Property type
SEO for boutique and independent hotels: the name search is bigger, and so is what leaks through it
A boutique hotel at £180 a night loses more than £27 on every OTA stay at 15 per cent, and it has a name that guests search for after reading about it, which is exactly the search the OTAs bid on. The work for an independent with a name is different in proportion rather than kind: the panel and the price list on the name come first, then member rates and packages inside parity, then the pages for the restaurant, the spa, the weddings and the specific stays the hotel is known for. Most independents with real competition sit on the Growth tier at £599 a month; a single property in a quiet town is Local.
The name search
Where the money leaks from an independent with a reputation
A feature in a Sunday supplement, a mention on a food programme, a friend's recommendation: each ends with someone typing the hotel's name into a phone. What they see is the knowledge panel and a price list, and if the price list holds Booking.com, Expedia and a paid OTA entry at the top, the guest you earned with the press books through a commission. On a £180 room at an effective 18 per cent after a visibility programme, that is £32 a night, on the guest who was already yours.
The fix is the same as for any property and worth more here: the listing complete, your own rate in the free booking link with breakfast or a drink in it, and a capped Hotel Ads campaign on your own name where an OTA sits above you. The press that earned the search should link to your site, not to a booking platform, and we ask for that on every feature you land.
Inside parity
Member rates, packages and the list
An independent cannot run a loyalty scheme the way a chain does, but the OTA terms allow lower rates to a closed group and a different product at the same price. That means a members' rate for the email list, a returning-guest code in the departure email, a dinner, bed and breakfast midweek that no OTA sells, a spa or restaurant package with dates, and a Christmas or New Year programme with its own page every year. The guest list becomes the loyalty scheme, and one email a season to it is the cheapest occupancy the hotel has.
How each ten points of OTA share is worth more at a higher rate is in the calculator on the pricing page.
The pages an independent is known for
The restaurant, the spa, the weddings and the specific stay
A boutique hotel is rarely searched as “hotel in”. It is searched as the thing it is: the restaurant with rooms, the spa break, the wedding venue with accommodation, the adults-only weekend, the dog and the fire. Each is a page, with the honest detail, photographs of the actual room and plate, the rate, and the questions answered.
Restaurant with rooms
The menu, the chef, the tasting-menu stay with the room included, the Sunday lunch and a night. Food searches bring the room.
Spa and wellness
The treatments with prices, the day package, the two-night break with dinner. "Spa hotel near" is a search with dates in it.
Weddings and events
Capacity, exclusive use, the accommodation block, the recommended-stays page for guests. Every wedding is thirty room nights booked by name.
The specific stay
Adults only, dog friendly with the fire, a quiet room with a bath, the walking weekend with a packed lunch. The searches the OTAs cannot filter for.
City competition
Bath, York, Chester, Edinburgh: a longer game, honestly timed
In a city with fifty independents the hotel module is crowded and the specific searches have competition. The name search and the panel still win in weeks; the pages take six to twelve months to settle rather than three to six, and we say so in the audit rather than charging more and promising the same. Reviews decide the module here more than anywhere, and a routine that asks every guest the same way is the difference between page one and page three of it within a year.
The site as part of the product
Beautiful is fine; slow is not
A boutique hotel's website is part of the stay, and the temptation is a full-screen video and a gallery of forty images. On a phone on a train that is a nine-second load and a guest gone to the OTA's app. We build the gallery to load in under two seconds with the photographs converted and sized at build time, the engine styled to the brand and connected to Google's price list, the room pages with the bed, the bath and the view, and the rate on every one of them. Design is not the compromise; the video header is.
How we build hotel sitesRelated
What an independent uses most
Questions hotel owners ask us
Is SEO for a boutique hotel different from a chain's?
A chain has a brand, a loyalty scheme and a central team, so its work is mostly the brand search and the app. An independent has a name people search for, a story, a restaurant and a location, and no loyalty scheme, so the work is the name search won in the panel, member rates to a closed list, and pages for the things the hotel is known for.
Should we be on Mr & Mrs Smith or a curated collection?
Some curated collections charge commission, others an annual membership; both are marketing spend and both bring a guest who trusts the curator. Keep the ones whose guests come back direct, and make sure the name search those guests make afterwards lands on your rate, not on an OTA's.
An OTA is bidding on our hotel's name. Can we stop it?
Not by asking. The counter is your own rate in the free booking link and, where the OTA's paid entry sits above it, a small capped Hotel Ads campaign on your own name, which costs a fraction of the commission it replaces. Trademark complaints to Google work for the ad text, not for the bidding.
We have two hotels forty miles apart. Which tier?
Growth for two properties that share a team and a guest list, Multi-property for three or more or for two that need separate listings, page sets and reports. Each property gets its own listing work and its own pages either way.
Find out who is being paid on your hotel's name
Send us the hotel name. We search it with real dates, list who is in the price list and who is paying for the top of it, and show what member rates and the pages would add.