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Travel SEO

Travel SEO that gets travelers to book direct with you

Booking sites like Expedia take a cut of every booking they send you. Growing Search is a travel SEO agency that helps hotels, tour operators and agencies get more bookings directly.

AI trip plannerexample
What's a good family hotel near the city center?
Your hotel is a short walk from the center and has family suites with a kitchenette and a pool. Booking on its own site includes breakfast.
yourhotel.com/family-suitesyourhotel.com/area-guideGoogle reviews
WahiShopifyRBCHGregoireGGPokerHomebaseBrilliant EarthOpencare

Who takes the booking when your site doesn't show up

Booking sites and big travel brands go after the same searches you do, including searches for your hotel's own name. Ranking well starts with picking the searches you can win.

01

The big booking sites rank first

Expedia and Booking.com outrank most hotels in their own city, and often show up next to you when someone searches your hotel's name. Each booking through them costs a commission.

02

Google's hotel results favor full profiles

For hotel searches, Google shows a map with prices from several booking sites. A thin profile or a missing rate leaves that spot to someone else.

03

Seasonal searches start months ahead

Searches for a busy season start climbing months before it arrives. A page that goes live when the season starts is too late to catch any of them.

What our hotel SEO and travel SEO get you

Hotels, tour operators and agencies each get their own plan, and every plan is about more bookings that come straight to you.

01

A strong spot in Google's hotel results

A full profile and current photos help your property show up well there. Google's free booking links can put your own rate next to the booking sites.

02

Page one for the stays and tours you sell

Your room, package and tour pages rank for the searches you can win, like your neighborhood or the kind of stay you're known for. Each page makes booking with you easy.

03

More direct bookings and fewer commissions

Every booking that comes straight to you is one you don't pay a commission on. We track which searches lead to bookings and focus on the pages that bring in the most.

04

Guests who search your name land on your site

Booking sites compete for searches on your hotel's own name. We work to keep your own site at the top, so those bookings come straight to you and skip the commission.

05

Recommended in AI trip planners

We work to get your hotel or tour named, and described well, when ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews answer questions about where to stay or what to do in your area.

06

Bookings from every market you sell to

Guests in each market find a version of your site in their own language. Links from Spanish, French and Brazilian Portuguese sites help those pages rank there.

Planning around your busy season

We build a calendar from your booking history and search trends, so each season's pages are live and ranking by the time travelers start looking.

The same people stay on your account from the first audit on and keep watching your searches between seasons. If a booking site starts outranking you for your hotel's name, we tell you before it costs you bookings.

Pages ranking before each season so they're ready when the searches start
More bookings around events and holidays like festivals, long weekends and school breaks
A stronger site every off-season so each busy season starts from a better place
Know which searches bring bookings from the first search to the stay
Pages in each guest's language in every market where you take bookings
Links in the markets you sell to from Spanish, French and Portuguese sites
Pages that load fast on phonesEven the photo-heavy room and gallery pages
A plan built for your business around what you sell and where you are

The order we do things in

The first audit shows where you lose bookings to other sites. After that, the work follows your booking calendar.

01

See where bookings go

We look at how your site, booking engine, Google profile and booking-site listings show up in search, and where travelers leave for a booking site.

02

Build for the next season

Technical fixes, room and package pages and your Google profile come first. Destination content for the season coming up follows right after.

03

Reach more markets

We add languages and markets, build links and keep an eye on what AI tools say about you. After each season we look at what booked and plan the next one around it.

Common questions about travel SEO

What is travel SEO?+
Travel SEO is the work of getting hotels, resorts, tour operators, travel agencies and booking sites to show up when people search for places to stay, things to do and trips to book. It covers your website and your Google Business Profile, the hotel pack, content about the places you serve, reviews, links, and how AI tools describe you. The goal is more bookings that come straight to you. Every page comes from our in-house writers and editors, and none of it is written by AI.
How does hotel SEO help us get more direct bookings?+
It puts your own site in front of travelers at the moments the online travel agencies usually win. That means ranking your room and package pages and getting your own rate into Google's hotel results through its free booking links. It also means people who search your hotel's name end up on your site and can book in a few taps. Every booking that comes direct is one you don't pay a commission on.
Can we outrank Expedia and Booking.com?+
For broad searches like hotels in Paris, usually not. Those sites have huge budgets and millions of pages. You can win the more specific searches, like your hotel's name, your neighborhood, the kind of stay you're good at, and questions about your area. Those are easier to win, and a strong page can rank for them.
What is the Google hotel pack, and how do we show up in it?+
It's the map and list of hotels Google shows when someone searches for a place to stay in an area. Your Google Business Profile drives a lot of it, so we fill it out completely, keep photos and amenities current, and work on reviews. We also help you use Google's free booking links, which show your own rate next to the prices from booking sites. That gives travelers an easy way to book with you directly.
How do you plan SEO around busy and slow seasons?+
We look at when people start searching for each season in your market, which is usually months before they travel. Then we publish and update pages early enough for them to rank by the time demand picks up. In the slower months we refresh older content, build links and fix technical issues, so the site is in better shape for the next peak. If travelers start searching for your area earlier than last year, we tell you and move the plan up.
Do you do SEO for tour operators and activity companies?+
Yes. Tour operators depend on things-to-do searches, like day trips from a city or a food tour in a certain neighborhood. We build tour pages that answer what people want to know before they book, such as how long it lasts, where pickup is, group size and what's included. Destination content then leads travelers into those pages, and we work on your reviews on the sites travelers check.
What does SEO for travel agencies look like?+
Travel agencies need to rank for the trips and destinations they sell, and for searches that show someone wants help planning, like honeymoon packages or group tours to a certain country. We build destination and package pages around those searches, set up local pages if you have offices, and write guides that show your team knows the places you send people.
Can you help us reach travelers who search in other languages?+
Yes. We set up translated and adapted pages with hreflang, so Google shows each traveler the right version, and we research how people search in each market instead of translating English keywords word for word. We also run link building in Spanish, French and Brazilian Portuguese. Tourism is one of the industries our Spanish link building serves.
How do reviews affect hospitality SEO?+
Your review count and rating affect where you show up on Google Maps and in the hotel pack. We set up a steady way to ask guests for reviews and help you write replies that answer common questions. AI tools also read reviews when they describe a hotel or tour, so the tone of your reviews carries over into their answers.
Can you get our hotel recommended in ChatGPT and other AI trip planners?+
Yes, and it takes more than changes to your own site. AI tools build their picture of a hotel or tour from across the web, including reviews, travel guides, forums, news and booking listings. We run campaigns that get you mentioned in the sources these tools read and correct how you're described where it's wrong. We also add clear pages and structured data so they can quote you accurately, then keep checking what they say about you.
Will you work with our booking engine and website platform?+
Yes. We work with the CMS and booking engine you use, and we won't ask you to switch. Booking engines often run on a separate domain or inside a widget, which can hide pages from Google and break your tracking. We check that your booking pages load fast, that your analytics follows a guest from the first search to the booking, and that nothing important is blocked.
How long does travel SEO take to work?+
Most travel sites see rankings start to move in 3 to 6 months, and bookings follow as those pages build trust. Because demand is seasonal, when you start matters too. If you start a few months before your busy season, the first round of pages has time to rank before travelers start looking.

Let's look at your next busy season

Book a discovery call. We'll look at who ranks for your main searches, from booking sites to local competitors, and tell you what we'd fix before your next peak.

Book a discovery call