High-level motel operators don’t guess

Last week, we asked a hard question: Is your motel trustworthy? We established that in the absence of a trusted brand like Hilton or Marriott, you need to create trust and convince the guest to book in a very short window of time. We covered how verified reviews, placed in the right places, are what drive direct bookings.

Creating trust is only step 1. Once you’ve shown that your motel is trustworthy, the stopwatch starts on step 2. You must convince the visitor that you sell what they want to buy.

We’ve listed 4 Steps your motel can take to stop guessing and start showing the information that is going to convert visitors to paying guests.

Step 1: Research and Understand Guest Requirements

Stop assuming you know why guests visit your town or choose your motel. In the hotel and motel industry, there are so many anecdotal ideals and strategies passed around like “bums in beds”. High-level operators rely on data rather than assumptions. The best way to sell a room to a visitor who does not know your motel is to show them relevant, well-organised information about your property and the location.

Key Research Tools (FREE)

To find exactly what your guests are typing into Google, use the Google Keyword Planner Tool. To use this tool, you need to create a free Google Ad account.

You can expand out your search ideas with the Related Search Section in Google Search; this is located at the bottom of a standard Google results page. Identify the exact search queries, then build your strategy around them.

(Image credit: Google.com)

The deeper you dive into the research, the more value and opportunity you will find for your motel. To take your research a step further, once you’ve completed your key search query research, you can take it a step further and put each query into Google’s search bar and add a letter to the end, and it will show you more search queries. If a query comes up here, it gets some search volume.

(image credit: Google.com)

Common guest search queries

· Leisure & Attractions: Are they searching for the local National Park, the new family waterpark, or the beach?

· Self-contained accommodation

· Long-stay worker accommodation

· Motel room with bath

· Motel with roll-in shower

· Motel room North Side of Town

· Restaurants: Is the guest looking for a pub dinner

· Near Airport: Is the guest looking for accommodation near an airport, or with easy transfer?

· Near Business District: Is your motel in a key business district? List this information.

· Near a major highway

· Medical & Necessity: Are you positioned near a major hospital? This targets longer stays, locum doctors, or families needing self-contained units for surgeries and births.

· Events & Corporate: Are you catching the overflow from popular wedding venues? Are workers staying Monday to Friday?

Step 2: Organise Your Website based on your Research

Your website architecture must act as a digital funnel.

The Home Page

Your homepage addresses the broad, mandatory requirements every guest wants. Highlight the non-negotiable or popular guest queries. Here are some general options, but consider what is best for your motel and target clientele.

– Fast Wi-Fi

– Pool

– Secure Parking

– Pet Friendly

– 5-minute drive to the airport

– 2-minute walk to restaurants

Individual Room Pages

Before we go any further, a non-negotiable for your motel website is a dedicated page for each room type. For example, your self-contained apartments should have a page like this: www.yourmotel.com.au/self-contained-apartments.

When Google sees this page, it will give more value to this page when a visitor searches “Self-contained apartments Your Location”.

If a guest is on your individual room page, they are a high-intent and valuable lead. This is where your earlier research will help to convert them into paying guests.

If you primarily cater for workers in your double rooms, then identify the key items a worker is looking for – it might be a microwave, a fridge, or fast Wi-Fi. Your corporate targeted room pages should prominently feature the values for that key clientele; it might be:

· 2-minute walk to [Local Pub Name]

· Fast, Secure Corporate Wi-Fi

· Dedicated Work Desk & Plentiful Power Outlets

If your family rooms are primarily sold to families with younger kids, highlight the pool, any kid-friendly motel amenities, nearby attractions for children and possibly self-contained features for families looking to cook in their room to reduce their costs. Your family room page might state:

· On-site Pool

· Only a 5-minute drive to [Attraction A]

· Smart TVs (Log in to your own Netflix/Disney+)

· Self-contained kitchenette, or if your rooms don’t have a kitchenette, talk about the Free Family Friendly BBQ Area.

You will not always be able to have the exact right information for every guest, but you can work towards improving your relevance for guests. A significant benefit of this process is the improved organisation of your essential information.

Step 3: Formatting to Improve Visibility with AI Search Tools.

This article is focused primarily on improving your website information to convert visitors into guests, because AI overlaps the space, and there is a valuable and growing opportunity. We will briefly go through some concepts.

AI Basic Strategies

By deepening your understanding of your guests, you can enhance your visibility within the AI search landscape. Below are several foundational strategies to guide your initial research:

– Format your Header 2 Titles on your room pages to answer questions guests ask about accommodation, your town/city and the primary attractions that drive visitors.

– If you believe the query is substantial, you can create a specific page, and set up your website URL to be yourmotel.com/the-query

– Be consistent with your information and rates across channels. AI builds clarity and trust with a brand by getting consistent information from different sources. If your city has 100 motels, and AI recommends 5 motels to a potential guest, AI will avoid suggesting motels with inconsistent information.

– Reviews, review text, review score, review velocity, and review response rate are all important trust signals for AI Models. Run a good motel, ask guests for a review, and respond to reviews – all the basic best practices will help with AI visibility.

– Consider posting in related forums and social media sites like Reddit and Facebook about your town. If posts are talking about where to stay, or places to eat, be involved, post on the forum, and then create a page that verifies your online suggestions. This is an important part of getting visibility in Google’s AI Overview, which appears at the top of Google Search.

AI does not read paragraphs; it scrapes data and consolidates it. Writing information that answers your guests’ questions rather than generic information will help you rank for AI search queries.

Instead of a clunky paragraph about your family room, create a Heading 2 like: “What Family-Friendly Facilities Are in our Family Room?”

Followed immediately by a clean bulleted list of amenities. This feeds the AI exactly the structured data it needs to recommend your motel when a user asks ChatGPT or another AI Tool, “What is the best family motel near [Attraction]?”

Step 4: The Google Maps Leakage

Visitors often want to stay within a certain area of the town or city your motel is in. Ensure that a map is available to them on your website that illustrates where your motel is and ideally will highlight where the motel is in relation to the central business district, major attractions, airports and local dining. Having a map embedded on your key website pages will help guests make a booking without having to check where your motel is on an external site.

Direct Booking Leakage

When an independent motel website fails to provide the information that a guest requires at the point of decision, the guest leaves to verify it elsewhere. This is where direct booking leakage occurs. Once a guest exits the site, they are immediately exposed to competing properties, pricing, and availability.

Small Improvements = Big Increases in Direct Bookings

Optimising your digital presence isn’t about radical overhauls or outmuscling Booking.com; it’s about the cumulative power of small details. These marginal gains increase your market relevance and ensure your motel reflects what guests value, rather than what you assume they want.

This article was written by Ben Douglas, Motel Coach for AccomNews. Motel Coach provides practical training and support for motel managers at every stage—from those new to the industry to experienced operators. The training consolidates the most important management lessons into clear, actionable guidance that helps motels improve operations, build stronger teams, and increase occupancy.