The hotel panel and metasearch.
Google puts a rate comparison with the OTAs inside your own branded search. Broken free booking links or a bad Google Hotel Ads feed hands that guest to a channel.
Hotel SEO agency for properties that want the booking direct
Every hotel SEO agency shows you a traffic chart. We agree the direct booking numbers first, write them into the contract, and refund you if we miss them.
The stakes
What OTA dependence costs you every month
A traveler searches “boutique hotel in Savannah”. Booking.com and Expedia own the first screen.
Your property appears inside their listing, the guest books there, and you pay 15 to 25% of that room revenue to a channel that did nothing to create the demand.
Thirty OTA room nights a month at a $280 average daily rate sends roughly $1,700 to $2,100 out the door in commission. Organic search drives as much as 57% of direct booking sessions and usually carries the smallest budget in the building.
The definition
What a hotel SEO agency actually does
A hotel SEO agency makes your property visible in the searches that end in a stay, then clears the friction between that search and your booking engine: technical SEO, Google Business Profile and Map Pack visibility, destination content, room pages, review management, digital PR, metasearch and Google Hotel Ads coordination, and reporting measured in room revenue instead of sessions. A hospitality SEO agency runs the same system across resorts, restaurants, spas and event venues.
Hotel search
Hotel search is not generic SEO
Most agencies selling hotel SEO services run the checklist they run for a plumber. Hotel search has surfaces no other industry has.
Branded defense.
OTAs bid on your hotel name and rank for it. Winning your own brand back is the fastest direct booking revenue in hospitality.
Seasonality.
What we publish in October fills February, so the roadmap follows your occupancy calendar and builds shoulder season demand months ahead.
The booking path.
Rankings mean nothing if the booking engine crawls on a phone or the rate the guest saw is not the rate they land on.
Every month
What we run every month
Housekeeping sheetEvery month, every floor
VD = vacant dirty · Inspected = live and checkedTechnical.
Crawl and indexation cleanup, site architecture, Core Web Vitals, mobile speed, and Hotel, LodgingBusiness, Room, Offer and Review schema.
Local SEO.
Google Business Profile in the right categories, consistent details across Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp and TripAdvisor, citation cleanup, and review management.
Content travelers search for.
Destination and neighborhood guides, things to do pages, wedding and group business pages, and room pages written for the guest rather than the revenue management system.
Authority and digital PR.
Editorial placements in real travel and lifestyle publications, not directory spam. Links Google counts and AI engines quote.
Reporting in room revenue.
Direct booking sessions, room nights, organic revenue in GA4, Map Pack position, commission avoided, and AI citation share.
AI answers
When travelers ask ChatGPT instead of Google
Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews where to stay and you get a short list with reasons attached. No map, no ad slot, no way to bid onto it.
More than half of Google searches already end without a click.
Those systems name hotels they can verify: entity clarity, structured data stating your location, amenities and room types, identical details everywhere you appear, and mentions in publications the models trust.
The last one
That last one is where a hospitality SEO agency runs out of road. We run PR and SEO from one senior team, so your general manager gets quoted in real travel coverage, and those placements become links Google respects and sentences an AI engine repeats. Our clients have been featured in Forbes, USA Today Network, Daily Mail, Elle and Variety.
The first 90 days
How the first 90 days run
- 1Week one
Week one. Technical audit, a teardown of the two properties outranking you, an OTA dependence baseline, and your position on every booking term.
- 2Weeks two to four
Weeks two to four. A twelve month roadmap plus the written targets, deliverables and timelines your guarantee rests on, approved by you before anything ships.
- 3Months two and three
Months two and three. Technical fixes, profile and schema work, branded defense, first destination pages, first press pitches. Map Pack movement usually starts here.
- ROngoing
Ongoing. Content sequenced to your occupancy calendar, coverage and link work, AI citation tracking, and a report you hand to ownership.
Cost
What hotel SEO costs, priced in OTA terms
Most agencies on this search hide pricing.
A single independent property typically pays $2,000 to $5,000 a month. Competitive destination markets, luxury resorts and groups running portfolios sit above that. Anything near $500 buys directory submissions and a dashboard.
Then convert it. At a $280 average daily rate and 20% commission, a $3,000 retainer costs what the commission on 54 OTA room nights costs. AceIt engagements run mid five figures to six figures annually, published at our pricing page. Model your numbers at the ROAS calculator.
Why AceIt
Why hoteliers hand this to AceIt
The fear here is specific. You sign a twelve month retainer, pay through a full season, then reach the next budget meeting with reports nobody opened, the same commission line, and an OTA outranking you on your own name.
So the outcome goes in the contract. Targets, deliverables and timelines are agreed before kickoff, and if we do not deliver what we committed to, on the timeline we committed to, you get your money back. The hotel SEO agency pages ranking above this one say the opposite openly: one will not promise outcomes, another answers the ranking question with a flat no. On rankings they are right. Nobody honest sells you position one for “hotels in Miami”. What we put in writing is measurable: qualified organic traffic, Map Pack position on the terms that fill rooms, direct booking growth, agreed coverage tiers, and AI citations, each carrying the refund.
Senior people only, no junior account managers, replies in 1 to 2 hours.
In writingbefore kickoff
Agreed results or your money backQualified organic trafficMap Pack position on the terms that fill roomsDirect booking growthAgreed coverage tiersAI citations
The pages ranking above this oneOne will not promise outcomesAnother answers the ranking question with a flat no
Proof
Proof before you sign
We do not have a hotel case study to hand you yet, so judge the machine on what it has produced elsewhere.
50+Forbes placements our program has secured
12+Industries those placements span
4,200+Visits one anonymized Forbes feature returned
DA 94Authority of the backlink it earned
Vezbi, a community super app: over 1 million brand impressions during its U.S. launch, all organic PR. Forbes: 50+ placements across 12+ industries, a first opportunity for most clients within 4 to 8 weeks, plus one anonymized feature worth 4,200+ visits, a 38% increase in branded search, a DA 94 backlink and 12 secondary pickups. More case studies.
The fit
Who this fits, and when it is not the right move
It fits independent and boutique hotels paying too much commission, luxury resorts competing on destination terms, hotel groups running portfolios, and any property whose branded search belongs to the channels reselling its rooms. Hotels drawing international guests also need hreflang and market by market targeting.
It is the wrong move if you need heads in beds next weekend. SEO compounds, it does not rescue a bad month. Run paid and metasearch while the foundation is built.
Questions
Asked before every hotel SEO engagement
Anything else, email [email protected] and it comes back in 1 to 2 hours.
Most independent properties pay $2,000 to $5,000 a month, and competitive markets, luxury resorts and hotel groups run higher. Convert it: at a $280 average daily rate and 20% commission, a $3,000 retainer equals the commission on 54 OTA room nights.
Technical fixes and Google Business Profile work often show movement inside 60 to 90 days, usually on branded terms and Map Pack results first. Competitive destination rankings take 6 to 12 months. Your timeline goes into the agreement before kickoff, and missing it triggers a refund.
Local SEO for hotels is one part of hotel SEO, covering your Google Business Profile, Map Pack position for “hotels near me” searches, citations across Apple Maps, Bing, Yelp and TripAdvisor, and reviews. Hotel SEO also covers the property site, destination content, metasearch and schema markup.
Yes. Travelers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews where to stay, and those answers name a few properties with no ad slot to buy. Getting cited depends on entity clarity, structured data, consistent details everywhere you appear, and mentions in publications the models trust.
Yes, in writing. Targets, deliverables and timelines are agreed before kickoff, and if we do not deliver what we committed to, on the timeline we committed to, you get your money back. No honest agency sells a ranking position, so we commit to measurable outcomes instead.
Next step
See what your property is losing to the OTAs this month
Send your property URL and your city. Within 1 to 2 hours you get the searches you are losing, which channel is taking them, and what we would fix in month one. Targets and timelines go in writing, backed by a 100% guarantee: you get the agreed results or your money back.
Every engagement carries a 100% guarantee: you get the agreed results or your money back