.

  3. 03

    A review monitoring and response routine across the platforms guests check before they book.

What we measure in hospitality

Outcomes we plan around

  • 01Direct booking share
  • 02Cost per direct booking
  • 03Review rating
  • 04Brand search demand

Targets are set after the diagnostic, against your own baseline.

Related industries

Sectors with similar buyers.

All industries

Start with a growth audit

Stop Buying Marketing Activity.Start Building a Growth Engine.

Tell us where you are today, where you want to go and what is holding growth back. We’ll identify the highest-impact opportunities.

Get Your Growth AuditTalk to a Growth Strategist

What happens next

  1. 1

    You tell us where you are

    A short form about the business, its goals and what is holding growth back.

  2. 2

    A strategist reviews it

    Search, AI visibility, paid media, content and conversion, read together.

  3. 3

    You get the priorities

    The highest-impact opportunities, in order, with the reasoning shown.

No obligation, and no guaranteed outcomes promised. Just an honest read of where you stand.