275 - What Hoteliers Need to Know About GEO: Generative Engine Optimization

Speaker A: Mhm. 4, 3, 2.

Speaker B: Well, good day, fellow hoteliers, and welcome, welcome, welcome to episode 275 of the Hotel Marketing podcast by Travel Boom. I'm your host, Pete Deo.

Speaker A: And I'm Mackenzie Livernoy. And together, along with the team off camera, we are the Boom Squad.

Speaker B: Boom Squad. Jazz hands.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, awesome. Well, hey, mackenzie, we got a big show today, and if you are tuning in live on LinkedIn or YouTube. Hello and thank you for, for joining the show. We're starting to see some more and more people join in on the live episodes. We absolutely love that. And if you guys keep joining in, then we can start doing some actual live comments on the show and things like that to make it even more fun. But that's going to require you to do your part and join the show. So you can do that on our, uh, LinkedIn page or on YouTube. But either way, if you want more information about the show, just go to travel boom marketing.com podcast and get everything you possibly need. But today, what we're talking about is something you probably don't know about. Uh, McKenzie, I know you and I have just been doing a lot of research on as well, and that is geo, or geo, which is short for Generative Engine Optimization. Now, we've talked about this item or that item or whatever it might be being the death of SEO in the past, but what's clear is SEO is really never going to be dead, but it's going to evolve and it's evolving quickly as the technology and users change. So one little stat to kind of start this off with. 33% of users have used Gen AI in some form for their travel planning. So the question becomes, how could hoteliers ensure they're still relevant in the search world of today? And the answer is GEO or geo. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. So, Mackenzie, are you excited to, uh, dive into to the episode?

Speaker A: I am very excited. I think this is such a cool concept and it's obviously becoming increasingly important. I mean, that stat alone, 33%. You could be missing out on a third of your potential guests if you're not capitalizing on proper geo, uh, strategies. So we'll definitely dive all into it today for sure.

Speaker B: So. But really, before we dive in, let's stay on the AI discussion topic and do our little icebreaker. So, McKenzie, what is some way you have used AI to make your life better today?

Speaker A: Okay, um, well, I obviously use it for pretty much everything now. I swear, once you start, you can't stop um, and there's just always ways to use it just to, it's like a little cheat code. Um, I love it. I would say from a work standpoint, I love using it, um, just to kind of like edit my communications. It's great, um, to kind of give you like the tone that you're going for. What I'll do is like, if I have an email draft or even an internal message, I'll put it in there and I'll ask it like, okay, this is exactly what I want to say, but can you just pretty it up? And I love doing that. It's really hard to even just send anything without doing that now. So it's quickly becoming like a recurring habit for me. And then, uh, from a personal standpoint, I probably shouldn't advise this, but it's kind of becoming my new WebMD. I love using it for like, health questions and just kind of like generic information. Um, in that sense I feel like I've learned a lot and it's easier for me to digest than Google. And I think that goes to show, you know, the whole reason why it's becoming popular is the fact that it's scannable, it's providing you with a ton of information and it's super digestible.

Speaker B: Well, one of the main reasons people are using at, uh, least chat GPT now is as a therapist, which is not always the best solution because you don't know if they're using, uh, hallucinations to expand on your hallucinations.

Speaker A: But true. Yeah. Feed on.

Speaker B: Yeah, so as long as you're checking the data to make sure everything is correct, then that's an awesome way of using it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's definitely a, uh, barrier, but to just get like general information and I don't think I'm like a hypochondriac by any means, but every once in a while I have a question and it's just way easier to go there than Google to me easily.

Speaker B: And I use it more like from personal perspective, that's. I'm using it more for my regular searches than I'm using Google or search engine. Uh, my daughter just moved out to college, so we have an extra bonus room in our house now. So, you know, the first thing I did was took the elliptical machine out of the garage, move that to the bonus room, moved my workout bench up there. Uh, which she was okay with.

Speaker A: She was 100%.

Speaker B: Yeah, she wasn't completely happy with me already kind of moving into this little extra room that we had. But, uh, no so what I did is I went to GPT and I said, hey, here's a situation. This is the equipment that I have. These are the size weights I have, the elliptical, all the stuff that I have. I said, please develop a 12, uh, 12 week workout routine, a little bit aggressive to help me get in shape for a run. And it gave me a phenomenal checklist with specific workouts, how to do the workouts.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I had it convert us to a printable PDF, print it out and it's just sitting up there on the desk next to my equipment and I just go in there, just check stuff off. So it's awesome for that.

Speaker A: That's great. And like meal planning too. I'm a pretty picky eater, so for me it's like I can find a recipe but there will be something, some ingredient that I'll find that I don't like. So in chat, GPT, I can just dump in everything I like and it'll customize it from there.

Speaker B: It spits out chicken fingers and Mac and cheese.

Speaker A: Pretty much, yeah. And pizza, don't forget frozen pizza.

Speaker B: Has to be on that list somewhere.

Speaker A: Of course.

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh, yeah, in terms of work, very similar to you using it for communications. Uh, I love creating a custom GPTs or projects so that all the, the data is in one place and the chat gets better and better and better over time the more you communicate with it. So uh, we honestly use it all the time for the podcast to kind of help get the script together and make things more concise than ah, we usually are.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's great for like organizing everything and taking what's going on up here and actually putting it into something that, you know, you can get through pretty easily.

Speaker B: Yep, exactly. So, all right, well, cool. So that is kind of the icebreaker that we have. We're going to jump right into my favorite topic and that is with hotel marketing that cannot lose. Now it's time for newsaroos. All right, so I got a pretty cool news item today and it comes to us from the Guardian. So I'm actually If you're on YouTube or LinkedIn, actually we're sharing uh, a link to it right now. But it's a really interesting article and what it talks about is the group of hotels which is uh, based in the the eu, which is called hotrec, which is the hospital, hotels, restaurants, cafes in Europe. They have brought suit against Booking.com over their rate parody practices and accusing Booking.com's rate parody and best rate guarantee as being abusive practices for the hotel because it prevents the hotel from having a better rate on their own website. It prevents them from offering a rate but suggesting that the person book it direct. And it's a, it's really interesting piece of uh, or lawsuit that's working its way through the, the EU right now because the hot rack represents over 10,000 hotels across Europe. And this suit is really going to potentially define how those rate parity rules impact all of us. So. Interesting article. We have a link to it in the show notes. It was published back on the 7th of October of August. Excuse me. But yeah, it's thousands, uh, of hotels in Europe sue booking.com over abusive practices. What do you think, Mackenzie?

Speaker A: It's pretty crazy. I mean, obviously it is still relevant to us, but if we have any European listeners, I would love to kind of get your insights on it. Um, yeah, it's pretty crazy. I'm excited to follow along and see how it shakes out.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's definitely an interesting one. It's something that's been popping up over and over again. Granted, uh, in the, the US market, it will take a while to have any impact here. It has to go through a lot of appeals regardless of the decision that's made on the European side before ever makes it over here. So, so we will be watching that one very, very closely.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: All right. So, yeah, that's what we got for the, for the news today. Um, Mackenzie, you got some cool stuff though. What you got going on?

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. You know, my favorite section is RFI or room for improvement, where we scour Reddit hotels and find some of the most entertaining, I should say relevant, but oftentimes entertaining hotel threads and, um, we discuss, you know, were they right, were they wrong? How could they improve the situation? Um, are we team guests? Are we team hotel? Are we both? Are we neither? So we'll get down to business with this one today. So this comes to us from Connect Attention 95. Not the best username we usually.

Speaker B: I know, I was like that should have disqualified this person to start with.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was a good one. But their username's not the best. We deduct points for that. But subject reads, increase direct bookings 32% by fixing our tech stack instead of, instead of spending more on ads. So immediately this jumped out to us running a 95 room business hotel, watching OTA commissions eat our margins. I'm sure plenty of you are listening and nodding your heads. Tried throwing money at Google Ads and Facebook campaigns with minimal results. Then realized our booking process Was the real problem. The diagnosis website booking engine was slow and clunky. Mobile experience was terrible. Guests were starting on our site but uh, finishing on booking.com, speak of the devil. Because it was easier. The research phase spent weeks testing our competitors booking flows. Good job to them I would say use resources like hoteltech report to understand which booking engines other similar properties were using successfully discovered. Our current provider had consistently poor reviews for mobile optimization. I want to pause there because two things that I think are great is the fact that they went through their own booking journey and their competitors but also the fact that they're talking about mobile optimization so much. But I'll keep going. Okay. What we implemented upgraded uh to a mobile first booking engine. Simplified the reservation process from six steps to three so cut it in half. Added real time availability and pricing. Integrated with our pms. So no more manual double entry. But apparently they faced some unexpected challenges. The staff training took longer than expected. Integration with revenue management system required custom development and some payment processing issues happened during the first week. But the results they saw after six months direct bookings increased by 32% as they mentioned in the subject which is great. Mobile conversion rate was up by 45%. They reduced dependencies on OTAs from 68% to 51% and guest complaints about booking process were down to nearly zero, which is pretty great. So the cost comparison they add at the bottom. The system upgrade costs about three months of previous advertising spend but delivers ongoing results. Marketing budget now focused on driving traffic to a conversion optimized expense experience. And then they asked the group anyone else found that fixing the basics worked better than flashy marketing campaigns. Pete, I know you've got a lot to say so.

Speaker B: Oh my gosh, yes. Yeah. This honestly could have been its own episode. But it just goes to show you, I mean what contact attention is doing is what we've always told people to do on the show and you know, as part of travel boom M is you have to make sure that you don't have holes in your boat before you take it out to see. You have to make sure that that booking engine is phenomenal. You have to make sure your website is as good or better than the booking experiences they the consumer gets on Amazon, on any other platform that's out there, that's who you're competing with. So the fact that they realize that wait a minute, I'm spending money but people aren't booking on this my site. And they stopped, stopped their marketing, fixed the problem and it seems like they've Gone back to starting their marketing again. I mean, they've done it the right way. I think it was very smart that they took a time out to, to fix the process because the reality is if your website sucks, people are going to probably book elsewhere. There's no way around it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I 100% agree. I give them major kudos for, like you said, stopping and trying something different that ultimately benefited them in the end. I also like the analogy that you use like you can't take a boat with a bunch of holes in it out to sea. You can't. Your website is your digital lobby. It's your first impression. So if you're relying solely on performance max campaigns or performance marketing campaigns to drive traffic to something that doesn't convert, it doesn't matter. You're hurting yourself wasting money. Um, so yeah, I give them major kudos and it sounds like they were pretty hands on with acting like the guest. I think that's such a best practice. And anything that we talk about is go on the site, take your ego out of it. Doesn't matter if you built the website yourself or an agency did whatever it may be, go on it, would you book? Do you have enough information? If this is your family vacation that you're planning and if the answer is no, then you know you need to make changes.

Speaker B: Mhm. Yeah. And that's where things like user testing, if you can't get, which you should do either way, but if you can't get your own ego out of it, have a third party come in and do some user testing to see what it's like. Because it's so important. Now I will also say this though, because listening to the issues that they had with their booking engine, the fact that they had no real time availability to start with, that they had no integration with their pms, they were starting from a really bad place anyway.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So, uh, so I think their results are probably atypical that by simply fixing that they saw 32% increase in direct bookings, a 45% increase in conversion rate. But I think there's probably a lot more for them to do and I would say congratulations on your first step. Now let's talk about the innovative optimization that you can be doing and ongoing content creation. A, B testing. Take what you have and understand that that's just your starting point. So congrats on that. But now don't take your foot off the gas, keep it going.

Speaker A: Yeah, and I think like with that last, you know, question that they're posing flashy marketing Flashy marketing campaigns. Well, I wouldn't necessarily, necessarily say that paid search campaigns are flashy marketing campaigns and I wouldn't rule them out. They seem a little jaded about ever doing that again and I wouldn't recommend that. You know, now that you've got a well oiled machine that can act as a steroid, you know, you're targeting people and specific geos. So I just wouldn't. Yeah, like you said, I think congrats for the first step, but there's definitely more to be done and we shouldn't just rule out, um, some of those tactics that they were using before.

Speaker B: Yep. And I say kind of wrap everything up. I think, uh, Connect Attention needs to come back to this Reddit post that they made because everybody's asking them, what booking engine were you on that wasn't working, which one did you move to? And they had a bunch of questions for them. So join back in the community and, uh, share your thoughts there. Connect Attention.

Speaker A: Yeah, what if Connect Attention is listening?

Speaker B: What if. That'd be pretty cool. They say, hey, listen, I heard about you guys commenting on my Reddit post on the podcast. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Well, cool. So I think that's a pretty solid, uh, rfi. I think we're ready to dive into the main topic, which is a big one today.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: So we're gonna be talking about is what is GEO and why should a hotel care? So, first of all, there's a new article that you can check out that's gonna be at travelboomarketing.com blog talking about generative engine optimization. And it is very important. It is the next evolution of SEO. And we're finally starting to see search engines lose a little bit of market share to AI tools like we were just talking about with ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever platform you're using. The search engine is becoming less relevant, not irrelevant, just a little bit less so. And you're. We're going to have to evolve and that's what we're going to be talking about today is understanding what GEO is, how you can implement it. And because it's the hotel marketing podcast, we have specific things to do that are going to make it better for you to, to optimize your campaign. We got that broken down into three, four parts here. We're going to talk about what is geo, we're going to talk about why it matters, hotels, we're talking about how it works. And then last, we're going to talk about some practical strategies for you to Put in place. Yeah, and I think that's where we should start. Right?

Speaker A: Let's get into it. Yeah, so it's a hot button right now and it's another acronym, of course. So let's settle the score. Let's just get this done right up front. And if you don't know what it stands for or what it actually is, GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It's the strategy that's going to help your brand, your hotel show up inside AI powered tools and generative engines. So think things like Google's search engine, um, their generative, uh, experience that they have on their chat, GPT perplexity. All of those other LLMs people can directly search information about your hotel on that. So SEO has always been about one thing and that's helping your site show up. When somebody searches for something like hotels near me or, you know, we're based in Myrtle beach, so I'll use that as our example. Best beach resorts in Myrtle Beach. It's very technical and foundational and it's all about rankings. But GEO is very different because it's not necessarily all about rankings, but it's about being cited and trusted in some of those AI generated answers. So there's almost a public relations aspect to the GEO piece because you need to be credible and you need to be easily cited. Um, so I know that, you know, is kind of a roundabout answer, but it is very different from SEO. But as Pete said, it does work in tandem with it. I wouldn't completely abandon all of my SEO strategies to go all in on Geo yet. Maybe we'll get there someday in the future, who knows? Probably. Uh, but not right now. It's important to be showing up for both.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And what we're going to be talking about kind of throughout this episode is what we're doing is taking the fundamentals of SEO and making sure that we are tailoring those to work just as well for the search engines, but also work for the AI engines. Also, because they are looking at similar data sets, the question kind of becomes how are they using that data and understanding the kind of intricacies of each platform? So, so yeah, I know this. Or go ahead.

Speaker A: Sorry, I was just going to say, we know in the SEO world, in on the serp, things are always changing on Google's algorithm. So for our job as hotel marketers, it's important to understand how the LLMs work and how they're actually, you know, pulling this information and citing it. There's constantly changes with Google and there's probably going to be lots of changes as these AI engines continue to evolve as well.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I think one of the examples that you talked about was the best friendly, family friendly resorts in Myrtle. I actually have a screenshot of that because when you do that search, you get the first result is Dunes Village Resort, which is one of our clients. And it's because, because we've written content about that topic, we have it in the proper markup, the proper schema, uh, all that kind of stuff is going into it. And, and I think one of the big things with GEO is there's not 10 answers, it's one answer in many cases and we have to kind of factor that in.

Speaker A: Yeah, so absolutely. Well, pat on the back for Dunes Village. Shout out to them.

Speaker B: So, hey, separate question as well. Did you watch Team Umizumi when you were little?

Speaker A: I didn't. I was slightly. I was just old enough to not watch.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker A: But I know what it is because

Speaker B: my kids were all into it and every time I hear of Geo, I always think of that little character and I stuck it in. That's that little character in the show notes.

Speaker A: I was wondering.

Speaker B: That's Geo from Tsumi.

Speaker A: He's so cute.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Awesome. He's our mascot for this episode.

Speaker B: Exactly. Cool, but awesome. Yes. That's a good example of kind of what GEO is. I think that's perfect. So the next question really becomes why do hotels even care?

Speaker A: Yeah. Why are we even making a whole episode on this today? Um, yeah, I think we did our research and there's a lot of information that's coming out about how it's going to impact hoteliers, how it already is. So on average every OTA booking, we already know this costs a hotel around 16 commission. So what GEO does is it allows you to be found before a potential guest has ever even gets to those traditional search results. So the goal is for them to find you either organically if you can't beat the OTAs, or on an AI engine. So the article that we looked at quoted, with geo, your content can show up directly in AI generated responses, which gives you first touch visibility. And then a Travel Pulse survey that we looked at, um, from August 11th finds that 33% of US travelers are using gen AI in the travel process, compared to 22% in the UK, 19 in France and 15 in Germany. So it's all the more important for our, uh, US listeners to, you know, really be making the most of that. Like we said in the beginning of the episode, that could be a third of your Potential guests that you might not be getting in front of?

Speaker B: Uh, well, I think they're, they're, they're getting in front of them.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But they're not getting in front of them at the impression share that you'd like.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Um, kind of like with where you see in the EU and in the, in the uk, they're a little bit ahead of us with that legislation with booking.com and whatnot.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But the US market does appear to be significantly ahead of the, the curve in terms of using AI to replace that search engine to a certain level. So you kind of have to be in both places. But not being able to be optimized for GEO is a huge, huge red flag for the rest of 20, 25 and into 26.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it really does bolster that awareness. Um, you've got to use it to your advantage. So I definitely agree. Um, but specifically with sticking with the US travelers. 19% of US travelers have used Gen AI to plan at least one trip. With similar figures, um, in the same countries we just mentioned. The UK is at 19 as well. France is a little bit higher at 30, um, and Germany is at 16. So you've got nearly 20% saying that they've used AI to plan at least one of their trips. I mean, I know that's my go to, um, I didn't want to steal the main topics thunder in the beginning of our conversation on the pod today, but yeah, it is a game changer for travel. I'm definitely using it when I'm planning trips. Um, especially for lodging, I think it's all the more important. I don't think it's as important when you're booking things like airfare, like you can go straight to the site. And a lot of people almost have their, you know, preferred companies, um, that they go through. But I would say for lodging, you know, people will go in and easily search things about your location and what kind of features and amenities do you have.

Speaker B: Yep, exactly. And this is not just about just a hotelier side. This is the DMO as well. So. Because where I use it is going on a trip is like, hey, what are some fun things to do around certain location? And it's all those very specific searches that AI is really excelling at.

Speaker A: Yeah. And if you want to go even more macro from there. I know I want to do an east coast road trip at some point, like a, a Northeast, um, road trip. I know I want to go to states like Maine. I don't know exactly what cities I want to Go to. So I'm going to go into chat GPT and ask for a summary of some of the most popular cities to visit in Maine, the activities that I can do there and places to stay. So, you know, it's really, really deep research that can be done on that.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: And then one last survey that we looked at, um, by Cloud, Astra says, cited that 35% of travelers, um, in 2024 had used some form of AI when planning or booking a trip. And it rised, it rose to over 50% among millennials and Gen Z. So especially targeting some of the younger generation, um, it's, it's extra important if that's kind of your ICP that you're looking to target is, is a younger audience.

Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. And I think it kind of goes back to. This is not a new topic. If you go back, literally years ago on episode 87, we talked about how voice search could kill the, uh, search engines. And this is back when, you know, Google Home. Well, no, that was happening also, but it was mostly, it was smaller, smaller. Dinosaurs weren't the big boys. But that's like when you, you know, Alexa was new and Google Home was new, you know, and it did change a little bit, but, but it didn't have the user interface that was good enough to really impact SEO. Now you've got something that is competing on the same technology platforms as SEO. So, yeah, this is going to be something that's going to really impact the overall world that hoteliers need to be paying attention to.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I think the sentiment around it needs to be, let's not be scared, let's embrace it. Um, I know there's a lot of mixed feelings out there about AI, particularly among some of the older generations, but it is, it's here. Um, so you might as well, if you can't beat them, join them, um, and make sure that you're using it to your advantage and your hotel's advantage.

Speaker B: Yep, absolutely. All right, so let's go and talk a little bit about how geo works. So to start with the differentiation between the two, you have traditional SEO, which is all about climbing to the top of a long list of blue links. Right. You know, you have, if you're in that top three spot, you're fine. Generative search has changed the game completely because a lot of times AI engines don't give the travelers 10 choices, they'll give them a couple. You know, sometimes if you say, hey, give me 10 places to stay, they'll do that. But it's not just about rankings with generative AI, it's not about becoming one of the 10, it's about becoming the default answer. So if we always think about that as what are we doing in our market to be the default answer for a traveler that's going to be coming to our area to get all the answers they need? We have to be a very definitive source on our site in the footprint that we leave on the web that says, hey, this hotel website is the only uh, place you need to go to get the information. So let's break it down a little bit and look at kind of the, I'd say the, the four or five main things that separate what GEO is compared to SEO. The first one is machine readable and structured content. It's very, Geo relies very heavily on um, making sure that your website is technically very clean and it's easy for the engines to interpret. That means the right markup, the right structured data, that your navigation is critical, that your content structures and hierarchies are all very important. Uh, that's very high up on that list. So you do want to make sure that that is there because geo relies much more heavily on that. The next is trust signals. So AI engines, unlike uh, SEO, it does seem like if you talk to ChatGPT, it's trying to please you. So it wants to make sure that the information that it shares is very credible. So that weighs heavily in there. Having things like Reviews, very detailed FAQs, first party data like your room descriptions and policies and all that stuff is really important to have it on your site and throughout the web so that you become that authoritative source. From there you got your semantic markup. So schema, other structured data tools for address and things like that. That's all has already been incredibly important from an SEO perspective. Even more so now that you're starting to see more of the around me type searches on AI and the other tools that are being used. It's really important that the AI engines can translate your amenities, your rates, locations, all into a nice format that they can easily show to the person using the AI. From there we got real traveler questions. So again, this is where AI is much more conversational. The query that someone types in or the prompt is not hotels near me, it's I'm looking for a hotel near Pensacola that has an indoor water park, walking distance to restaurants and at least four stars on TripAdvisor. That's the prompt that you're trying to rank for. So if you can be conversational in your answers and hit those Topics, you're going to do very well in answering all those, those questions. And I think kind of wrap up kind of what it is or how it works is it's more than just your website. So in the past, if you were trying to optimize your hotel website.com, that's what you would optimize. With AI, you're trying to become that default answer. Right. That means that it's not just your website, it's all the listings that you're in. Your booking engine can play a, uh, big factor in this. Previously you didn't really optimize your booking engine, but when you think about the booking engine has real time rates. Unless you're with that booking engine that Connect Attention was using before, it has a bolded list of what's in each room. So got room photos, it's got availability and it's all right there. And guess what? That's pretty authoritative. If someone's looking for how much a room at your property cost, the booking engine is important. So make sure beyond just optimizing your website, you're optimizing that entire footprint of your brand. So, uh, that's kind of pretty much how it works. It gets a lot more complicated than that. And the dirty little secret is it's new. We're all trying to crack the, the AI algorithm code.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love this section. I think this is really helpful. Um, one thing I would note too is I think one of the biggest areas of opportunity, I guess missed areas of opportunity, is not having an FAQ section on your website. If you can structure that to be tailored to the types of questions that you know are going to come up in some of those AI engines, help have them on there. It makes it extremely easy for the AI engines to crawl your website. And then it's just, I mean, an FAQ section is great to begin with. Um, be conversational, be human, give as much detail as you can. I feel like there is sometimes a lack of transparency and that's why people are hesitant to book. Um, so I think being as upfront as you can will help you not only for your direct traffic, but also from AI traffic too.

Speaker B: McKenzie, you're dead on. Because in the past, if that question wasn't asked in your faq, people may not know about it. But the reality is people are asking those questions. With Gen AI in some form, if the answer is not coming from your website, it's coming from somebody else.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And it's so much more important that you become that authoritative source. And the cool thing is with FAQs. They're easy to implement, they're easy to edit, and it's the one thing where all you have to do to get all the questions and answers you need is go downstairs to the front desk and say, what are they asking exactly? And answer every one of those questions exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah, you don't need an agency to even handle that. You know the property so you can come up with how you want that to look on the website.

Speaker B: Yep, exactly. That's a perfect segue into part four, which is the last part of the this episode. And that is practical GEO strategies that every hotel can use. Again, Hotel Marketing podcast is all about giving you the tools that you need to become a better hotelier. And that's exactly what we're gonna do here. So we've got six quick little tips that we'll go through that after this is over, go talk to your tech team, log into your website and make this stuff happen. The very first one is, and it's simple. Just like SEO, content is always going to be king. And GEO depends on being able to answer both branded and unbranded queries. So a branded one being Hilton Myrtle beach, an unbranded one being family hotels near the Charleston Marathon route. Whatever you want to do, but make sure that you're creating that great content. And kind of as a little pro tip, content that is surrounded by event driven terms is very, very important. Uh, that Charleston example of hotels near the Charleston Marathon route, that is somebody who you know is going to be in Charleston, they are going to need a hotel, they are into fitness, clearly. And it's a very high intent search term that that person is going to immediately book. So answering those questions is a phenomenal way to create that great content. So kind of going from there, I think the next one is test the AI engines with prompts about your destination. So again, this is one that, to M. McKenzie's point earlier, it doesn't really require you having an agency. It could be a big hotel or small hotel. Literally just pop open, chat, GPT, whatever engine you're using and start asking questions, you know, you know, what hotels would you recommend for a family of four? What hotels are great to be there for New Year's Eve, whatever it is that you feel like you're relevant for and see where you show up in those searches. I think one thing I would also do there is we always say abt always be testing. The way you can always be testing. This is just to document your searches. So when you're testing those engines with the prompts that you feel like you should rank well for, write down where you appear. Do you appear at all? That way, when you improve your website and you look at a couple weeks from now, six months from now, you can start trending if you're making progress. And that's going to start helping you unlock some of those mysteries of those, you know, AI results.

Speaker A: I have a quick challenge to that point for everybody listening today. Um, all the hoteliers after this episode wraps up. Don't leave us now, don't leave us hanging. Finish strong. Um, go into chat GPT or your preferred AI engine and look up what is the best, you know, boutique, independent, however you define your hotel, what is the best hotel near? And then whatever city you're located in or other major city, see where you're coming up. And if you're not coming up at all, that is a flat flashing neon sign, um, that something, you know, needs to be done in, in terms of geo. So that's my challenge for everybody. Let us know how it goes.

Speaker B: I like that one a lot. I actually just typed it in. We'll see what it says while we're going through this. Uh, it looks like for Myrtle Beach, North Beach Resort and Villas is number one, followed by the Strand. So that's two places to go check out in the area. Uh, all right, so let's go to, uh, the number three thing. And mackenzie, you've kind of already hit on this pretty well is create and update your FAQs. Man, that is just so important to answer questions directly in a very conversational format. AI loves conversational because that's the way it talks to its users. So be conversational and make it easy

Speaker A: for them and update it. If your FAQs were done when you formerly had only 40 rooms and you've expanded to 60, say that like, you've gotta, you've gotta update it and give the information. It's not going to do it for you.

Speaker B: That's super true. Particularly when we've had properties that say, you, hey, we're showing up as being pet friendly, but we haven't been pet friendly in five years. And then you help them out. You go to their website like, well, your FAQ says that you are. So, um, why would a search engine or anybody else think you're not?

Speaker A: Great example. Yeah. If your hotel's been around since the 80s and 90s, it still might be presented as smoke. I would hope not. But smoking friendly.

Speaker B: Yeah. With color TVs.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. In the creepy, like rose like comforters the really ugly like grandma.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we have this too. Uh, yes, I would say also while you're doing that, look at your booking engine. We just kind of talked about that earlier. But making sure that the FAQs that they're on your booking engine or you have bullet points of amenities, that those are updated as well because that all kind of factors in which kind of goes to the next bullet point, which is making sure that your schema market markup is correct for your rooms, your amenities, reviews. Uh, schema is not going to make you a GEO hero, but when you pair it with all the other recommendations that we're going over, it's going to help you become that authoritative resource for the engines. And as you, if you have great content and you make it easy for it to be digested, it's going to put you in a phenomenal spot.

Speaker A: Yeah, make sure the, the bones and the structure are good.

Speaker B: Exactly. You know, and from there you know, AI, LLMs, generative engines, wherever they, you want to call them. Excuse me, they don't actually see your website in the way a search engine would. They don't use a uh, traditional algorithm to index your site. They use third party data sets, they use citations, they use obviously the content on your website, but they use so much more. So the technical optimization is very important. We talked about that with schema markups and content and FAQs and all that kind of fun stuff. But it's really important that you become a member of that broader community because it's not your website that is getting optimized, it's your brand that's getting optimized. So TripAdvisor, if it's Google, uh, listings to Google reviews, your booking engine, Reddit, whatever you want to do, wherever you're putting that content, make sure it is representing your brand, voice and it's authoritative because all of it goes into your ranking, not just your website alone.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm sure that might seem overwhelming. I mean all of these things exist already but with geo you can use that as, you know, all the more reason to invest in your digital presence. You know that you're going to be factored in on all of these different sites and platforms. So it's all the more important and to, you know, have a really positive presence on all of them, not just your website.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that kind of wraps, kind of wrapping everything up from the recommendations is make sure that you're a content hub and that you're a knowledge leader. If you're ever thinking about, ah, uh, you know what? It's not worth having my blog. I want just take it off. That's probably not the right choice. Instead, you need to lean into it and create some great content. Uh, things like first party insights like we, like we talked about, of, you know, great things to do New Year's Eve around this destination. If that's on your website, that's going to help. Reviews, guides, all that stuff makes you very valuable. Not. And here's the cool thing is you're not just valuable to AI, but you're. You're valuable to your hotel guest, which is, I mean, that's the ultimate goal, right? If you're valuable to them, they're going to want to stay at your property.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love that last one. Um, I. My job is to talk to hoteliers day in and day out. And something I hear is we have a great product. Like our hotel is wonderful. We have a really high repeat guest rate, really positive reviews, and we offer, you know, an experience on property that they won't get anywhere else. You have to do the same online. Like, you have to have them give them a reason to believe before they even get there, and then they'll, you know, you're already, you're already halfway there, I would say. Um, so I think that's super important. Like, if you're a property that prides itself in knowing your area and maybe it's a historical property and your front desk staff is trained to answer these really specific questions about different amenities or attractions, you've got to showcase that, uh, on the website as well.

Speaker B: Yep, absolutely. I mean, case study, look at the room for improvement today with, you know, the person clearly had a pretty crappy website and crappy online experience. They fixed it. Things got better. People wanted to stay at their property, they just didn't know how to do it. So that's kind of what we're trying to do here.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think we should just be done with the podcast altogether because we've said everything we needed to say. Uh, invest in your digital marketing people.

Speaker B: Travel boom is. Oh, no, no, you're not getting, you're not getting off that easy. You've got 60 seconds coming up.

Speaker A: I thought so.

Speaker B: Yeah. Hey, uh, so anyway, kind of to kind of wrap everything up up. Here's the bottom line. AI isn't in the future. It's already here. Travelers are already using it right now. And if your hotel isn't showing up for those answers, then quite frankly, you don't exist. Like I said, it's. It's not about being ranked. It's about becoming the default ranked answer for whatever that might be looking for. But what, uh, I like about it is GEO really does level the playing field. So if you're focusing on the right answers to your travelers, you're going to do just fine. So start small, test your prompts, update your FAQs, be a local expert, be that innkeeper that we always talk about, and it all comes back to serving travelers. The better you can do that irl, the more likely you're going to be able to do that when it's SEO or GEO or what other platform that you're working on.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Um, and one other thing I would add is do not forget, GEO does not replace your other marketing. It enhances it. So the best results will come together when it's working things alongside things like your SEO, your ppc, influencer marketing, email marketing strategies, everything else you've already got in place. If you tie it all together, you're not just showing up in AI answers, but you're actually creating this complete guest journey that's going to lead straight to direct bookings, which is, of course, what we all want to see.

Speaker B: Amen to that. So, all right. Hey, that's the show, guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you for listening. Mackenzie, thank you for sharing all your input and smarties, but you're not off the hook yet.

Speaker A: You pranked me again. I was like, I'm getting out of this.

Speaker B: No, no, I was looking at. We're only about 44 minutes, so we'll be able to wrap up within by 50 minutes if we let, uh, you do your 60 seconds to success.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, no pressure. Um, yeah, I kind of stuck with the GEO theme today, guys. So if you want to just fast forward to the very end of this episode, this 60 seconds will give you a nice little overview.

Speaker B: Yeah. So to set the stage of kind of what this is, 60 seconds is where we have just one minute to share a tip or trick that's going to help make your marketing much more effective. So pretend you get into an elevator. McKenzie's standing in there. She looks over at you and kind of in a creepy way says, would I. Would you like to hear a hotel marketing tip on your way down the elevator? That's what's happening right now. So if you're just joining us, uh, go over to travelbemarketing.com podcast to listen to the full episode. But with that, Mackenzie, I'm going to hit the start button and you tell me when you are ready to. Ready uh, to go.

Speaker A: I'm ready.

Speaker B: Here we go.

Speaker A: All right. If your hotel's website isn't answering real traveler questions in plain English, you're not just missing out on SEO. You're now invisible to Google's new AI results. As we talked about in great detail today, generative search is changing the game. Obviously. Instead of searching terms like Myrtle beach oceanfront hotel, travelers are now asking things like, what are the best kid friendly oceanfront hotels in Myrtle beach with free breakfast and free parking? That's the kind of natural language questions that AI platforms are pulling into their featured answers. So if your site's not clearly answering those kind of questions, you're not showing up. Here's what you can do. Start by building out FAQs on your top pages. Use conversational headers and create content that actually helps people make a decision. Right. Like you're talking to a guest at the front desk. A great starting place is to use tools like ChatGPT to simulate the questions your ideal guest might ask. Then go answer them on your site. Gen AI doesn't crawl, it curates. So if your content isn't human, it won't make a comment. Just like I didn't so close.

Speaker B: I knew you weren't gonna make that one. That's the first time you've not, you haven't made it.

Speaker A: I know, that was my challenge. I had something and I was like, nah, this isn't even close. This is really playing it safe. I'm like, let's double it. Let's, let's get to 60. I want it to live on the edge today, Pete.

Speaker B: Well, you definitely did that. You lived in the edge to the point you went over the edge.

Speaker A: Such a rebel.

Speaker B: Hey, that's okay. I usually, I never make it, so that makes me feel better. But, uh, but yeah. So that's 60 seconds. If you guys just are tuning in for just that one. Let, uh, go check out the full episode where we're talking about GEO and how generative engine optimization is going to shake up the SEO world. So after that, that kind of wraps up 60 seconds and it wraps up the whole episode. So again, hopefully everybody enjoyed the show. Hopefully you learned something. And if you did reach out to us, we definitely want to hear how you're using the information we talk about on the show. But also if you need help, we are a hotel marketing agency and we do that stuff pretty good. And I would say reach out to McKenzie. She is the, the guru in terms of finding out exactly what we can do to help drive more occupancy, reduce your OTA commissions, and make you smile as a hotelier more than anything.

Speaker A: I love it. Let's. Let's help everybody get more direct bookings. Sorry, OTAs.

Speaker B: Amen to that. All right, so you can find us at, uh, travel boom marketing dot com. And, MacKenzie, you want to send us on our way?

Speaker A: Yep. And with that, Travel Boom is out.

Speaker B: Booyah.

Speaker A: It, uh.