Google Business Profile for hotels: what to post

GuestJourney editorial team, edited by Alon Shkuri

Published 27 September 2026 · Updated 2 November 2026 · 8 min read

Gigi photographs a croissant on the breakfast table

On a Google Business Profile for hotels you can post updates, but no offers: Google's policy says hotels can't create offer posts, or any post that mentions or links to deals, promotions, special offers or discounts. Hotels also have no editable opening hours. Post what is true this week at your hotel, with your own photo and a button to your own booking page.

Anna looks up her own hotel

It is the first warm Saturday of March and the breakfast room has emptied. Anna types Hotel Kadeloft into Google on her phone, to see what a guest sees. The newest photo is fourteen months old: the old chairs, from before the renovation. There are no updates at all. Twenty rooms on the quay, and it looks as if nobody is home.

She has a plan for that: a spring package, three nights for the price of two, written on the back of a breakfast menu. She opens the form to post it. Google's rules for hotels do not allow it.

Hotel Kadeloft and Anna are made up, and so is this profile. The rule is real, and it comes next.

Hotels may post updates, not offers

Google's content policy has a paragraph for hotels alone. It opens kindly: "Hotel businesses can create local posts to provide relevant, timely info to customers." Then comes the rule: "Hotels can't create “offer” posts, or any post that mentions or includes links to deals, promotions, special offers, or discounts."

The reason Google gives is about prices. It does not want customers confused about where on a hotel's listing to find "organic and ad prices". Those prices already sit next to your details.

The rule is easy to miss, because other Google pages point the other way. The help page on posts lists Offers as a post type, and the contribution policy says offers are "otherwise permitted in posts". Both are written for businesses in general. The hotel paragraph is the one written for you.

The post Anna wanted

Spring at Hotel Kadeloft! Book three nights, pay for two, all through April. Reserve now on our site.

A deal, in so many words. Whichever post type she picks, the rule covers it.

The post she can put up

The tables are back on the quay. From today, breakfast is outside when it's dry, from half past seven.

News from this week, with a photo she took herself and a Book button to her own booking page. No deal mentioned, no deal linked.

Anna can still sell her package. It belongs on her own website and at the desk. It stays out of the Google post, and the button under the post stays away from the page where the package lives.

The rule reaches further than the word offer

A spring package with twenty percent off is the obvious one. The rule is wider than that, because it also covers links: an update about your terrace that links to your offers page mentions a deal by the back door. So check where the button goes as well as what the text says.

The same news, as a post that breaks the rule and one that does not. Our reading of the rule, not Google's examples.
Breaks the rule	Fine
Book three nights, pay for two this spring	The garden is open again, breakfast outside from today
10% off when you book on our site	Our rooms on the canal side have new beds
Last-minute rooms this weekend from €89	The Saturday market is back, a five-minute walk from our door
Button to /offers/	Button to your booking page

One more trap sits in the same policy, for every business. Google may remove posts with "unverified contact information", and that includes phone numbers, email addresses and social media handles. So leave your number out of the text and add a Call now button, which uses the verified number on your profile.

A hotel profile differs in other ways too

No opening hours to edit. Google's page for hotels says hotels "do not have the ability to edit their business hours because hotels are open 24 hours to their guests". Instead you keep check-in and check-out times, amenities and highlights.
Check-in times can come from others. Google also takes them from "trusted sources, like user reports and licensed content", and you can choose whether to accept those updates automatically. Look once. A guest who reads two o'clock on Google will be at your desk at two.
Prices and booking links next to your details. Those come from Google Hotel Ads and free booking links, not from your profile. See free booking links.
No deals in the listing either. The contribution policy bars promotional content in the listing itself when it has "Time-bound promotions, pricing, or direct calls-to-action". So the spring package cannot move to your description.

After you press Post

An update can carry a photo, a video and a button. Google says the button should lead to a website where people can complete the action, "like make a booking". That is your booking page, on every post.

Google then reviews the post. It gets one of three statuses: Live, Pending or Not approved, and a post that is not approved does not show on Search or Maps. Whether Google catches every offer, we do not know. We would not test it on the only profile you have.

Two details save you work. You can schedule a post for later or let it repeat, so one quiet hour can fill a month. And posts older than six months are archived unless a date range is set, so a profile with one post from April is empty again by November.

Your own photos, and Google's rules for them

Use your own photos. A stock image tells a guest nothing about your breakfast. A photo of your own table does, and no OTA listing next door has that one.

Google's photo guidelines are short: at least 250 by 250 pixels and preferably 720 by 720, in focus and well lit, without heavy filters. In Google's words, "the image should represent reality". Your newest media appears first, and a new photo can take up to 48 hours to show.

Guests can add photos too. If the old chairs came from a guest, Anna can only report that photo if it breaks Google's policies, and an old photo may not. Either way, she adds a new one.

Gigi stands on a rainy window ledge next to a blank sign, camera in hand

What does posting do, and what not?

Google's page on local ranking names three things: relevance, distance and popularity. Posts are not on that list, and Google says you cannot pay or ask for a better local position. What Google does advise is a complete, current profile, and replying to reviews.

So do not post to climb. Google's own claim for an update is modest: it "helps them decide to visit your business". Post because a guest who has already found you is comparing you with the hotel next to you in the list, and a profile last touched two years ago makes a quiet statement about the hotel. A button to your own booking page gives that guest a way past the OTA. That is the job of a post, and it is enough.

One update a week is what we would keep up

It is also what Gigi does. We know of no solid evidence for a magic frequency, so pick the one you can sustain. Ten posts in January are archived by July, and then the profile looks as it did before. One a week does not run out.

Four checks on a quiet morning

Check-in and check-out times that match your website.
Amenities that are true today: parking, breakfast, pets, step-free access. Google lets you correct them once your profile is verified.
Your own website as the link, not an OTA page.
Replies to your reviews, in the guest's language. See how to respond.

A year of posts, by season

A hotel with twenty rooms does not have twenty things happening. These twelve last a season, and you can photograph all of them on a phone. They will not fill 52 weeks, so let the good ones come back with a new photo. Kadeloft has two charging points on the quay, so Anna's winter post is half written.

Twelve post ideas over a year. None of them mentions a deal.
Season	The post
Spring	The first morning breakfast is outside
Spring	A room that was just redone, before and after
Spring	Bikes to borrow, and where you would ride first
Summer	A walk from your front door, with how long it takes
Summer	The garden, the bar or the terrace in the current season
Summer	A market, museum or event nearby, with the date
Autumn	The fireplace, lit for the first time this year
Autumn	What is on the breakfast table from a local supplier
Autumn	The person who makes the breakfast, if they agree to it
Winter	A charging point, if you have just put one in
Winter	Parking made simple: where it is and what it costs
Winter	How to get here from the station, now the timetable changed

This is one of the six places in how a small hotel gets more direct bookings.