Hospitality bookings depend heavily on review volume and rating, among the strongest local-search ranking and conversion signals. SerpHike drives direct-booking SEO and GBP visibility to reduce dependence on OTA commissions, with campaigns scoped around seasonal demand windows.
What matters most for hospitality?
- Review generation and response management across Google and travel aggregators
- Direct-booking SEO to reduce OTA commission dependence
- Seasonal and event-driven campaign planning, not reactive spend
Every direct booking keeps the commission
Online travel agencies are useful, but every booking through them costs a commission that often runs well into double figures as a percentage of the stay. Hospitality marketing is the work of winning more of those bookings directly, and of bringing past guests back without paying for them twice.
What the public evidence tells us
- Google opened free hotel booking links worldwide in March 2021, so connected hotels can show their own rate next to the OTAs at no media cost (Search Engine Journal, March 2021)
- In the Deloitte and Google speed study, a 0.1 second mobile improvement lifted travel booking rates by 10% (Deloitte and Google, Milliseconds Make Millions)
- Booking.com runs around 25,000 tests a year, according to Harvard Business Review (Harvard Business Review, 2020), which is a big reason its pages convert so well
- Airbnb found professionally photographed listings were booked around 2.5 times more often (Fast Company)
The playbook
- Direct-booking SEO for neighbourhoods, landmarks and events, see hospitality SEO
- Brand search and Google Hotels to protect your own name, see hospitality paid media
- Real, well-shot social content that builds demand, see hospitality social media
- Post-stay emails that request reviews and offer a reason to return
Reviews rank you and sell you. Reply to every review, good and bad, within a couple of days. Future guests read the replies as closely as the reviews.
How we measure it
Direct-booking revenue, the share of bookings that came direct, commission saved, cost per direct booking and review volume and rating. See the full-stack hospitality package for the combined plan.