How can you ensure your hotel is visible when potential guests search online? Travellers have more information, more choices, and higher expectations than ever before. To really understand how they make decisions, you need to shop like a traveller. See your property through their eyes, anticipate what they are looking for, and be there to meet them at the right moments.
The principle is simple: search for your hotel the way guests do, identify gaps or opportunities, and optimise your presence across search, listings, and review platforms. But in the age of AI and ever-changing search behaviour, understanding the traveller’s journey and how they encounter your hotel online is even more important if you want to turn that first glance into a confident booking.
Imagine a couple planning a weekend getaway to Cornwall. They’ll probably start online, browsing destinations, Googling “boutique hotel on the Cornish coast”, scrolling through photos, reading a few reviews, watching videos, or asking their AI of choice for recommendations. In that moment, they are already forming an impression. Is your hotel the one that makes them pause, imagine themselves there, and click to book, or do small inconsistencies leave them unsure?
Hotels that succeed today are not just visible; they are discoverable, trustworthy, and relevant at every step of the guest journey.
To start, search for your hotel as if you were a traveller.
This is the most basic part of managing your online image, but it is often overlooked. When you want to find out more about something online, your first port of call is usually Google. Remember that your prospective guests don’t know your website URL, social media handles, and where to find your online travel agent listings, but you can be pretty sure that they know how to use Google.
What appears on the first page of Google’s search results when you search your establishment’s name is what people will find out about you first online. Is your hotel website on the first page of the results? When you Google your town or area, do you come up?
Look at the search results, the map listing, and the reviews. Take note of what catches your eye and what feels confusing or missing. Even small inconsistencies can influence a guest’s decision, or AI’s willingness to suggest you. This isn't just about how visible your hotel is, it’s about seeing the story of your hotel as a traveller would and understanding the impression you make before a guest even clicks to book.
Once you have Googled yourself, click on the first five or so relevant results.
If you were a traveller, would you stay at your hotel based on what you see? Make sure that everything you can control about these pages, such as the photos and descriptions on your OTA listings, are as enticing and accurate as possible.
Some questions that are good to ask:
Remember, it's also not just about your hotel. Travellers rarely judge you in isolation; they’re weighing you up against other properties in the same search results, map listings, and OTA screens. When you Google your town or area, do you come up — and how do you look next to your competitors?
For the sake of human potential guests browsing the web, and any Large Language Models helping potential guests synthesise information faster, information about your hotel needs to be easy to find, understand and navigate online.
First impressions count (especially when competition is high)
Images, video, and detailed descriptions are often the first impression potential guests have. High-quality visuals make your property more appealing, and short video clips help travellers imagine their experience. Make sure every listing reflects reality. Keep amenities accurate, room descriptions clear, and everything mobile-friendly. Many of these searches happen on mobile devices, where attention spans are short, and clarity matters even more.
Compare your listing across OTAs and your own website. Are the details aligned everywhere? Do your room types, facilities, and policies match? When you appear beside competitors in search results, does your value stand out clearly?
Provide instant gratification
People turn to Google and AI chatbots because they provide information immediately. Mobile browsing, AI-powered answer engines, zero-click search behaviours and more are all about instant gratification.
Even if they are not yet staying at your establishment, give potential guests something that they can enjoy. If they are looking for picturesque places to visit, provide a variety of quality, high-resolution photos for them to look at on your website and social media. If they want to know what the best time of year to visit your area is, you’re more likely to get noticed if you’ve written a blog post about that topic.
Do your reviews help or damage your image?
Word-of-mouth is still one of the strongest motivators behind booking decisions, but online reviews are a close second. What impression do yours give? Often, hoteliers are tempted to only look at the numerical ratings and rankings. But there are more elements that guests and AI assistants take into account, even if they are not that obvious.
Some questions that are good to ask:
Unfortunately, when left to their own devices, often only the most impressed and most dissatisfied guests will post reviews of your property, leaving prospective travellers browsing through your reviews with an inaccurate image of what a stay at your hotel is really like.
Many guests who were satisfied (but not overwhelmed) will still have pleasant things to say about your hotel – if you ask them. So, make sure you have a system in place to encourage more guests to leave reviews.
Often, your ranking on OTAs and review sites depends on review recency, volume, and quality. So, if you want to climb the rankings, it’s imperative to make sure you have a steady stream of new reviews online.
Reviews are no longer just social proof for guests looking for reassurance. They are a key, trusted data source for LLMs, and a significant part of how AI summarises information and presents your property to travellers. Encouraging guests to share authentic photos and comments helps other travellers make decisions with confidence.
Helping to shape the narrative by responding to your reviews
When so much of your online image is in the hands of review-writing guests, you need to seize every opportunity to be part of the conversation and respond to guests who have been gracious enough to write you a review. This helps you not only enhance the guest experience but also guide the content that AI picks up when summarising your hotel for search results.
It may seem like a waste of a high-level team member's time to write to strangers online, but people need to see that someone with the authority to effect real changes is taking notice of guest feedback. AI tools can be a huge time-saver here, just remember not to take anyone for a fool. Rather say nothing at all than use a generic response time and time again, or post a response that's obviously been written by an LLM without any human input.
Travellers are increasingly turning to AI for guidance. They ask for personalised recommendations and get curated answers in seconds, often before visiting a hotel website. For example, a traveller might type: “Hey ChatGPT, I want to go on a surf trip to Indonesia. Where is the best hotel near good waves that is not overly crowded with tourists?”
Within moments, AI can provide a curated list of hotels, highlight key features, summarise guest reviews, and suggest nearby attractions. Depending on the user’s history, it may even say something like “these hostels have resident artist programmes, which might be appealing to you since you've asked me about the Expressionist movement in the past”.
Travellers can compare options instantly and make a confident decision without scrolling through endless pages. For hoteliers, this means your hotel’s story and unique qualities need to be communicated clearly. The easier it is for AI to understand what makes your property special, the more likely it is to appear in the right traveller’s query.
Google’s job used to be to help users search for and view web content about a topic, or keyword – it was a search engine. It then successfully pivoted to being an answer engine – many queries are asked and answered without ever leaving Google.com.
Google Maps, Google Hotels, knowledge panels, featured snippets, and Google’s various content types (other than the 10 blue links) began providing users with key details and comparisons without a single click-through. For hotels, that meant it was even more important to own your location, photos, amenities, policies, reviews, and rates in all the places Google presents first.
Now, with generative AI layered into Search, Google is solving for user intent throughout the path to purchase. AI Overviews and AI Mode summarise and recommend options, often reducing the need to click multiple results just to get oriented. That means more zero-click behaviour: travellers can learn, shortlist, and even build confidence without ever reaching your website.
As Agentic AI captures the internet’s collective imagination, Google is even looking towards completing the task (booking a trip) on the user's behalf without the human user ever visiting the original sources of information (like your hotel's website). In its newer Search experience, AI Mode includes “Canvas” for travel planning, where users can organise itineraries and move from planning to booking within the AI interface. Google describes agentic capabilities that help users turn plans into actions, reducing the number of steps (and tabs) needed to complete a booking journey in this recent blog.
So now, when you're imitating a traveller’s browsing habits to check “Can guests find us?”, you also need to ask “Can Google understand us?”
Your core facts must be consistent everywhere (website, OTAs, directories, maps) so search and AI tools don’t pick up conflicting information.
Are you providing plenty of “place” information to the sources Google relies on most? Your Google Business Profile (and related place data) plays an outsized role in what appears in Search and Maps. Keep it accurate and up to date – especially amenities, categories, photos, contact details, and policies.
Once you’re accurate, you also need to be attractive. Mine your guest insights to identify your unique appeal (or get AI to do it for you), and lean into what guests rave about and make it prominent across your channels.
Ask, are we easy to recommend in one sentence? If a traveller asks for “boutique, pet-friendly, walkable to the beach, great breakfast”, is that clearly stated on your site and echoed in reviews and listings?
Are you building trust where travellers actually compare options? Reviews, fresh imagery, and clear value signals matter because they’re often summarised and surfaced before the click (and sometimes instead of it).
Your website still matters, but your visibility and credibility increasingly start outside it. The goal is to make sure that wherever the traveller chooses to ask their questions, your hotel’s story is accurate and compelling, and Google (and other AIs/LLMs) is confident enough to give you a place on the list.
To learn more about how Google’s AI tools are shaping traveller search behaviour and what that means for hotel marketing, see our breakdown of what Google’s new AI tools mean for hotel marketing.
The online landscape changes constantly. Algorithms, traveller expectations, and AI capabilities evolve quickly. That means the exercise of shopping like a traveller should not be a one-off. Check your listings, images, and content regularly. Look at your competitors. Adjust what you offer based on feedback, trends, and new tools.
Even small improvements add up. The hotels that adapt fastest maintain high visibility, trust, and bookings. By continually refining your online presence and staying in tune with the traveller’s journey, you can turn a casual search into a confident booking.
Get to know your potential customers’ behaviour
Your website’s Google Analytics, your Google Ads statistics, and your social media analytics can all provide clues about your potential customers – when they are online, where they are from, and what they are most interested in.
Shopping like a traveller has stood the test of time, but what has changed is how travellers search, plan, and decide. By seeing your hotel through guests’ eyes, making your property easy to discover, and following the ways AI shapes their journey, you can meet guests exactly where they are and guide them towards the experiences only you can offer.
Travellers today are not just booking a room. They are seeking clarity, confidence, and unforgettable moments. When you make it effortless for them to imagine their stay, to connect with your story, and to trust in what you promise, you do more than attract bookings. You inspire them to choose your hotel, to become part of the experiences you create, and to share those moments with others.
Your hotel is more than a destination. It is a place where memories are made, where journeys begin, and where every guest encounter can become a story worth telling. See the traveller’s perspective, adapt with intention, and inspire at every touchpoint. That is how you turn searches into stays, and stays into lifelong connections.