A new change with Google My Business is providing hotels with great opportunities to have their hotel appear within the Hotel Pack (local pack) for content (website mentions) found on the hotels website.
This feature within the local pack for all other categories is not new and has been around for some time, but now hotels can benefit and take advantage of this.
Hotel Pack Shake Up
First noticed on the 4th Feb and is appearing more and more within search queries as this rolls out.
These new website mentions at the moment appear to be directly related to “hotel” type queries, that Google understands to be a hotel / accommodation type query – that are not already covered within displayed hotel attributes.
Like: All Inclusive, Spa, Child Friendly etc
How Can I Use This for My Hotel?
We have already established that they do not display for already available hotel attributes (this may change – but I doubt it).
So I would note down what attributes you have selected for display in your Hotels GMB listing.
Then I would do some research what people search for when looking at your particular location, any colloquially unique terms (note above nickname coffee street), also what types of hotels people search for within your particular type of accommodation type.
Start with your offerings on site:
Look at accommodation pages, special offers – can you add / refine your copy to include any related search queries you have uncovered ?
Local supporting content – can you create / refine any of your local supporting copy to include locally unique “known as” content?
Note:
This seems to be very early in its machine learning phase – queries that I thought would trigger, that have no attributes return an irrelevant hotel pack, including unrelated attributes.
Searching for: Bangkok Hotels with Tuk Tuks (very popular query) returns hotel pack displaying attributes for – outdoor pool, spa, fitness centre – which have no relation to tuk tuks.
So this machine learning has a way to go and I would start with sensible refining.
Need help with your hotel Google My Business Listing? Online Ownership provides Google My Business Consulting, feel free to contact us for a no obligations chat.