On Hotel Marketing
To summarise
Hotel marketing has become less about being everywhere and more about being useful in the places travellers are already looking.
That might mean appearing in a traditional Google search, being recommended by an AI assistant, showing up in a destination guide or simply answering the question someone has before they book.
Strong hotel marketing brings those pieces together: clear SEO foundations, useful editorial content, thoughtful GEO, an accurate and well-structured website, and a clear sense of what makes the property worth choosing.
The goal isn't simply to attract more traffic. It is to make the right traveller understand where you are, what you offer and why they should stay with you, ideally before they ever reach the booking page.
Hotel marketing used to have a fairly straightforward objective: put the property in front of the right traveller, make it look appealing, and make booking easy. The internet has complicated that journey considerably.
A traveller might discover a hotel on Instagram, compare it on Google, read reviews on Tripadvisor, ask ChatGPT where to stay, look at a map, return to the hotel's website, and only then decide whether to book. Increasingly, the first interaction with a hotel is a question, and that shift matters.
If someone asks an AI assistant for the best boutique hotel near the Yarra Valley, a romantic weekend within driving distance of Melbourne, or a hotel with good food and a particular kind of atmosphere, the question becomes about whether the information available online gives a search engine or large language model enough context to understand why you belong in the answer.
What hotel marketing actually has to do now
The fundamentals haven't disappeared. Hotels still need strong photography, a compelling proposition, a good booking experience, a recognisable brand and a reason for someone to choose them over the property down the road. But discovery has become considerably more fragmented.
Traditional search still matters. Google still matters. Social media still matters. Reviews still matter. So do OTAs, travel publications, tourism websites, maps, and recommendations from other people. And now there is another layer: generative search.
Large language models such as ChatGPT and other AI-powered search experiences can interpret questions, draw together information from multiple sources and provide a recommendation without requiring someone to work their way through ten blue links.
For hotels, this creates a new kind of visibility to think about.
SEO gets you into the conversation
Search engine optimisation has never simply been about adding keywords to a page. At its best, SEO is about making a website useful, understandable, and relevant to the things people are actually looking for.
For a hotel, that might mean having a clear accommodation page, but it could also mean explaining the surrounding destination, answering practical questions, creating useful itineraries and developing content around the experiences guests are actually planning.
Someone searching for luxury hotel in Melbourne is one kind of opportunity. Someone searching for where should I stay in Melbourne for a long weekend focused on food and culture? is another. The second search reveals considerably more about the person, their intention and the decision they are trying to make.
That is where good content starts to become interesting.
GEO asks a slightly different question
Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO, is concerned with how your business is understood and represented within AI-powered search and answer engines. The distinction from traditional SEO can be useful, but the two are closely connected.
An AI system needs to understand what your hotel is, where it is, what it offers, what makes it distinctive and how it relates to the wider destination. It needs enough reliable information to connect the dots.
That information might come from your own website, but it can also exist across reviews, tourism organisations, publications, directories and other reputable sources.
Your website has more to say than you think
One of the biggest opportunities for hotels is often not creating more content, but making better use of what already exists. A hotel may have an old destination guide that still attracts search traffic, an FAQ written several years ago, a wedding page that hasn't been updated since the last renovation, or dozens of guest questions that have never made it onto the website at all.
There is usually considerably more knowledge inside a hotel than its website reveals.
The reservations team knows what guests worry about before booking. The concierge knows which restaurants people ask about. The events team knows what couples want to know before choosing a venue. The staff know which local experiences guests remember.
That knowledge is valuable content. The job is to find it, organise it, and give it somewhere useful to live.
Stop describing the hotel. Start describing the stay.
A room is a room. What someone is actually buying might be a weekend away, a nice place to work, a romantic escape, a base for exploring wine country, a family holiday, or somewhere to take visiting parents.
This distinction is particularly important as search becomes more conversational.
People don't always ask:
“Hotels with king rooms.”
They might ask:
“Where should I stay for a romantic weekend in regional Victoria?”
The hotel that can clearly communicate its place within that experience has considerably more to work with.
This is where editorial content becomes useful.
A regional guide, a thoughtful itinerary, a piece about the best time to visit, a guide to local food and wine or a practical explanation of what to expect can all help establish the hotel as part of the destination rather than simply a place to sleep.
FAQs are not filler
A good FAQ can be one of the most useful parts of a hotel website.
Not because someone needs to know whether check-in begins at 2pm (although they probably do) but because FAQs allow a business to answer the small uncertainties that sit between interest and action.
Is the hotel accessible? Can I bring my dog? What is there to do nearby without a car? Are there restaurants within walking distance? Is it suitable for children? What happens if I arrive late?
Writing the answers clearly gives guests more confidence and gives search systems more context about the business.
Reviews are part of the story
A hotel's reputation doesn't live exclusively on its website. Guests are constantly describing the experience elsewhere, often in considerably more detail than the hotel describes it itself.
They talk about the breakfast, the staff, the views, the location, the atmosphere, the little details that made the stay memorable.
Those observations act as evidence of what people actually value.
If guests repeatedly describe a property as an excellent base for exploring the region, for example, that might suggest an opportunity to build out destination content. If everyone mentions the restaurant, perhaps the dining experience deserves a larger role in the website's story.
The best marketing often starts by paying attention.
The wider web matters too
A hotel’s website is one source among many, alongside Google Business Profile information, booking platforms, tourism websites, review sites, local publications, event listings and industry directories. And consistency matters.
If one site describes the hotel as a luxury country retreat, another calls it a family resort and a third has an outdated address, the digital picture becomes harder to interpret.
For both traditional search and AI-powered systems, a coherent body of information is considerably more useful than a collection of disconnected descriptions.
This is also where digital PR and backlinks can have a role. Being mentioned by relevant tourism organisations, publications and reputable industry websites can provide another layer of context and authority around the business.
You don't need to publish every week
There is a tendency in content marketing to mistake activity for progress. A hotel doesn't necessarily need 52 new blog posts every year. It needs useful information that earns its place.
A guide to spending a weekend in the region may be worth maintaining for years. A seasonal piece can be refreshed rather than replaced. An old article that already has search visibility may need a thoughtful update rather than another competing article on the same subject.
Sometimes the best content strategy is simply to look at what already exists and ask what could be made considerably better.
What a modern hotel content strategy looks like
A considered strategy might bring together:
SEO, to understand how people search and where opportunities exist.
GEO, to improve how the business can be understood and referenced within AI-powered search.
Editorial content, to communicate the destination, experience and expertise behind the property.
FAQs, to answer the practical questions that sit between discovery and booking.
Content audits, to identify outdated, duplicated or underperforming pages.
Ongoing optimisation, because search behaviour and the business itself continue to change.
Digital authority, through relevant mentions, reviews, partnerships and third-party sources.
Measurement, so content decisions are informed by what is actually happening rather than what sounds good in a meeting.
Ultimately, the goal is to make it easier for the right person to understand why they might want to stay there. And increasingly, that decision is being made before they ever reach the booking page.
The Be Seen approach
Be Seen brings SEO, GEO and editorial thinking together to help hospitality businesses make more of the expertise, experiences and information they already have.
That might mean refining an existing destination guide, rebuilding a neglected FAQ section, strengthening service and accommodation pages, developing a more useful editorial calendar or understanding how the business currently appears across AI-powered search.
The objective is fairly simple: be easier to find, easier to understand and considerably harder to overlook.
Hotel marketing FAQs
What is hotel marketing?
Hotel marketing brings together the content, channels and campaigns that help a property attract guests, build recognition and ultimately drive bookings. Today, that includes everything from SEO and editorial content to social media, reviews, OTAs and AI-powered search.
How does SEO help hotels attract more guests?
Hotel SEO helps a property appear when people are actively researching where to stay, what to do and where to go. This can extend well beyond searches for the hotel's name, with useful destination content, FAQs and experience-led pages creating opportunities to reach travellers earlier in their decision-making process.
What is GEO and why does it matter for hotels?
GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, focuses on how a hotel is understood and represented within AI-powered search experiences such as ChatGPT and Google's AI features. Clear information about your property, location, expertise and experiences gives these systems more useful context when generating recommendations.
Do hotels need to create lots of blog content?
Not necessarily. A smaller collection of genuinely useful guides, itineraries, FAQs and destination content can be more valuable than publishing constantly. Existing content can also be refreshed and expanded as search behaviour, the destination and the hotel itself change.
What kind of content should a hotel publish?
The strongest topics usually sit close to the questions travellers are already asking. That might include destination guides, weekend itineraries, seasonal recommendations, local food and wine, wedding planning, accessibility, family travel or practical information about staying at the property.
Should hotels optimise their existing content or start again?
Often, the existing website is the best place to start. Older pages may already have search visibility, useful information or authority that can be strengthened through better structure, updated information, clearer language and a closer alignment with current search behaviour.
How can a hotel know what travellers are searching for?
Search data, website analytics, customer questions, reviews and competitor research can all reveal what prospective guests are interested in. Looking at conversational searches is increasingly useful too, particularly as people use AI tools to research destinations and make recommendations.
How often should hotel content be updated?
There is no universal publishing schedule, but important information should be kept current throughout the year. A broader content and SEO audit every six months can help identify outdated information, pages that could perform better and new opportunities emerging in search.
Do reviews matter for hotel marketing?
Yes. Reviews provide social proof, but they can also reveal what guests actually value about a property — from its location and breakfast to its atmosphere and service. Those recurring observations can inform the way a hotel positions and describes itself online.
Does a hotel need a digital marketing agency?
It depends on the size of the property, internal capabilities and what you're trying to achieve. For a hotel with an established marketing team, an SEO and GEO consultant can provide specialist strategy, content optimisation and ongoing insight without taking over the entire marketing function.
