Navigating the hotel marketing tech stack: Why hotels need the right experienced partners 

Adobe, Omniture, Google Analytics 4, Google Conversion Tracking, Facebook Pixel, Snowplow, Gravity Forms, WordPress, Pinterest, Google Maps, Hotel Schema, Vimeo, YouTube, BugHerd, ADARA, the list goes on. For most properties, managing this evolving tech stack is like maintaining a complex ecosystem. Each tool provides value, but without alignment and expertise, they rarely deliver the efficiency or insights hoteliers need to drive direct bookings and optimize digital performance.

The complexity of connection

Today’s hospitality marketing ecosystem is powered by data. Every pixel, tag, and API call contributes to a hotel’s visibility, guest acquisition, and conversion strategy. Yet, even the most advanced technology can become a liability when misconfigured or underutilized. The truth is that connecting and optimizing these tools demands a deep understanding of both hospitality operations and digital infrastructure.

Why experience matters

Expertise in hospitality technology

•  A hospitality-focused digital marketing agency understands the nuances of this industry,  from metasearch strategy to the importance of first-party data in driving direct bookings. These partners know how to configure tracking tools like Google Analytics 4 and Facebook Pixel to reflect booking engine behaviors, cancellation patterns, and revenue attribution specific to hotels and resorts.

Comprehensive solutions

• An experienced partner provides a full-service solution that extends beyond web development. From designing fast, conversion-optimized websites to managing paid search and hotel metasearch campaigns, these experts ensure every element of your digital presence is connected. This end-to-end integration prevents data silos and enables more accurate reporting and decision-making.

Customization and personalization

• No two properties are the same. A boutique resort will have different data needs than a multi-property management company. Expert partners can customize analytics dashboards, automate reporting across multiple properties, and apply advanced tools like GCommerce’s Multi-Property and Channel Rollup APIs to surface performance insights that inform smarter strategies.

Keeping up with trends

• The digital landscape evolves constantly. New privacy regulations, analytics updates, and platform shifts, like the move from Universal Analytics to GA4,  require continuous adaptation. Agencies immersed in hospitality marketing stay ahead of these changes, ensuring your property’s tech stack remains compliant, optimized, and competitive.

ROI and performance tracking

• Experienced partners don’t just implement tools; they turn data into action. By integrating your property’s analytics with media performance data, they can identify what drives revenue and what doesn’t. This allows for precise ROI tracking, smarter budget allocation, and a clear understanding of which campaigns are increasing direct bookings.

Building stronger foundations for hospitality success

In an era where digital infrastructure defines performance, your tech stack is as important as your property’s physical foundation. Managing it requires the same level of expertise, planning, and precision. Partnering with a seasoned hospitality marketing agency ensures your technology ecosystem is optimized for both efficiency and growth.

With the right guidance, hotels can transform a tangled web of tools into a unified system that powers visibility, conversions, and profitability. The outcome isn’t just a better website or more data,  it’s smarter marketing that helps your property connect with guests and increase direct bookings.

Ready to simplify your tech stack and drive more direct bookings? Connect with GCommerce to build a smarter digital foundation for your property.

Beyond the funnel: The new rules of hotel marketing

I have watched hospitality marketing evolve dramatically over the years, starting with the clean, predictable funnel: awareness, consideration, booking. It served us well. We could measure it, optimize it, and feel confident in the process it promised.

But that model is breaking. Today, 60% of searches end without a click. Travelers are not making it to your site the way they used to. Search engines and AI are serving answers before anyone even lands on your page. The journey to booking is no longer linear. It is fragmented, circular, and often invisible.

So what do we do in this zero-click world?

We stop thinking in straight lines and start building adaptive growth loops. Marketing systems that listen, learn, and continually feed back into each other.

Why funnels don’t work anymore

Funnels assume a neat progression: you find us, you compare us, you book with us. Reality is messier. A potential guest might see a display ad, scroll past your property on Instagram or TikTok, check rates on an OTA, revisit your blog, get retargeted with an ad, receive a reminder via email, and only then decide to book. Sometimes they book without ever visiting your site at all.

Trying to force that into a funnel does not just fall short. It ignores how travel browsing actually happens now.

What works instead are loops. Strategies that adapt. Every interaction, whether it is an email open, an ad view, or a review read, feeds into the next one. These loops learn from behavior and make the journey smarter, more responsive, and more personal.

Tactical takeaway: Map your current guest journey. List out every touchpoint where a traveler interacts with your brand. Ask yourself if those touchpoints are connected or if they operate in silos. Look for opportunities to create continuity, such as aligning messaging between your display campaigns and your follow-up emails.

Organic search is fading, but content still counts

Ranking well in Google historically has been marketing gold. Now, AI-generated results and featured snippets are claiming more real estate and more clicks.

That said, this does not mean SEO is dead. Fresh content, helpful blogs, and useful information are more important than ever. Google rewards them, and AI relies on them.

But here is the reality. Organic search is no longer the only hero. We need media, owned channels, and marketing loops that learn from behavior to fill the gaps.

Hotels often ask: What kind of content should we be creating? The answer lies in listening to your guests and your market. Here are some effective ways to uncover topics worth writing about:

• OTA reviews- Scan Booking.com, Expedia, or TripAdvisor reviews to see what guests consistently mention. If travelers are asking about parking, dining options, or nearby attractions, those are content opportunities.
• Social media conversations- Watch what people are saying in Instagram comments, TikTok travel videos, or Reddit threads about your destination. These conversations highlight authentic traveler interests.
• Search trend tools- Use Google Trends or other keyword research tools to see what is spiking in interest. Seasonal queries like “best family ski resorts in Utah” or “things to do in Napa in the fall” can drive timely content.
• Local events- Build content around festivals, conferences, and seasonal activities happening near your property. Guests are searching for this information, and it positions your hotel as a helpful resource.

Tactical takeaway: Audit your website content and brainstorm new ideas from these sources. Focus on creating content that answers real questions, reflects your property’s unique perspective, and positions you as an authority both in Google and in AI engines.

Media is essential at every stage of the guest journey

With organic traffic shrinking, media becomes critical. Smart marketers treat it as a portfolio, not silos.

• Display advertising works at the top of the journey. It plants the idea and inspires travel before the traveler even knows they want it.
• Meta is both a discovery and consideration channel. It combines reach and targeting, letting hotels inspire travelers with visuals while also re-engaging them through remarketing.
• Paid search captures the moment travelers are actively looking. It helps you show up when intent is clear.
• Metasearch sits at the bottom, where comparison happens and booking decisions are made.
  

When display, Meta, paid search, and metasearch work together, they create a seamless journey, feeding the loop from inspiration to conversion. But it is not enough to just run these channels side by side. What sets high-performing hotels apart is the ability to understand how the entire media mix is working together through unified data.

Without unified reporting, display, or Meta, they may look like they are underperforming, when in fact they are seeding demand that shows up later in paid search or metasearch. Paid search might appear expensive if viewed in isolation, but when connected with attribution data, you can see that it is strengthening both direct bookings and assisted conversions.

Another critical element is creative differentiation. Boilerplate ads that could be promoting any property will always underperform. What builds brand trust and drives bookings is featuring the hotel’s sustainable competitive advantages, the unique experiences, amenities, and positioning that no competitor can replicate. Media spend is only as effective as the story it tells, and hotels that lean into their unique strengths see higher conversion rates across every channel.

This is where GCommerce’s data platform makes a difference. By pulling performance data across all media channels into one unified view, we help hotels see the true value of each channel, how they interact, and where to shift budget for maximum impact.

Tactical takeaway: Do not evaluate your media channels in silos. Look for ways to connect performance data across your media mix to understand the entire guest journey. And make sure your ads reflect what makes your property different. Generic creative erodes trust, while highlighting your brand’s long-term competitive advantages builds authority and drives higher booking conversion.

AI search is here, and it is shifting the game

AI is not on the horizon. It is in the search bar already. AI-powered results are answering traveler questions on the spot. That means:

• Organic clicks may shrink further.
• Authority, both in content and brand, becomes critical.
• AI could start sending traffic directly to your booking engine without OTAs in the mix.

This is both a threat and an opportunity, which is why we are introducing AI Metasearch, a way to place your direct booking link in AI-powered search results while still enjoying reporting, attribution, and control. It is the next evolution of metasearch for a zero-click world.

Tactical takeaway: Begin preparing for AI visibility now. Make sure your property information, reviews, and content are accurate, fresh, and structured. Think of every piece of content you create as a potential answer AI could surface to a traveler’s question.

Learn more about how to optimize for AI search in our full guide. 

Fundamentals still drive success

Even as AI rises, fundamentals remain your foundation. In fact, they are more important now because they fuel both human and AI discovery.

• Email marketing remains the most revenue-efficient channel. It is direct, owned, and powerful.
• Content and blogging keep Google interested and give AI engines a reason to cite you. The demand for fresh content has never been higher, but simply publishing words on a page is not enough. AI can assist with speed and efficiency, but it cannot replace the strategic perspective, brand alignment, and hospitality-specific expertise required to create content that actually drives bookings. Hotels need content that answers the questions travelers are asking, reflects the property’s unique story, and builds long-term authority. That requires a thoughtful strategy behind the words.
• Schema markup provides structured data that helps AI and traditional search understand your property.
• Guest reviews reinforce credibility. Not just with travelers, but also with AI that values citations and signals.

These fundamentals are not optional. They are the base layer upon which loops, AI visibility, and media integration stand.

Tactical takeaway: Look for ways AI can accelerate the process, such as generating topic ideas or first-pass outlines, but always layer in human editing and hospitality expertise. This ensures your content is not just fast, but accurate, on-brand, and positioned to win visibility in both search and AI engines.

Growth comes from loops, not ladders

The old ladder-like funnel is obsolete. Guest journeys loop back, circle forward, and intersect across channels. Marketing loops that learn from behavior, feeding insights back into media, content, email, and AI discovery, are how we stay relevant.

Hotels that master both fundamentals and future-facing strategies, email and AI, reviews and media, schema and marketing loops that learn from behavior, will not just survive. They will define what hospitality marketing looks like in our new era.

The funnel has run its course. The future belongs to systems that adapt, learn, and keep guests connected.

Tactical takeaway: Start building your own loop model. Sketch out how your media, content, email, reviews, and AI readiness connect. Ask: What happens after a traveler clicks? After they open an email? After they read a review? Growth will come from the connections you build between these moments.

Where hotels go from here

The rules of hotel marketing are shifting. The funnel that once guided strategy is no longer reliable, and organic search alone will not deliver the results it once did. But that does not mean growth is out of reach. In fact, the opportunities for hotels have never been greater.

The hotels that will win in this new era are the ones that adapt. They will invest in media at every stage of the guest journey. They will lean on data to understand how channels work together instead of judging them in silos. They will prioritize fundamentals like email, reviews, and content while preparing for the rise of AI-enabled search. Most importantly, they will create marketing loops that learn from every interaction and strengthen with each cycle.

Hospitality has always been about connection. The tools may change, but the goal remains the same: to build trust, inspire travelers, and keep them coming back. For hotels ready to embrace this shift, the future is not something to fear. It is something to build toward with clarity, confidence, and creativity.

Contact us today to apply the loop to your hotel marketing. 

Maximize your hotel's visibility with AI Search

It’s a truly exciting time to be in digital marketing. The rise of LLM’s over the past few years has led to an incredible shift in consumer behavior. AI engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity have introduced a new type of search engine experience that takes away an immense amount of friction compared to the traditional search engine marketing experience. It’s driven Google to rapidly advance its search product to introduce and evolve with features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode, to retain market share and keep users on Google products. 

Our team has been researching, studying, and analyzing the user experience of these emerging technologies over the past few years. We have been deeply focused on how they work, how they compare to more traditional search engines, and what that means for helping our hotel clients ensure visibility as more and more consumers engage with these products. We’ve studied ChatGPT Search, from beta to live environments (here’s the webinar in case you missed it), and will soon be launching a webinar around our recent study of AI Mode (sign up for our newsletter to be alerted of the date). 

Our understanding of what drives visibility on AI search engines continues to evolve, as will our services to best support our hotel clients. These new answer engines are adding and ultimately replacing what used to take potential guests a massive amount of clicks to research. Ensuring your hotel is visible on the channels and content that AI engines are sourcing from is critical.

Here’s a breakdown of what we know about visibility on AI answer engines, along with what hotels need to do to best ensure and maximize visibility in these searches.

What is AI search, and how does it work?

Before we dive into what your hotel should do now to maximize chances for visibility, it’s important to understand how AI search works.

1. AI search is powered by LLMs

AI search answers are driven by large language models. The knowledge of LLMs comes from their ability to train on data from a variety of sources. They retrieve and then summarize this data for our searches, called prompts, resulting in a compilation of data it’s learned from countless sources. These LLMs all have a cut-off date for the recency of data they source. They then rely on using established search indexes, most commonly Bing, to do live retrieval for more up-to-date information. You can think of LLM’s like super-powered auto-predict. Their knowledge is based on an understanding of entity linking or the connection between references, in an effort to predict what comes next to answer your prompt or request. This indicates that the more your brand is mentioned/found across sources related to a specific topic, the more likely it is to associate your brand with the answer the users are looking for when they submit a query on that topic. 

2. LLM’s love structured content

The basis of this knowledge comes from the background that the sources LLM’s train on are centered around structured architecture. They love sites with content structured like YouTube, Reddit, and listicles (think top 10 lists). They devour formats like community forms with comments and up/down voting. They give preference for blog content providing distinct headers, lists, and bullet formats. For hotels, they often source and showcase attributes pulled from structured data on sites and sources such as Google Business Profile. They then use these structured sources, schema, and more to provide the best answer they can.

3. AI search reporting is limited

ChatGPT, Perplecity, AI Mode, you name it, reporting is even more limited than what’s been historically provided by search engines for organic search data. While Google has recently included AI mode data in Search Console, you still can’t separate it out to know how much of your organic impressions or clicks come from this feature. ChatGPT offers no search-console-like reporting. The best we have right now is looking in GA4 to find whatever clicks make it to the site. The hard part is, these types of answer engines are designed to drive fewer clicks, so without impression or mention insights, we’re missing out on an important piece of performance insights. 

While there have been numerous AI search reporting tools coming out, the extreme personalization and varied results by user make it incredibly hard to scrape and provide a position ranking report. We predict that this will continue to evolve as the top minds in the industry, driving platforms like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and more, continue to ideate on solutions.

What can hotels do to ensure visibility on AI search engines such as ChatGPT Search, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity?

While the industry’s understanding of AI search optimization continues to evolve, these are the areas or channels of focus we’ve identified to be most critical for hotels right now:

1. Emphasis on Local SEO 

Each different AI SEO study for hotels that we’ve completed has unveiled elements and sources that overlap with traditional local SEO. This includes:

• Google Business Profile listing attributes
• Google, TripAdvisor, and other guest reviews
• Consistency of hotel descriptions/up to date information found across listing sites on the web

2. Utilization of Schema/Structured Data on your hotel’s website

LLM’s love structured content. This applies to your hotel’s own website as well as other sources they prefer to learn from and source summary information. On your hotel website, this means making sure you’re using schema.org’s structured data markup for applicable information on your site, such as:

• Local business organization
• Product
• FAQs and more

3. Expand and revisit your hotel’s website content

Ensuring your hotel’s website has comprehensive information about different amenities and features of your hotel, as well as the local area, is important to being represented in AI search results. This includes:

• Well-rounded content in multi-modal form - text, image, video
• Conversational text
• Expanded content to fully answer topics and questions
• Structured content, including FAQs

4. Technical SEO and site architecture 

While Technical SEO has been historically important for traditional search engines, its focus is enhanced for AI agents. This includes:

• Reviewing site code for proper markup
• Reviewing site health and page speed, such as Core Web Vitals
• Ensuring to resolve and address other technical seo issues on your hotel’s website
• Internal linking strategies for related content 

5. Social Media content

If it wasn’t already, the new world of SEO is quickly changing to a “search everywhere optimization” definition. Recent updates, such as news of the Instagram indexing controls, are bringing new light to how social media content is surfacing on search engines, including AI search. Make sure your property is:

• Communicating blogs, news, reviews, and features about your brand via organic social media posts. 
• Participating and responding to comments and conversations

6. PR and link building

One metric that continues to be noted with high importance for AI search optimization is the concept of ‘brand mentions’. In traditional SEO, link building has been a long-standing tactic for off-page SEO. In the view of LLMs and AI search, high amounts of brand mentions with context around specific topics increase your brand’s chances of being included in summaries and answers for those types of prompts. It’s essential to be competitive in this space. This includes:

• Building partnerships with local, related organizations and coordinating online mentions or website links
• Local listing sites such as the Chamber of Commerce
• Finding a PR agency to help secure inclusion and brand mentions in top publications
• Working with bloggers, tied closely to your local region and/or affinity audiences, to be featured in their top 10 lists or area guide articles

7. YouTube, Reddit, and community forms

Did you know that YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine? It’s also one of the favorite sources for LLM’s to learn from. Why? Because of the structured format of the content. From its videos, to titles and descriptions, comments, and thumbs up/down voting, it’s easy to consume and contains an incredible amount of information. Similarly, community forms like Reddit and Quora offer easy-to-consume data for LLM’s to study and learn. These pose additional opportunities for hotels to increase visibility, whether it’s through their own (or influencers') channels on YouTube, related community threads on Reddit or TripAdvisor, and more.

There are numerous facets to visibility and ranking in AI SEO, similar to traditional SEO. As you may have noticed, a lot of them even overlap with tactics that are important for traditional SEO. It can be overwhelming when trying to navigate limited resources or budget. We recommend focusing on the critical ones and testing new ones as you find new resources to support your AI SEO endeavours and, ultimately, building your brand. Lean on partners that specialize in each of these areas of expertise and services. 

Our hotel marketing team is here to support your goals as well as recommend additional resources that can help achieve them. Please reach out with your questions; our team is happy to assist.