Tourism SEO

SEO for Tourism Businesses That Want to Grow

Most tourism businesses have a visibility problem they don’t know about. Travellers are searching for exactly what you offer, but Booking.com, TripAdvisor, and Expedia are answering those searches instead of you. By the time a potential guest reaches your website, they’ve already been handed to a platform that takes 15–25% commission on every booking it delivers.

I’m Peter Sawicki, a destination SEO strategist with over ten years of experience working in tourism and travel. I build SEO strategies for tourism businesses that want to change that equation, replacing OTA dependency and paid ad spend with organic visibility that compounds over time and keeps the full value of every booking where it belongs: with you.

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SEO for Tourism Businesses That Want to Grow

Why Tourism SEO is Different?

Generic SEO advice doesn’t translate well into tourism, and consultants who’ve never worked in the industry often discover this after months of misaligned effort. Tourism has its own search logic, its own competitive dynamics, and its own buyer journey. Getting it right requires understanding all three.

The four largest OTAs — Booking Holdings, Expedia, Airbnb, and Trip.com — generated $58 billion in revenue in 2024 and collectively spent over $5.2 billion on marketing in a single quarter. Booking.com alone commands a 69.3% share of the European hotel OTA market. These platforms dominate search results not through advertising alone, but through years of technical SEO investment, domain authority, and content at a scale no individual tourism business can match head-on.

The only winning strategy is to stop competing on the same terms, and build visibility where OTAs don’t dominate: long-tail destination queries, local intent searches, multilingual markets, and increasingly, AI-generated travel recommendations where brand authority matters more than ad spend. That’s where independent tourism brands can win. That’s exactly where I focus.

My Services

Who I Work With?

Destination Marketing Organisations

DMO’s compete against the very platforms that list their attractions. I help DMOs reclaim authority in search, becoming the definitive source for travellers researching where to go, what to do, and how to get there. When someone asks Google or an AI assistant about your destination, your organisation should be the answer.

Hotels & Resorts

Every direct booking saved from OTA commission is revenue reclaimed. I help hotels and resorts build organic search presence that reduces dependency on third-party platforms, bringing more guests directly to your booking engine at a fraction of the acquisition cost. Less Booking.com. More margin.

Tour Operators & Travel Agencies

Travellers search for experiences long before they search for operators. I help tour operators and travel agencies appear where the decision is actually made – during the research phase, when someone is comparing options and building their trip. By the time they’re ready to book, your brand is already the trusted answer.

Dive Centres & Water Sports

This is where my story starts. I built the entire digital presence of a dive centre from scratch – branding, content, SEO, and booking funnel, turning it into the number one customer touchpoint for the business, outperforming social media, walk-ins, and referrals combined. I know this segment from the inside.

Cruise & Yacht Companies

Cruise and yacht businesses operate in one of the highest-value segments of tourism and one of the most underserved from an SEO perspective. Most competitors rely on brokers and listing platforms. I help cruise lines, yacht charter companies, and liveaboard operators build direct organic visibility.

Adventure & Outdoor Brands

Travellers looking for hiking trails, ski resorts, safari operators, or rafting experiences search with high intent and very specific queries, and they rarely start on an OTA. I help adventure and outdoor brands capture that traffic directly, building content and technical foundations that turn search visibility into enquiries and bookings.

What is tourism SEO and why does it matter?

Tourism SEO is the process of getting travel and hospitality websites to rank in search engines and AI tools, so travellers find your business directly rather than through a platform that takes a cut of every booking. For tourism businesses, it is one of the few marketing channels that keeps working and getting cheaper over time.

How is tourism SEO different from regular SEO?

Travellers research trips months before they book, search in multiple languages, and are constantly intercepted by OTAs with billion-dollar ad budgets. Generic SEO strategies ignore all of this. Tourism SEO is built around the specific intent stages, seasonal patterns, and technical realities that are unique to travel businesses.

Can a small hotel or tour operator compete with Booking.com in search?

Not by playing the same game. The strategy is to own the spaces OTAs don’t dominate: specific long-tail experience queries, local destination searches, and AI-generated recommendations. A boutique hotel in a specific location can absolutely outrank Booking.com for the searches that actually matter to its business.

What is GEO and why should tourism brands care?

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation. It means building content and authority signals that make your brand more likely to appear when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for hotel recommendations or destination ideas. A growing share of travel research now starts with an AI tool rather than a search engine. Brands that show up in those answers have a real advantage over those that don’t.

Do I need multilingual SEO for my tourism business?

If any meaningful share of your guests comes from non-English speaking markets, yes. Without the right hreflang setup and localised content, your website is invisible in those markets regardless of how well your English pages perform. For most tourism businesses, this is leaving significant revenue on the table.

How is working with Peter different from hiring an agency?

You work directly with one person who has spent over ten years focused on tourism search. No juniors learning on your account, no middlemen, no inflated retainers. The strategy I build is the one I carry out, and everything points toward bookings rather than rankings.

How long does it take to see results from tourism SEO?

First ranking improvements usually show up within three to five months. Direct booking impact becomes visible between six and twelve months. The longer it runs, the better the return relative to cost.

What does tourism SEO actually cost?

It depends on the size of your website, the number of markets you operate in, and how competitive your segment is. I work with businesses at different stages, from independent dive centres to regional DMOs, so the scope varies significantly. The free visibility audit is the right starting point because it gives both of us a realistic picture of what the work actually involves before any numbers are discussed.

We already run Google Ads. Do we still need SEO?

Paid search stops the moment you stop paying. Every booking it generates has a cost attached to it. SEO builds visibility that keeps working without ongoing spend, which means over time the cost per booking drops significantly. Most tourism businesses that rely heavily on paid ads are essentially renting their traffic rather than owning it. SEO changes that.

Is now a good time to invest in tourism SEO?

The best time to build organic visibility is before you need it. SEO takes months to compound, which means businesses that start now are the ones with strong organic positions when the next booking season arrives. Waiting until traffic drops or paid costs get out of hand means starting from behind.

Working With The Best

Brands I’ve had the pleasure to work with

Additional Services

What Else do I Offer?

Beyond core SEO services, my work benefits from over 10 years of experience in search and a strong computer science background. This combination allows me to look beyond rankings and take a broader view of your digital presence, connecting SEO with technology, structure, and real business needs.

SEO and Web Project management

Advisory for C-Level Executives

Independent SEO Assessment

Competitor and Market Analysis

Ongoing Strategic Support

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