Booking.com, Expedia and Google Hotels decides most of it for hotels and holiday rentals: the engines quote the score, the count and the price band from the OTA pages. Then TripAdvisor. Facilities and policies in text and schema: pool, beach, kids' club, shuttle, checkout time. The report asks fifteen such questions with your market set and shows which sources were cited for each.
What buyers ask the engines about hotels and holiday rentals
The buyer is a traveller with dates and a budget, asking for a shortlist, and the question carries their constraints. Six of the questions the report puts to the four engines for a hotel, one per kind:
| Kind | The question, as asked |
|---|---|
| Head term | best family hotel in Dubai with a water park |
| Product | which hotels in Abu Dhabi offer a day pass to the beach |
| Niche | boutique hotel in Muscat for a couple, under 600 riyals a night |
| Comparison | staying in the Palm vs Downtown for a first visit to Dubai |
| Comparison | holiday rental vs a hotel for a family of five in Ras Al Khaimah |
| Niche | hotel near Dubai airport with a free shuttle and late checkout |
Where the engines read about hotels and holiday rentals
An engine does not know hotels and holiday rentals; it reads pages that list them. For this trade, the pages it reads most:
| Source | What it decides |
|---|---|
| Booking.com, Expedia and Google Hotels | the engines quote the score, the count and the price band from the OTA pages |
| TripAdvisor | the ranking in the city and the review themes |
| Travel press and guides | Condé Nast Traveller, Time Out, Lonely Planet; the 'best hotels in city' lists are read as rankings |
| r/travel and r/dubai; 'where to stay' threads are read as recommendations | |
| Your own site | the room pages, the facilities, the policies (checkout time, shuttle, kids stay free), when stated in text |
What wins a mention
- Facilities and policies in text and schema: pool, beach, kids' club, shuttle, checkout time. The questions ask for facilities by name.
- Neighbourhood pages that answer 'is X a good area to stay for Y'. The engines answer area questions from whoever wrote the page.
- Direct-booking offers stated as numbers: 'book direct, save 10%, free breakfast'. The 'is it cheaper to book direct' question is answered from it.
What the engines get wrong here, and what the report does about it
The engines name the OTAs as if they were hotels, and rank the chain flagships for questions a boutique would win. The report files OTAs as channels and scores the hotel on the questions its own site's facilities and area would win, against the hotels a traveller with that brief would compare.
The site checks that matter most for hotels and holiday rentals
Of the report's thirteen technical checks, the three that carry most for hotels and holiday rentals:
- Organization schema: as Hotel with amenityFeature, checkinTime, checkoutTime and the address; the engines match facility questions on the amenity list.
- FAQ schema: 'is there a shuttle', 'do kids stay free', 'can I use the beach without staying'.
- XML sitemap: offers and event pages change; a sitemap with lastmod keeps the engine reading the current one.
The other ten: the checklist; the generator writes four of the files.
Data for hotels and holiday rentals
Once five companies in this category have been scanned, a data page built from the runs appears here: who took the lost questions of hotels and holiday rentals, the scores, the sources cited.
What a month of work looks like
The Grow plan's goal for a hotel: get named in the five facility-and-area questions where an OTA or a chain flagship is named and your hotel is not. The work starts with Booking.com, Expedia and Google Hotels, then the pages of yours the engines quote, then the third-party pages, with a rescan on the same questions at month's end. The plans are priced on the home page.
Read next
Hotels and holiday rentals in the UAE · How each engine reads and cites · What changes by country · How to get mentioned by ChatGPT · All industries
Questions
Do the engines recommend hotels and holiday rentals at all?
Yes. Asked 'best family hotel in Dubai with a water park', they name specific companies, and the free check shows whether yours is among them across about fifteen such questions.
Which source matters most for a hotel?
Booking.com, Expedia and Google Hotels: the engines quote the score, the count and the price band from the OTA pages.
What is the first thing to fix for a hotel?
Facilities and policies in text and schema: pool, beach, kids' club, shuttle, checkout time. The questions ask for facilities by name.
See whether the engines name you
Your website, region and work email. The score appears in about three minutes, and the report is a link you keep.