Travel and Hospitality

Guests book through someone else. You pay commission.

Travellers research for weeks before they book. Most of that research happens on aggregators and booking platforms, and by the time a guest reaches your website they have usually already decided, or already booked elsewhere at fifteen to twenty percent commission.

Who this is for

Hotels and resorts

Destination, property and amenity searches.

Homestays and villas

Location, group size and experience searches.

Tour and activity operators

Experience, season and itinerary questions.

Travel agencies

Package, destination and planning searches.

Restaurants and venues

Local intent, occasion and cuisine searches.

Adventure and niche travel

Specialist activities with dedicated audiences.

Why aggregators dominate travel search

They spend more on search visibility than most hospitality businesses earn in a year.

Booking platforms have millions of pages, enormous advertising budgets, and a business model built entirely on owning the moment a traveller decides. Competing with them on the obvious searches is not a strategy, it is a donation.

What they cannot do is know your destination. Their pages are generated at scale from templates. They cannot tell someone which month the water is clearest, which route avoids the crowds, or what to do when it rains. Those are the questions travellers actually search during the weeks of planning, and they are almost entirely uncontested.

Where you can win instead

Travel research is long and question heavy. That is the opening.

The travel research journey and where aggregators compete Travellers begin with inspiration and destination questions, move through planning and logistics, then compare properties, and finally book. Aggregators compete heavily only at the comparison and booking stages, leaving the earlier research stages largely uncontested. HOW TRAVELLERS RESEARCH, WEEKS BEFORE BOOKING Inspiration “best time to visit” Planning “how many days” Comparing “hotels near beach” Booking “[property] price” Where the big platforms compete hardest Only at the end, where the transaction is. Where you can realistically win Weeks earlier, answering questions only local knowledge can answer. Be useful during planning and you are the obvious choice at booking.
Being present early does two things: it earns direct bookings that carry no commission, and it builds the familiarity that makes someone choose you over an identical listing.

Proof from the sector

Surfing academy, Andaman

A niche travel business competing for attention in a destination dominated by large operators and booking platforms.

What we do

Own your destination’s questions

The planning searches aggregators answer badly because they have never been there. Seasons, routes, what to avoid, what is worth it.

Destination content architecture with internal linking to booking pages.

Win local and map results

For anyone already nearby or arriving, map results decide. Reviews, photos and accurate information do most of the work.

Google Business Profile, review process, local schema.

Make direct booking the obvious choice

Clear rates, availability and reasons to book with you rather than through a platform taking a cut.

Conversion path review and booking flow optimisation.

Get recommended by AI

Travel planning is one of the most common uses of AI assistants. Being named in those itineraries is a real channel now.

Structured content built for AI answer engine citation.

How an engagement runs

  1. We map the research your guests actually doThe questions they search in the weeks before booking, most of which nobody in your destination has answered properly.Query research across the full planning journey.
  2. We find where the platforms are beatableWhich searches they genuinely own, and which they generate templated pages for and rank badly on.Competitor gap analysis against aggregator content.
  3. We fix the technical foundationTravel sites are usually image heavy and often carry booking engines that search engines index poorly.Technical audit covering speed, crawlability and indexation.
  4. We build content only you could writeLocal knowledge, seasonal detail, honest advice. The things that cannot be generated at scale.Content production with destination and FAQ schema.
  5. We report on direct bookingsNot traffic. How many people booked with you rather than through a platform, and what they read first.Booking attribution tied to organic source.

Questions travel businesses ask

Can we realistically compete with the big booking platforms?

Not on the searches where someone is comparing prices across twenty properties. You can absolutely win the weeks of research before that, where the questions need actual knowledge of a place. Those searches are less contested, and someone who found your advice useful is far more likely to book with you directly.

We depend on platform bookings. Does this replace them?

Not immediately, and it should not. The realistic goal is shifting the mix over time so a growing share of bookings come direct at no commission. Most of our hospitality clients keep platform listings running while building the direct channel alongside.

Our season is only a few months. Does SEO make sense?

Seasonality actually suits this well, because travellers research months ahead. Content published in the off season is what ranks by the time people are planning. The work is counter cyclical, which is usually convenient.

How long before we see direct bookings?

Specific destination questions can start bringing traffic within a couple of months. Direct bookings follow as that traffic builds familiarity. For a seasonal business, plan on being visible one full planning cycle ahead of the season you want to fill.

Do reviews matter as much as everyone says?

In hospitality, yes. They affect map rankings and they affect whether someone chooses you over a similar property. The useful work is having a consistent process for asking guests at the right moment, rather than any clever tactic.

Find out which travel searches you could be winning.

We will map the research happening around your destination and show you where the platforms are beatable. No pitch deck.

Map our destination search gaps
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