You are writing for demand that has not arrived yet.
An urban business hotel is frequently booked within days of the stay. A resort can be booked four, six or nine months ahead. Everything about the search program follows from that single difference.
The practical consequence is that publishing has to lead demand. A page written about a summer season during that summer is competing at the moment the searches are ending, against pages that have had months to establish themselves. The same page published in the previous winter has time to be found, linked to and trusted before the volume arrives.
It also changes how results are read. A resort program that appears to be doing nothing in month three may simply be building toward a season that has not started, which is why the reporting has to show delivered work as well as outcome. Otherwise there is no way to distinguish a program that is failing from one that is early.
- Publish ahead of the window, not during the season the content describes
- Expect flat months followed by a step change, rather than steady linear movement
- Judge a season against the same season last year, not against last month
- Build authority in the quiet period, because that is when it is cheapest to earn
Destination-led discovery, in five layers.
- 01
The region or destination
The largest pool and the most contested, but also where the journey genuinely starts. This is where aggregators and tourism boards dominate, and where a resort competes with content rather than with accommodation pages.
- 02
The season and the trip type
A specific month, a school holiday, a shoulder season break. High intent, far less contested, and searched at exactly the point the decision is being made.
- 03
The activity or setting
What the guest is actually planning to do. This is usually the strongest available ground, because competitors optimize for accommodation terms and leave it open.
- 04
The property’s own facilities
A spa, a restaurant, a golf course, an events capability. Each is effectively a separate search market with its own guests, and larger resorts routinely leave all of them unworked.
- 05
Room and suite categories
At resort rates, guests research specific categories by name. A villa or suite category with its own page consistently outperforms a rooms index.
What the channel mix costs at resort scale.
Preset to a 180-room resort. At this size the annual commission figure is usually the largest single number on the page.
You pay roughly
a year in OTA commission, in your currency.
Moving 15% of that volume to direct would keep
a year, in your currency.
The Platinum program is $325 USD a month, or $3,900 USD a year. At these numbers that is 2.9% of what you would keep.
These are illustrative projections based on figures you entered. They are not a forecast or a guarantee. Commission rates and channel mix vary by property and contract.
A resort is not one search problem.
A property with rooms, a spa, three restaurants, a golf course and a conference capability is running five businesses that happen to share a car park. Each has its own guests, its own searches and its own competitors, and most resorts optimize for one of them.
The restaurants have local competitors who are not hotels. The spa competes with day spas. The events business competes with venues. None of those competitors appear in an accommodation ranking report, which is why they are usually invisible to the property until someone looks.
This is also why resorts frequently need the largest keyword allowance. It is not the room count that drives it, it is the number of distinct markets the property is quietly operating in.
This is the main reason we recommend Titanium at $575 USD a month more often for resorts than for any other segment. It is a keyword count decision, not a size decision.
What it costs.
Month to month, cancel anytime, setup fee waived, dedicated account manager on every plan. Available as a monthly subscription or a one-time order. All prices in US dollars.
| Basic | Silver | Golden | Platinum Best value | Titanium | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $65 USD | $125 USD | $235 USD | $325 USD | $575 USD |
| One-time | $75 USD | $140 USD | $260 USD | $380 USD | $620 USD |
| Domains | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Keywords | 5 | 10 | 20 | 40 | 100 |
| Guest posts (DA 20+) | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Web 2.0s (DA 50+) | 5 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 50 |
| Amplification links | 1,500 | 3,000 | 5,000 | 10,000 | 20,000 |
| Keyword research | Standard | Standard | In-depth | In-depth | In-depth |
| Premium indexing | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| On-page technical audit | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Content gap analysis | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Competitor traffic spy | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Toxic link check with disavow | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Turnaround | 8-10 days | 10-12 days | 12-14 days | 14-16 days | 16-18 days |
Our recommendation Platinum at $325 USD a month is the floor for a resort. If the property runs a spa, multiple restaurants, an events business or several room categories, Titanium at $575 USD covers the 100 keywords those separate markets actually require, plus four domains if you operate more than one property.
- Dedicated account manager
- Month-to-month, cancel anytime
- Setup fee waived
- Every link delivered with a live, clickable URL
- You own the assets forever
- Available as a monthly subscription or a one-time order
Build the exact program in the builder, or send us the property and we will tell you what we would target and what we would not bother doing.
Questions.
What do hotel and resort SEO services do differently for a resort?
They start much earlier in the journey. A resort guest typically begins with a destination and a season rather than a property, and the gap between the first search and the booking can run to several months. That means content has to be published well ahead of the demand it is meant to catch, and it means the valuable terms are about the place and the experience rather than about the resort.
How does seasonality change the work?
It changes the timing more than the content. If your booking window averages four months, a page published in March is competing for stays in July, so it needs to exist and have authority before the search volume arrives. Publishing seasonal content during the season it describes is one of the most common and least productive things a resort does.
We sell an experience, not a room. Does search handle that?
Yes, and it is usually the strongest ground available to a resort. Searches for the activity, the setting and the kind of trip carry high intent and are far less contested than accommodation terms, because most competitors are optimizing for the word hotel and nobody is writing properly about the thing the guest is actually planning to do.
Which plan suits a resort?
Platinum at $325 USD a month at minimum, and frequently Titanium at $575 USD if the property has multiple room categories, several restaurants, a spa and an events business, each of which is effectively its own search market. The keyword count is the deciding factor rather than the room count.
Our destination is remote. Is there enough search volume?
Usually more than expected, because the searches happen at the destination level rather than the property level. Few people search the name of a remote property, but a great many search the region, the activity and the type of trip. Those are the terms worth owning, and a remote resort frequently faces less competition for them than an urban hotel does for its city.
What makes this different.
Every link comes with a live URL
You get a clickable address for every placement, so you can open it and confirm the work exists. That is the whole reporting standard, and it is rarer than it should be.
You own the assets forever
Placements do not disappear if you stop paying us. What we build stays yours.
Month to month, no contract
There is no minimum term and no cancellation penalty. If the work is not worth the fee, you stop.
We say no to the wrong plan
If your numbers do not justify a larger program, we will tell you to start smaller. The calculator on this site does that automatically.
No guarantees on rankings
We do not guarantee rankings, occupancy, booking volume or revenue, because no agency controls them. Be careful with anyone who does.
Delivered remotely, worldwide
We do not claim offices or staff in your market, because we do not have them. Search work has always been delivered remotely and our published results include clients outside the United States.
Where to go next.
Start with the arithmetic.
Send us the property and we will come back with what we would target, what it costs and what we would not bother doing. We reply within 24 hours on business days.