Hotel SEO: getting found next to Booking.com

GuestJourney editorial team, edited by Alon Shkuri

Published 1 November 2026 · Updated 2 November 2026 · 8 min read

Gigi looks at a small model hotel through a huge magnifying glass, in the sun on a stone table

Hotel SEO for a small hotel is, in our reading, mostly about Google's own hotel block, not about a blog. In the 12 guest searches we ran on 1 November 2026, that block appeared every time, and above the first ordinary result in 10 of them. Booking.com, Tripadvisor or a comparison site stood among the ordinary results in 11 of 12. On searches like these you are unlikely to pass them, but you can be in the block.

12 of 12searches showed Google's own hotel block, with hotels by name

10 of 12had that block above the first ordinary result

10 of 12had an AI overview

Our own measurement on 1 November 2026: 12 searches a guest might make, half from the UK and half from the Netherlands, on a mobile setting, collected with DataForSEO. One day, not a market figure, and an earlier run that same day showed an AI overview on 7 of 11. Results differ per person and per moment, and someone standing in your town can see something else, because Google says distance counts.

What the 12 searches looked like

We typed what a guest might type, such as "boutique hotel york", "small hotel bath" and "bed and breakfast zeeland". Read this as a picture and not as a law. Then there are the ordinary results, and this is who stood first there.

First ordinary result per search. In bold: an individual hotel or B&B, 3 of 12.
Search	From	First ordinary result
boutique hotel york	UK	Middletons York
small hotel bath	UK	bathhotels-england.co.uk
bed and breakfast edinburgh	UK	Barony House
hotel cotswolds	UK	Booking.com
small hotel bruges	UK	Tripadvisor
boutique hotel amsterdam	UK	amsterdamhotele.com
boutique hotel haarlem	NL	Boutique hotel Staats
klein hotel maastricht	NL	Booking.com
bed and breakfast utrecht	NL	Booking.com
klein hotel brugge	NL	trivago
boutique hotel amsterdam	NL	Design Hotels
bed and breakfast zeeland	NL	Bedandbreakfast.nl

An OTA, Tripadvisor or a comparison site stood among the ordinary results in 11 of the 12. In "klein hotel maastricht", all six ordinary results were Booking.com, trivago, Tripadvisor or KAYAK.

The hopeful part is in the block itself. It held four names every time, and they were not only the big ones: in the Edinburgh search, Menzies Guest House stood next to a Premier Inn, and in "klein hotel brugge", Hôtel Karel de Stoute stood next to an ibis budget. And on one of the 12, the Haarlem search, the first ordinary result was a small boutique hotel and no big OTA, Tripadvisor or comparison site made the list. In these 12 that happened once.

What Kadeloft can win, and what it cannot

Hotel Kadeloft is made up, so we could not search for it. Twenty rooms on the quay, in a town with plenty of other beds. This is our reading of the 12 searches, not a measurement of Kadeloft.

What Kadeloft can win

Its own name. Someone who googles Hotel Kadeloft should find a way to book direct at once.
One of the four names in the block, when the search is close by and the profile fits.
A line of its own among the booking links, with its own price, through free booking links.
Narrow searches: a hotel on the quay where the dog can come, or with a charging point. Its own site can say that.
A mention from the tourist board, or from the restaurant Anna sends guests to.

What it will not win

The top of the ordinary results on a town search. In the Maastricht search above, OTAs and comparison sites took all six.
A place in the block by paying or asking. Google says you cannot request or buy a better local ranking.
The "best hotels in town" lists. In our results those came from Tripadvisor, Booking.com and travel magazines such as CN Traveller.
A fixed spot in an AI overview. Ahrefs saw 50% of the citations in AI Overviews gone the next day.
Jonas. He started on Booking.com, and no SEO work changes where he starts.

The left list is where Laura ends up. She stayed in the spring, wants to come back and googles the name. Whether she lands on Anna's site or on Booking.com is worth €16.50 a night to Anna. The right list is where Jonas comes from, and that is fine: he is the guest the commission pays for.

The order we would do it in

Your Google profile. Google defines relevance as how well a profile matches the search, so complete it, keep it current and answer your reviews. Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and popularity, and that more reviews and positive ratings can help. That page is about local results in general and does not name the hotel block; we read it as applying there too. See what a hotel can post.
Your own price in that row. Free booking links can put your site next to the OTAs when a guest picks dates, and Google charges nothing per click. Ask your booking engine supplier first: you may already be connected.
Your own name. Search it on a phone. If an OTA ranks above you on your own name, or your site does not lead to a booking, fix the first screen before anything else.
A website Google can read. Real text instead of words in images, one page per room type, your town and what is nearby in plain words, and a site that fits a phone. This is where the dog at €15 a night and the two charging points on the quay belong.
Mentions from people nearby. The tourist board, a local guide, the restaurant you send guests to. Google says how well known a business is also rests on how many websites link to it. Tourist board sites showed up in our results: Visit Cotswolds stood second on "hotel cotswolds". Ask to be listed.

Gigi pushes a big purple pin into a large paper map on a dark desk

AI answers need no plan of their own

They count, and they do not call for a separate plan. Google says its AI features are "rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems" and that you do not need new machine-readable files or special markup to appear. The same page says Business Profiles can help you be visible in AI responses. The advice is good ordinary SEO, with original content.

Seven of the 10 AI overviews on our guest searches came back with a list of sources. All seven named Google itself, four named Booking.com and three Tripadvisor. Individual hotels showed up too, once each, among them small ones in Edinburgh and Haarlem. Do not read much into one day: Ahrefs followed citations for 20 days and found that about 75% of those that vanish come back within that time.

On 20 questions hotel owners ask, such as "hotel seo" and "hotel booking engine", 19 had an AI overview, with YouTube among the sources in 10, SiteMinder in 6, Reddit in 5 and Mews in 4. That is about where owners get their answers, not guests, so do not copy it for your hotel.

How you see whether it works

Set up Search Console, which Google describes as a free service. Look at searches without your hotel's name. Google says some changes take effect in a few hours and others could take several months, and that you likely want to wait a few weeks before you judge your work.

Your Google profile shows the search terms people used to find your business, updated at the start of each month. What finally counts is in your booking report: the share that comes direct, as in how a small hotel gets more direct bookings. To see whether search brought them, ask at check-in how guests found you, and count.

The work you can skip

Someone will offer to do these for you. You can cross them off. Where Google has a rule on it, we link it.

A page for every nearby town. Google's spam policy lists pages aimed at specific regions or cities that funnel people to one page as doorway abuse, and we see nothing in it for a small hotel.
Buying links. Paying for links to rank higher is spam under the same policy.
Meta keywords and counting words. The starter guide says Google Search ignores the keywords meta tag and that the length of the content alone does not matter for ranking. Repeating your town in every sentence only tires the reader, and keyword stuffing is against the spam policy.
A new domain with "hotel" in the name. Keywords in a domain do next to nothing on their own, says the same guide, beyond showing in breadcrumbs.
AI text files. Google lists llms.txt and other special markup among the things you can ignore for Google Search. What other AI tools do with them, that page does not say.
Trusting a position promise. Nobody can guarantee a first place on Google, says Google, and it tells you to be wary of firms that email you out of the blue and of tools that promise ranking success. We do not promise positions either.
A blog because someone said you must. Write when you have something a guest wants: a walk from your door, how to get here. Twelve thin posts help nobody.

Cross those off and what is left fits on a postcard: your profile, your price, your own name, your site, and the people nearby.