Hotel marketing is in dramatic flux. That is fact. What was true 20 years ago today has no relevance. It's a brave new world, to go Aldous Huxley on you (but he stole it from Shakespeare) - and so you see how what you believe to be so just may not be.

Myth: SEO is the cornerstone of hotel marketing.

No it is not. SEO is essentially dead. Listen to Priceline CEO Paul Hennessy: "I believe it is a paid world."

The point: Between Google's AdWords and the search giant's expanding array of buy now travel offerings, what SEO driven organic search results there are now are so far down the page they might as well be in a different county.

I just queried Google for hotels in Sedona. The top half of the page is crammed with ads - Trivago, Booking.com, Kayak, Priceline, Orbitz, TripAdvisor, L'Auberge de Sedona, and more. It really isn't until the bottom half of a very busy page that organic search results pop up - and how many viewers would get that far?

Now try that same search on a phone. Maybe on the third screen SEO results begin to show up.

And know that - beyond debate - mobile soon will be where a majority of travel search happens.

So you see why SEO is a fool's errand.

I am a huge fan of content marketing for hotels - the right content (informative, witty, personable) will bring you readers who may become bookers. That, in my mind, is smart, useful SEO, still worth doing (if it is done well).

But there is less and less reason to think about simplified SEO as such. Not in an increasingly mobile world.

Myth 2: OTAs are the enemy.

No, they are in fact your friend because they bring you business with no effort expended on your part. Zero.

Listen to Darren Huston, CEO of Booking.com in a recent interview: "we always pride ourselves on being the cheapest way to do your marketing. If you ask any owner, or any hotel, why they're all on Booking.com, when they can all leave tomorrow, the reason is, it's the cheapest way to do paid marketing."

Think on that.

How many hoteliers have you heard denounce Expedia - or maybe Booking.com - as the devil but odds are they are still in the OTAs' inventory because OTAs fill rooms that otherwise would be empty.

Fill all your own rooms, cost effectively (and many hotels - sadly - have but a casual understanding of their actual costs per direct booking. Do you know yours?), and you can cut the OTAs off without a glance backwards.

But you aren't filling those rooms. And so you need the OTAs.

Make them work for you by always capturing guest data directly. Always ask for an email address so you can start doing direct marketing. And let that guest know you want them as your customer.

Win the customer's loyalty, pay the OTA's comparatively small fees and that is win-won.

Myth 3: We need a complicated online booking process because we sell a complicated product.

Nonsense. More direct bookings are lost by hotels because they complicate their booking engine in a determination to upsell guests on everything from a round of golf and a spa treatment to a welcome bottle of bubbly with fruit.

I can do the math. I know there are rich profits in those upsells. But hear this: close the deal first. Use a fast, simple, clean booking process. A la Amazon's One Click.

Look at how fast HotelTonight enables a purchase. Don't be slower.

What about those upsells? Use email to offer the guest the opportunity to enhance his/her stay. Remind the guest that many premium activities - a treatment with the top spa therapist or a primetime dinner table - do sell out. So reserve early. Offer this information as a guest service: we know you don't want to be disappointed. The earlier you book these activities, the better.

The big takeaway: now is the time to question just about all your beliefs about hotel marketing because so many simply are false.

Babs Harrison
Babs Harrison + Partners
Babs Harrison + Partners