Do hotels need SEO?

Yes, but not the kind of SEO sold to shops and tradespeople. A hotel is found in three places, the Google hotel listing, searches for its own name, and the specific searches guests make ("dog friendly hotel near Bala", "hotel with parking Chester"), and hotel SEO is the work of winning those three without paying a commission on them.

The generic search, "hotels in Shrewsbury", is owned by Booking.com, Expedia and Tripadvisor, and no independent property is going to take it from them. That is the part of SEO a hotel does not need and should not pay for. What is left is the part that matters for the bank account.

Where the money is

• The knowledge panel and the hotel module. When someone searches your name or looks at the map, Google shows a panel with a price list. If your own rate is in that list, the booking is commission free. If it is not, the guest who already chose you books through an OTA. Getting the listing complete and the rate feed live is SEO in the only sense that matters to a hotel.
• The specific searches. Guests search for what they need, not for "hotel": a room that takes a dog, a family room for five, somewhere with a bath near a wedding venue, a pub with rooms on a walking route. The OTAs have filters for some of those and pages for none. A page on your site that answers one of them ranks within a few months and keeps ranking.
• The AI assistants. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI for somewhere to stay near a place, the answer is assembled from the Business Profile, Tripadvisor, the OTAs and your own pages. A property described consistently across those gets named.

When a hotel does not need it

A property that is full year-round from direct bookings and repeat guests does not need more demand, though it should still keep the listing right so the name search stays commission free. A holiday let handed entirely to an agency with an exclusivity clause cannot take direct bookings at all, so SEO would only send guests to the agency. And a property that is closing, or being sold next year, should not start a plan that takes six months to pay.

What to do first

Search your property's name from a phone in a private window and open the price list in the panel. If your own website is not in it, that is the first job, and it is a day's work rather than a retainer. After that, the room pages need rates on them, and the specific searches for your property need a page each. Only then does it make sense to talk about a monthly plan.