At Simplotel we have built websites for over 2,000 hotels, and every single time we have been asked about how we drive traffic to a website. We have been asked by those who are usually suspicious of SEO because they paid for such services in past and may or may not have seen results. And we have been asked by our customers who see a 3x plus growth in their website traffic after coming to our platform – as to how we do it. While SEO can be a deep subject, today we will attempt to outline how one must think about SEO in this post.

At a high level SEO depends on three things –

Technology and layout of the website
The content on the website
Things happening outside your website

Technology and layout of the website

In order to determine the relevance of a website for a search term (also known as a keyword) search engines have a piece of software called a Bot (derived from the word Robot) that crawls (think of it as reads) content on your website. The Bot then stores the keywords that a website is most relevant for. This is known as indexing of a website.

Unlike users, bots see the code of the website and not what users see on a website (you can view the code of most websites by right clicking on a webpage and selecting view page source). The easier this code is for the search engines to understand, the better chance you have of conveying your content to the search engines and making sure that your content gets indexed correctly. Here again there are hundreds of things that matter. These include the load time of a website, the structure of website code, mobile friendliness, proper tags and sitemaps. Detailing these is a topic for a future blog.

The layout of your website also plays an important role in search engine optimization. Clean and simple navigation, easily readable content – they all add up towards SEO friendliness.
To get these things right a website must be built for SEO from the ground up – retrofitting these things can often mean redoing the website. The good news is that Simplotel, out of the box, takes care of all this for your hotel website.

The content on your website

Now that we have gotten the technical aspects covered, the next most obvious thing about SEO is the content of the website. If your website’s content is about ice cream cones then your site will be indexed for ice cream cone searches and not for hotels. If your content is about a luxury hotel, then you won’t be indexed for budget hotels and consequently it is unlikely that you will show up for searches related to budget hotels.

Content also comes in many shapes. It includes the text on the website, the images that you put, the links you provide and the various tags (page titles page descriptions etc.). Each one of these have a significance and how and where you place them also matters. Content that is higher up on a page matters more than the content that is below. On things like page titles, the content that is to the left matters more than the content that is to the right. How you structure your content with various Headers (much like a word document) matters. How you name your images, how you name the links – they all matter.

All content on your website should be original content – copying of content from another website hurts your traffic – as the search engines and users skip past you believing you have nothing new to say. Adding fresh and relevant content has also shown to impact the SEO of a website.

There is also data about your hotel (meta data) that you can provide on your website, it is not visible to your customers but tells the bots the location, name, etc. of your hotel. Once again, Simplotel does this out of the box for your site. Our experts write the content for your hotel website so that it is all set up well. This is another reason why our customers see a 3x plus growth in traffic.

Things happening outside your website

After the technology and the content on the website, there are things that happen outside your website that impact search engine optimization. These include your guest reviews, your listing on Google Maps and local listing sites, your mention in travel blogs, etc. – they all matter. Here are some suggestions,

Verify and own your Google My Business (GMB) page and make sure that the map marker is accurate.
Ensure that your hotel’s name, address and contact info is exactly the same on all online channels – your social media pages, local listings and classified listings.
Get good reviews by taking care of customers and encouraging customers to write a glowing review. Also, respond to your reviews on various review channels time to time.

There are few silver bullets in SEO – so you must skin it with a thousand paper cuts. Please let us know your comments, questions and feedback at hello@simplotel.com.

Home > Blogs > What Building an AI Agent Taught Us About Hotel Guests

What Building an AI Agent Taught Us About Hotel Guests

A few months ago, we started exploring how conversational AI could fit into hospitality.
Like most technology projects, we expected the biggest challenges to be technical. We thought about response quality, language support, integrations etc.

Instead, we got distracted by something else.

The questions.
- The same questions kept showing up again and again.
- Not just at one hotel. Across properties, destinations, and traveller types.

That was unexpected.
Because it made us realise that while the industry spends a lot of time talking about technology, guests are often worried about much simpler things.

Guests Can Find Hotels. That Is No Longer the Problem.

For years, the hospitality industry has focused on discovery.

Hotels invested in websites, search visibility, online travel agencies, digital marketing, and distribution channels. The goal was simple: make it easier for travellers to find your property.

And to a large extent, that worked.

Today's traveller has access to more information than ever before. They can compare rates, read reviews, browse photos, watch videos, and research destinations within minutes.

At the same time, more than 50% of travellers are already using AI-powered tools while planning trips, and 73% of hoteliers believe AI will significantly impact hospitality. Another 80% believe it will reshape guest communication.

The interesting part is not the technology itself.

It is what traveller behaviour is telling us.

People are spending less time searching and more time asking.

The Questions Were Surprisingly Consistent

When we reviewed conversations and guest interactions, we expected a wide variety of questions.

Instead, we kept seeing the same ones.

Which bed configuration will I get?
What exactly is the room view?
How strict is the cancellation policy?
Will this room work for my family?
How far is the beach from the hotel?

None of these questions are particularly complicated.

Most hotels already have this information somewhere.

Yet guests keep asking.

That is what caught our attention.

The issue was not access to information.
The issue was uncertainty.

The Last Few Minutes Before a Booking Matter Most

One thing became increasingly clear.

The closer a guest gets to making a booking decision, the more specific their questions become.

At that stage, travellers are usually not comparing twenty hotels anymore.

They have already narrowed their options.

Sometimes they have already decided which hotel they want.

What they are looking for is reassurance.

They want to know whether the room matches their expectations.

They want to know whether their family will be comfortable.

They want to know what happens if plans change.

Those details may seem small, but they often influence whether a booking gets completed or abandoned.

What This Means for Hotel Websites

This changed how we think about hotel websites and booking journeys.

Traditionally, websites have been designed to provide information.

Increasingly, they need to reduce uncertainty.

That does not necessarily mean adding more content.

In many cases, the information already exists.

The challenge is making important details easier to find and easier to understand.

Room views.
Bed configurations.
Occupancy details.
Cancellation policies.
Accessibility information.

These are not just operational details. They help guests make decisions.

The easier it is for travellers to find answers, the easier it becomes for them to move forward with confidence.

A Different Way to Think About the Future

Hospitality has spent decades helping travellers discover hotels.

The next opportunity may be helping them make decisions faster and with greater certainty.

The most interesting lesson from this journey was not about AI.

It was about guests.

Technology happened to reveal a pattern that was already there.

Guests are telling hotels exactly what they need before they book.

The question is whether we are making those answers easy enough to find.

Because if a traveller has already decided they like your hotel, the final barrier is rarely a lack of information.

More often, it is a question that has not been answered clearly enough.