Flywheel news | September 2025 hotel digital marketing news | GCommerce
- Your complete 10-step guide to 2026 marketing & budget success
As 2026 approaches, hotel digital marketing is rapidly evolving, driven by AI, economic shifts, and new consumer behaviors. Staying ahead requires strategic planning, smart budgeting, and targeting channels that maximize direct bookings. Explore our latest eBook to discover practical tips for aligning your digital investments with your property’s goals as you start planning for the 2026 marketing season. Download here.
- Your guide to AI SEO for hotels
It’s truly an exciting time to be in digital marketing with the rise of LLMs leading to incredible shifts in consumer behavior when it comes to online searching. As our understanding of what drives visibility on AI search engines continues to evolve, so will our services at GCommerce as to best support our hotel clients and their goals. In this article we’ll breakdown everything we know about so far about gaining visibility on AI search engines and how your hotel can maximize for success. Read more here.
- Up your email game this cyber season
Cyber season is drawing near and hoteliers have a major opportunity to drive direct bookings and build momentum as they head into the new year. Based on two years of cumulative data from the marketing team at GCommerce and emerging trends for 2026 we’ve devised our top 8 strategies for winning at email marketing this Black Friday and Cyber Monday season. Read more.
- [Webinar recording] Google AI Mode uncovered: The future of hotel bookings
Google’s new AI Mode is transforming how travelers research, discover, and book hotels. With its conversational approach and preference-based suggestions, AI Mode is shifting how consumers search and find hotels. Our team conducted an in-depth study of Google’s AI Mode in action, testing branded and non-branded hotel searches across major U.S. markets. The findings? Hotels that don’t proactively focus on building their brand and focus on optimization risk losing valuable visibility. Watch the full webinar.
- How to drive direct bookings through metasearch advertising
In today’s competitive hospitality landscape, reducing dependency on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) is a top priority for many hotels. OTAs may offer visibility, but the commissions can cut deeply into your revenue. Hotel metasearch advertising presents a compelling opportunity to reclaim control, increase direct bookings, and strengthen your bottom line. Learn how your hotel can leverage metasearch to drive direct bookings while minimizing reliance on OTAs. Read here.
- OpenAI is staffing up to turn ChatGPT into an ad platform
Recent news found that OpenAi is hiring a Growth Paid Marketing Platform Engineer to help develop tools for ad platform integration, something that doesn’t come as a shock to most search marketers. Reports show that OpenAI is hoping to monetize free users via ChatGPT ads by 2026, which means advertisers will soon have access to a brand new platform with over 700 million weekly users (and is only slated to go up!). GCommerce will be closely watching for updates and access to the new ad platform once it becomes available. Read more.
- Google modifies search results parameter, affecting SEO tools
A new reports shows that Google appears to have disabled or is testing the removal of the &num=100 URL parameter that shows 100 results per page. What does this change mean for marketers? So far we’ve seen impressions in search console drop across all accounts, mainly for desktop, which disrupts SEO and rank tracking tools that once relied on this function. Some theories suggest third party scrapers were injecting artificial data in Google and now reporting is coming back to actualized levels, but despite the guesses and speculations, Google’s intent remains unclear. GCommerce will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates to our clients as we know more. Read more here.
