Is SEO the most overrated discipline in hospitality?

Not true! The first rationale is that SEO now has significant overlap with AEO and GEO in terms of helping serve all the channels that will be important for AI travel search visibility. So, a focus on what drives SEO will inevitably aid in AI-driven hotel recommendations and, in the future, AI bookings.

Next is the argument against SEO as a 'set it and forget it' exercise. The most successful hotels are the ones that have evolving operations, programming, events and area planning to keep the product fresh for all customer segments. As such, SEO is a process that must work in lock step with all of these updates.

Yes, there are still 'heads in beds' hotels where OTAs and other third parties dominate, as well as branded hotels where most of this is handled by the corporate entities. But on the independent / boutique side, there's a ton that can be done from the SEO side for a net gain of occupancy as well as direct traffic to reduce commission costs.

GEO builds on top of SEO, so SEO is not dead.

I think that Search (Google) helps with Research and Planning, not necessarily Inspiration. I agree that Inspiration often lives in different areas, ie Social. I don't think people use OTAs for Inspiration, either.

As I would group Google Maps into SEO. Location and Reviews still matter but it also depends on the user and what their priorities are.

It is not fair to compare Branded Search versus Unbranded Search. Of course, from a traditional ROAS model that Branded Search will outperform, but that buyer is in a different place in the customer journey.

At this point in time, it is likely that LLMs are driving up Branded Search and being falsely categorized as people come from LLMs being more educated.

SEO has been important to hotels for years, but its role may be changing.

Most travellers discover hotels through OTAs, Google Maps, social media, reviews and now AI — not generic Google searches.

Once someone searches for a hotel by name, they have often already made their decision.

Hotels still need a good, well-structured website, but perhaps they should spend less time obsessing over SEO and more time focusing on how travellers discover and choose them in the first place.

Travelers increasingly discover hotels through social media, OTAs, creators, AI platforms, and Google Maps, where a property’s visibility is partly shaped by local SEO. By the time they search for a specific hotel on Google, much of the consideration process may already have occurred elsewhere.

Still, I would hesitate to conclude that the remaining role of SEO is primarily navigational. Search optimization increasingly serves two audiences: humans and machines. A technically sound website, structured and original content, local relevance, authoritative backlinks, and consistent property information help both traditional search engines and AI systems understand and trust a hotel.

Therefore, the value of SEO may be shifting from simply generating clicks to building digital authority and “recommendability.” As zero-click search and AI-generated answers grow, travelers may never visit some of the sources influencing their decisions. That does not make those sources less valuable; it changes how their contribution should be measured.

Perhaps what is overrated is not SEO itself, but the traditional way we define its success. Rankings and organic traffic still matter, but hotel marketers should increasingly evaluate whether their digital presence makes the property discoverable, credible, and recommendable across both human- and AI-mediated journeys.

I kind of agree, but many hotels have not even mastered the foundations and findability remains a key goal.

Third-party platforms and review sites often have better images, richer descriptions and more useful information than the hotel’s own website. Hotels talk about the property, but frequently ignore the details that actually influence the booking decision: the rooms, their differences, views, features and experiences.

So before discussing SEO, hotels should ask: Do we have great content? Does it describe our product properly? And is it consistently distributed across every relevant channel?

The real discipline is product management, content and distribution. The technical SEO layer should largely be standard once these foundations are right.

Visibility still matters. The more channels showcase a hotel, the easier it becomes to discover. Third parties then compete to advertise that hotel, creating demand that can ultimately convert through the direct channel.

SEO may be overrated, but findability is not. Hotels simply need to manage their product and content much better first.

SEO in hospitality is not overrated. It is unmeasured.

The observation is right: branded traffic dominates hotel websites, and brand-protection campaigns outperform generic search. But that reading comes from last-click attribution, the same instrument that overstates the bottom of the funnel everywhere else. Last click credits whichever surface a traveller touched last, and by then the decision is usually made, so navigational demand reads as performance regardless of what produced it.

I made the same argument about AI ad placements: bidding on your own name both defends the direct channel and harvests demand that would in part have converted anyway, and separating the two has never been settled cleanly. The ambiguity runs the other way here: a hollow organic programme and one that creates demand upstream produce the same branded-traffic curve, because both end at the same last click.

What would settle it is a holdout, or a geographic split test: withhold the work in matched markets and read total bookings rather than attributed ones. I have almost never seen one run.

As currently measured, the discipline cannot be falsified. Fix the instrument before ruling on the work.

I substantially agree, Simone. SEO is, by nature, a discipline with very few rules set in stone: what works today may become far less relevant tomorrow, while doing it properly still requires a significant investment in both time and money.

That’s why, for most hotels, I think the real question is ROI. Beyond getting the fundamentals right, generating enough incremental revenue to justify a heavy and continuous investment in SEO is increasingly difficult.

Not irrelevant, for sure. But probably overinvested in compared to other areas where the impact on direct revenue can be much more measurable.

Selling complexity has often been a mainstay of digital marketing, so the scepticism is fair. But I would frame SEO in hospitality as the most misunderstood discipline rather than the most overrated.

The places where travellers now discover hotels can still be influenced through SEO actions. Google Maps visibility draws on local SEO. The “best boutique hotels in X” article that ChatGPT later cites is a content or digital PR outcome.

What has changed is not whether SEO influences discovery, but where that influence happens.

Technical fundamentals are the starting point, not the finishing line. The challenge is to reset our thinking about what SEO encompasses and develop more holistic analysis and reporting that measures incremental visibility and revenue.

AI referrals are now visible in Google Analytics and converting into bookings. Volumes are still small, but the revenue is real. This connection between visibility and bookings is what is missing from most SEO reports.

For established properties, the foundations argument may largely hold. For smaller independent hotels, earning additional visibility across maps, editorial content, traditional search and AI-driven discovery can still create real value.

Perhaps SEO isn’t overrated. Our definition of it is simply outdated.

It certainly generates a lot of commerce! Based upon effort and intent and the manner in which information is found, it was not a wasted energy. Although, technology does not stand still...

I always come back to the same behavioural reality. If only based upon my own:

1. Travel is an expensive commodity.

2. Often, it is disposable income.

3. Regularly it is emotional.

4. As a result, most people care about where they (and their money) are going.

5. The closer to leisure, the more they care.

These factors remain the biggest asset for the hospitality industry. Unless someone is entirely oblivious, more than likely they will end up on your website. Even if they don't book there (your fault). Over 50% of cross-visiting travellers inspect the official site.

Trust is the key. The customer does everything they can to build more trust in the information.

Who can you trust more? The third party or the provider? For me, when things go wrong, I want to talk to the horse's mouth. Not the tail.

In this way, it supports Simone's theory. Although I would add, we are answering that question in August 2026. It may have been a different answer previously.

In the pre-AI era I would have said it was. As long as one ranked best on one’s name 90% of the work was done. There were exceptions they they weren’t the main ones.

In the AI era and seeing how important data structure is for machines. I would say good SEO has become critical. And blogs about the hotel and surroundings became important too.

Until people start abusing it, as usually always happens.

SEO exists for over 30 years now. Even in the age of AI search, the fundamentals of SEO haven’t changed and 70–80% of SEO best practices that worked for decades also work for GEO. Both SEO and AI search require:

* Original, editorial-level, structured and extractable website content. 

* Content marketing: social media, PR, articles, blog postings, expert knowledge pieces by your property golf, spa specialists, famous chef, etc. to generate links to the property website and citations of your property on the AI platforms and the search engines. 

* Backlinks to the hotel website from highly authoritative websites (CVBs, online directories, travel guides, digital versions of newspapers and magazines, etc). 

* Technical SEO (Good PageSpeed Insights Ex. website download speed under 2 seconds, optimized image sizes, minimizing HTTP requests, browser caching, etc. 

* Schema, which has been crucial for SEO for decades, is now even more important for AI search. Schema enables rich results and improves search visibility. Ex. 3/4 of first page Google results use schema. 

Hoteliers must:

a) invest in content marketing to “earn recognition” on the LLM platforms via citations.

b) invest in Online Reputation Management (ORM) to monitor AND promptly respond to customer reviews.

c) invest in SEO and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization).

I agree with the point, but I wouldn’t call SEO overrated. I’d call the old idea of SEO overrated: keywords, rankings and monthly reports treated as if they were a strategy.

Search is no longer where all discovery happens, certainly. But the same foundations that make a hotel visible on Google — clear information, authority, reviews, structured data, original content — are now what make it understandable across Maps, OTAs and AI too.

So SEO is not the whole game, but it is still part of the infrastructure of visibility and trust!

The question is no longer “does SEO drive bookings?” but: what makes a hotel credible, relevant and easy to choose wherever travellers are actually deciding?

Many aspects of hotel marketing are simple in concept and complex in practice. An effective hotel marketing strategy, among other things, demands: content that answers questions and merchandises the property; solid websites, CRM, social media, and campaigns; and building a hotel brand guests will ask for by name. 

The devil, of course, is in the details. Hotel marketers also don’t need to be expert in every detail to ensure their teams and partners deliver results. Strategy drives outcomes. Execution demands the details. 

The same is true for SEO. 

The point of SEO is to ensure your content and website help guests and, increasingly their AI agents, find your hotel. They’re deeply connected. As Google itself has said, “...optimizing for generative AI search is… still SEO.” 

In other words, not giving SEO appropriate attention can prevent you from showing up in AI answer engines. It’s worthwhile to know at least enough details to ensure you don’t break anything. 

Skilled hotel marketers focus on the big picture while knowing enough to ensure you can deliver the results you deserve. That’s as true for SEO as anything else. Focus on the big picture. And don’t mistake “simplicity” for “strategy.”  

I think that there may be some truth here, but I’d draw a different conclusion.

First of all, maybe we have historically given SEO too much credit for branded organic traffic. If someone discovers a hotel through Instagram, Booking.com or a friend and then Googles the property name and books direct, SEO didn’t necessarily create that demand; it helped capture it. But I don’t think that makes SEO overrated in any way, shape or form.

Discovery through search is absolutely still happening in hospitality and the data we're seeing on a daily basis shows this. Someone searching for informational queries such as “best luxury hotels in Charleston” or asking ChatGPT “Where should I stay in Charleston for a couples weekend?” is still undecided and actively looking for recommendations but what’s actually changing is where and how that discovery happens.

For me, that makes the discipline of SEO broader and definitely not less important. The work is increasingly about ensuring a hotel is understood, trusted and visible everywhere, whether across traditional search, local results and the sources and platforms influencing AI recommendations.

The problem isn’t SEO itself but continuing to define SEO by what it looked like 10 years ago. We should be more honest recognizing that search itself has evolved well beyond the traditional Google results page and rather than minimizing SEO, we should focus on visibility everywhere rather than just traditional search.