Lead Hospitality
ArticlesBooksSubscriptionsSearch
⌕ESEN
Hotel ManagementHotel CRMHotel Marketing

Smoke and Mirrors: A Hotelier’s SEO Wake-Up Call

Albert BarraAugust 13, 2018 · 4 min read
THE IDEA

After more than 20 years in hospitality, I reflect on the SEO and SEM providers serving hotels: some innovate and add real value, while others rely on questionable reporting, unrealistic promises and confusing solutions designed to secure market share and commissions.

Smoke and Mirrors: A Hotelier’s SEO Wake-Up Call
I have been in the hotel industry for more than 20 years now, and for better or worse I have seen it all, so it is difficult to surprise me, although not impossible. When something surprises me because of its originality or effectiveness, I cannot pass up the opportunity to learn from it or, where appropriate, to commend it, even if it stirs up envy inside me. Unfortunately, there are also things that surprise me because of how repulsive they are, and it is hard to hold my tongue, but there is no alternative given that we live in a world of relationships, where everything eventually comes at a price. In the end, this blog serves as a home remedy for releasing those tensions. Sadly, in a world that moves so quickly, there are more things that surprise me for the latter reason than for the former. That is the way it is, and we have to live with it. For some time now, I have been seeing and suffering the consequences of certain companies: some historically associated with booking engines for hotel websites, and others where it is not entirely clear what they are, but they do everything, including, of course, hotel booking engines. In some cases, seeing a technology company that was once quite well regarded in the hotel industry reinvent itself to complement its service offering by providing SEO and SEM to hotels seems admirable to me and, in a way, confirms that it is a company striving to adapt to market needs. On the other hand, I can understand it, since if its business model is based on charging a percentage of sales made through the hotel website for using its booking engine, any effort to improve that website’s visibility results in higher revenue for both the hotel and its provider. What I do not find at all elegant or professional is when, in order to do so:
  • Sales performance reports are falsified that bear no relation to reality.
  • Domains are registered using hotel brands to create mirror websites and attempt to rank them ahead of the hotel’s official website through any trick in the book.
  • Questionable SEO tactics are employed that may deliver results in the short term but are tremendously damaging in the medium and long term.
Then there are the reinvented companies that do not even know what they are themselves, because for some purposes they present themselves as IDSs and for others as a solution for disintermediation and boosting sales through the hotel website. Of course, they make a great show of the extensive knowledge and experience of a team that the prospective client will never meet because it is based in some God-knows-what country, but which, they claim, is the bee’s knees. You can put anything on paper, including a change proposal that guarantees entirely unbelievable booking conversion rates and increases in revenue through a hotel website that make the hotelier in question’s eyes pop out of their head. Naturally, if I were a hotelier, I would say yes too; if Jessica Alba proposed marriage to me tomorrow, I would lose my head and leave everything behind, but I should probably first consider that there is something behind such an exciting proposal. After all, I am no George Clooney What is behind it?:
  • A way of rapidly gaining market share by guaranteeing results that will not be delivered, but which in the meantime generate commissions for the provider and brand presence.
  • While working with a client, they use that client for as long as possible as a showcase to help them secure other clients.
  • In the end, it is a continuous cycle of clients who come in full of hope and leave after a while (if they can leave) frustrated that Jessica Alba does not exist and, worst of all, end up believing that the result was not achieved because of their own fault.
As I say, these are ways of gaining traction in a highly competitive market, all of them very well wrapped up in technical jargon, rhetoric, promises and, in some cases, disappointment.
KEEP EXPLORING

This article ends here. The archive does not.

Lead Hospitality brings together 1200 English articles published since 2018: years of experiences, decisions and lessons you can keep exploring.

CONTINUE FROM HERE

What would you like to explore next?

Choose a direction and keep reading around what you want to solve, learn or challenge.

Discover something interesting ↓Surprise me ↗
01MAKE MOREProfitability, revenue and decisions that reach the bottom line. 02LEAD BETTERTeams, culture, talent and the conversations that matter. 03SELL BETTERPositioning, marketing, distribution and customers. 04CREATE EXPERIENCESService, loyalty and details guests remember. 05UNDERSTAND WHAT'S NEXTInnovation, AI and new ways of thinking about Hospitality. ✦SURPRISE MEShow me something worth five minutes of my time.
✦ LEAD AI · MEMBERSHIP

Turn reading into actionable knowledge

Basic includes article recommendations. Premium unlocks questions, analysis, comparisons and applying the knowledge to your hotel.

See subscriptions →
LATEST PUBLICATIONS
View all →