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Hospitality SEO

SEO, AEO and GEO for Hotels, Resorts, Restaurants and Venues

Guests ask AI engines where to stay or eat and get a shortlist with reasons, drawn from reviews and city guides, before they open Google Maps. Miss that shortlist and the booking comes through an OTA at a commission, or goes next door. Our hospitality SEO, AEO and GEO work builds the room, dining and event pages engines quote. We count direct bookings and reservations against a baseline.

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Why guests pick a hotel or a table before they ever contact you

A couple planning a weekend in Lisbon asks an AI engine for a boutique hotel with a rooftop on a quiet street. The answer names three properties and says why, in lines lifted from Tripadvisor reviews, Time Out and a travel magazine. On Google, the hotel pack and Maps sit above every organic result. Restaurants face the same test with dinner near the cathedral with a view. The guest then checks the rate on Booking.com and books wherever it is easiest.

We pay commission on guests who already knew us

A guest searches your hotel by name, sees Booking.com or Expedia before your own site and books there. A typical OTA commission runs 15 to 25 percent, charged on guests who wanted you all along. Over a season that is margin you handed over for a booking your own site should have taken.

Every AI answer recommends the place down the road

Ask an AI engine for the best place to stay or eat in your neighbourhood and it lists competitors lifted from a guide article or a review roundup. If the guides answers quote don't mention you, you aren't on the shortlist, however good your rooms, kitchen or reviews are.

Our website is a booking engine and nothing else

A photo carousel, a rate calendar and a book-now button. There is nothing about the rooms, the area, the menu or the events you host that an engine could quote. So answers describe you from OTA listings and old reviews, and the guest books where the description came from.

What we build for hospitality SEO and direct bookings

Guests choose on specifics: which room, which view, what is on the menu, whether the venue seats a wedding party. We run six workstreams from one roadmap, ordered by your baseline, so your own site becomes the source that engines and guests trust over the OTA listing.

01

Prompt research built on how guests choose

We map the prompts and searches that fill rooms and tables, such as "best boutique hotel in Lisbon for couples", "restaurants near [landmark] with a view", "wedding venues with rooms on site" and "[hotel] reviews", then record which properties each engine names and the reasons it gives.

02

Room, dining and occasion pages worth quoting

Property and room pages with structured data for amenities and rates, neighbourhood and things-to-do pages, occasion pages for weddings, meetings and family stays, menus engines can read as text, and hotel versus rental comparisons. Each answers the guest's question in its opening lines.

03

Mentions in the guides guests and engines trust

We find the guide articles and lists behind each answer, such as the Michelin Guide, Time Out, city guides and the travel press, and earn your place in them with facts editors can use. We never buy, fake or incentivise reviews. Editorial fees are yours to approve.

04

Google Business Profile and listings that agree

Your name, address, hours, amenities, accessibility details and booking links made consistent across Google Business Profile, Maps, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, Expedia, Yelp and OpenTable, with a location page for every property or restaurant. Engines read these listings side by side and trust the details that match.

05

A site crawlers can read past the booking widget

Hotel and restaurant sites often load rooms, rates and menus inside a third-party booking widget or a PDF, split pages across booking-engine subdomains, and block AI crawlers by accident. We fix rendering, indexation and schema, and confirm GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot can read every room and menu.

06

Direct bookings counted against commission saved

Each month we rerun your prompts on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode and Copilot, read your search and Maps positions, and count direct bookings, reservations, event enquiries and average booking value in your analytics, next to your OTA share.

Covered on every engine your buyers use

  • ChatGPT
  • Perplexity
  • Claude
  • Gemini
  • Google AI Overviews
  • Google AI Mode
  • Copilot

ChatGPT search and Copilot draw on Bing's index, so Bing rankings feed AI answers. We work on search and AI engines as one program.

How it works

The same four steps on every engagement, with a clear view of what to expect at 30, 60 and 90 days.

  1. 01

    Understand

    Map your business, buyers, competitors and the prompts and searches that decide your category.

    Days 1 to 30. A fixed baseline across every engine and the prompts that matter.

  2. 02

    Prioritize

    Pick the few moves that will get you recommended fastest and turn them into a focused roadmap.

    Days 1 to 30. A focused roadmap agreed, with the first fixes already shipping.

  3. 03

    Execute

    Do the technical, content, authority and AI visibility work ourselves.

    Days 30 to 60. Content, technical and authority work shipping every week.

  4. 04

    Improve

    Track AI citations, rankings and the leads they drive against the baseline and keep refining.

    Days 60 to 90. A first read against the baseline, then the next quarter planned.

Case studies

The method we used for a fragrance retailer, clear pages plus a place in the sources answers trust, is what carries over to a hotel or restaurant that engines can't yet tell apart from the one next door.

Read all case studies

Who this is for, and who it is not for

A good fit

Hotels, restaurants and venues with their own website, a way to take direct bookings or reservations and a way to count them

  • Independent and boutique hotels and resorts
  • Vacation rental managers and hotel management companies
  • Restaurant groups, bars and venues
  • Event and wedding venues

Not a fit yet

  • Properties that can only be booked through an OTA
  • Venues hoping to buy or incentivise their way up the review sites
  • Businesses with no live website or nothing to sell yet
  • Anyone expecting guaranteed placement in a specific answer

How we compare with the other ways hotels and venues fill rooms

SearchAxe Relying on the OTAs Hospitality marketing agency Part-time revenue manager
Understands how your buyers research Guest prompts mapped by occasion and area Owns the guest relationship Social and ads first, often No time for prompt research
Works on AI answers and search together One roadmap, Maps included No, OTA ranking only Search sometimes, AI rarely Rate parity, not visibility
Ships the fixes Pages, schema, listings and crawler fixes Not applicable Campaigns more than site fixes Squeezed between pricing and forecasts
Earns third-party mentions City guides, dining guides and travel press Not for your own brand Sometimes, through a PR retainer Not in scope
Compliance-aware copy Accurate rates, accessibility, honest review handling Their listing rules apply Varies by agency Rates yes, accessibility copy rarely
Measured against a baseline Direct bookings and citations, every month Bookings, minus commission Reach and impressions, usually Occupancy and rates, not search
Published pricing Yes, from $499 per month Commission on every booking Rarely, a quote after a call Part of a salary

What you get each month

  • Baseline report Where you stand on every engine and in search before any work starts.
  • Monthly AI citation and ranking report Citations by engine, rankings and referring domains, read against the baseline.
  • Direct bookings attributed The direct bookings, table reservations and event enquiries that search and AI answers drove that month, in your own analytics.
  • Slack access A shared channel with the people doing the work.
  • Rolling roadmap What shipped, what is next and why, updated every month.
  • Competitor movement Which competitors gained or lost ground in AI answers and search, and why.

How we get started

From first call to work in progress in three steps.

  1. 01

    Book a free consultation

    A call about your business, your market and where you stand in AI answers and search today.

  2. 02

    Get a plan and a quote

    We send a plan for what we would do first, with a quote for the plan you choose.

  3. 03

    Work starts right away

    Once the plan and quote are approved, the work starts immediately.

What clients say

We had thousands of pages going nowhere. Amit cleaned that up and rebuilt our landing pages. Our top three rankings are up 362% and our citations across AI engines have grown more than a hundred times.

Nan Ha Nan Ha Product Growth Lead, Viggle AI Read the Viggle AI case study

We came to Amit with a good product and almost no search presence. He gave our team a plan we could actually follow. Referring domains are up 183% and our first page rankings have more than tripled.

George Kurdin George Kurdin Co-Founder, Monk Read the Monk case study

Our content was getting published but not landing anywhere. Amit reworked how we format it for AI engines and our citations across all seven engines are up over 400%. The Reddit community he built now brings us leads weekly.

Aditya Nagpal Aditya Nagpal Founder, Wisemonk Read the Wisemonk case study

We launched with a homepage and nothing else. Amit built the search foundation, the landing pages, the blog, the schema. Our domain rating is up 70% and we went from zero AI citations to being quoted by six of the seven AI engines.

Ahad Shams Ahad Shams Founder, HeyOz Read the HeyOz case study

We had multiple pages fighting each other for the same terms. Amit mapped it all out, consolidated what needed consolidating, and rebuilt our service pages. Organic traffic is up 147% and our top three rankings have more than doubled.

Manjunath Thandu Manjunath Thandu CEO, Zivoke Read the Zivoke case study

Who's behind SearchAxe

Amit Malvi spent four and a half years at Invideo AI, rising from SEO Executive to Senior SEO Manager. He built and led a 20-person link building team and owned the company's GEO and AEO programs. Today he works hands-on with a small number of businesses across 16 industries, from SaaS and AI startups to law firms, clinics, online stores and manufacturers, that want to be the name search and AI engines recommend.

Pricing

Published prices, in US dollars per month. The plan that fits this work is below.

Full Service SEO and AI Visibility

$1,499 per month

Minimum three months

For businesses that want one partner to own search and AI visibility end to end, from the fixes to the monthly report.

  • Everything in SEO Consulting
  • Technical fixes, on-page work and citation-ready pages
  • Link building, brand mentions and entity optimization
  • Monthly reporting on citations, rankings and the leads they drive

Third-party fees, such as editorial or placement fees and paid listings, are paid by you directly.

Questions buyers ask us

Can SEO move bookings from the OTAs to direct?

It can move some of them, and it starts with your own name. Many guests who book through an OTA searched for your property first and found the OTA above you. We make your site the clearest result for your name and your rooms, fix your Google Business Profile and give engines pages worth quoting. OTAs will still bring guests who have never heard of you. The aim is to stop paying commission on the ones who have.

Does Google Business Profile matter for hotels and restaurants?

More than almost any page on your site. Maps and the hotel pack sit above the organic results for most near-me and in-this-area searches, and answer engines read the same profile data. We make sure your categories, hours, amenities, accessibility details, photos and booking links match your site and every other listing. We don't run review campaigns, and we never buy, fake or incentivise reviews.

How do we show up when guests ask AI where to stay?

Where-to-stay answers lean on guide articles, review sites and property pages that describe themselves plainly. We find which guides each engine cites for your area, earn your place in them, and rewrite your pages so a line like quiet rooms, five minutes from the old town is there to quote. Engines also read Reddit threads, but we focus on the publications, directories and review sites. Our GEO Agency page explains the method in full.

Do restaurant menus need structured data?

They need to be readable first. A menu in a PDF or an image is close to invisible to engines, so a question like vegan tasting menu near the river goes to a restaurant whose dishes are on the page as text. We publish menus as HTML, add Restaurant and Menu schema that matches what guests see, link reservations from OpenTable or your own system, and keep hours and prices in step across listings.

How do you attribute direct bookings to search and AI answers?

Through your booking engine and your analytics. We connect AI and search referrals to completed bookings, table reservations and event enquiries, then report direct revenue share and average booking value next to what the same stays would have cost through an OTA. Some guests read an AI answer and then type your name, so we also track branded search and any how-did-you-hear field you already have.

How long before we see results?

We set the baseline in the first 30 days: the prompts guests use, your Maps and search positions, and your current split of direct and OTA bookings. You get the first full read against it at day 90, with a report every month in between. Listing fixes tend to show before guide mentions do. We don't guarantee rankings, citations or booking volumes, and we'd be wary of anyone who does.

What does it cost?

Three plans, from $499 to $1,499 per month. Full Service SEO and AI Visibility, at $1,499 per month with a three-month minimum, covers every workstream on this page. If you'd like a snapshot first, the $199 AI Visibility Audit is a one-time check of how engines describe your property. Paid listings and guide fees are paid by you directly. See our pricing for what each plan includes.

Do you need access to our systems?

Read access to your analytics, Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Business Profile, editor access to your CMS, and booking or reservation reports from your booking engine or OpenTable. Rates, availability and accessibility statements are checked with you before anything goes live, so what an engine quotes matches what a guest finds at the front desk or the door.

Let's get your business recommended.

Tell us what you sell, who buys it and where you show up today. We'll reply within one business day with what is costing you leads and what we would fix first.

Schedule a Free Consultation