Jitendra Jain of Starwood Hotels Dubai sees change brewing in the hotel SEO industry, which may sound surprising to some, seeing as hotels were slow to catch onto the idea of optimizing their pages for search engines. In the past, hotel chains could rely on their brand name or location alone, without surfing for new clients. It used to be that they could piggyback off the travel booking sites, but more and more hotel SEO is honing in on capturing audiences directly and running a self-sufficient empire.
“Experience building will become key to the looking and booking process online,” said Jain. She added that hotels will allow all elements of the hotel to be booked separately or bundled together to allow more personal customization.
Additionally, hotel SEO like paid search will fall by the wayside and top placement won’t necessarily be everything anymore. Instead, more than just text will be optimized – videos and photos will be as well. Also, Google may begin to show rankings based on past searches. “Successful hotel search marketing of the future will be more about optimizing content of all types and reaching the right audience through the right niche and social search channels,” Jain writes.