Hint from Google To Hospitality Industry Regarding Images + Bookings?
-
Hey To All My Favorite Local Folks Here!
Have clients in the hospitality industry? You might be interested in this Mike Blumenthal post in which he does a good job of voicing the frustration business owners may feel when their preferred Google profile photo is overridden with Google's preferred pic. The post does more than just vent, though ... it actually hints at something quite fascinating that Google may have just offered up to the hospitality industry by switching from hotel-preferred exterior shots to Google-preferred interior shots of rooms.
Mike's contention (and it's one shared by many in the industry) is that Google makes moves like this because they are maximizing profit. From the image switching that just happened, I think it makes sense to theorize that Google has gathered enough internal data to convince them that room shots lead to more bookings than do exterior views of lodgings. This wouldn't surprise me at all. When you're looking for a place to stay, it's the room you're going to stay in that matters most ... not really whether the exterior building is made of brick, wood or stucco, right? Certainly, a beautiful, fancy building could sway you, but if the rooms look awful inside, that's probably a deal breaker.
If Mike is right, then I think Google's image switcharoo offers an extremely compelling reason to follow Google's lead and shine a major spotlight - on your website which you CAN control - on your interior photography. This suggestion could apply at all levels of the industry, from major hotel corporations that might want to rethink homepage contents and interior page layouts, to country B&Bs that have never made the investment in getting a pro photo shoot done that will truly showcase their rooms. I know, as a traveler, I've seen everything from stunning to downright dark, distorted and scary when it comes to hotel room photography.
If Google knows it gets more bookings when good clear room shots are given pride of place, your hotel clients might want to be taking notes on that.
Do you agree? As a hospitality industry Local SEO (or even as a traveler) what do you think is the most influential booking factor? Do you have any tips to share with others in the industry or an opinion on Google's switcharoo? Please, share with our community!
-
Happy to have you be part of this community, Travis!
-
Yeah, the Oatmeal comic was correct: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
Degradation of social skills. Plus no real sense of urgency to acquire new business. It's too easy to sit back and play in graphs and sheets all day. Then with the increased interest for the development side, I could feel productive chasing shiny objects all day. After all, I was 'working' wasn't I?
I could work for one of the agencies in the area, but I don't want to sign non-competes/covenants or a NDA. Unless it's mine, never another agency.
But yeah, one does meet a lot of business people at a hotel, made for business persons. I'm not a dyed-in-the-wool sales person. It keeps conversations natural, as well as likely.
Plus, I get pretty decent discounts on hotels everywhere. Should a convention or client require travel, that's nice.
Just have to Guerilla/Science things while the momentum builds. In fact, I received a prospective client recently - due to my previous answers in Moz Q&A. That was nice.
But yeah, rambling. Lots of new photos should be coming from Wyndham family hotels, at least for the next year. It's mandated by corporate. Perhaps it would be interesting to note if a set of fresh photos does much for them organically - as a hotel family (in aggregate).
-
Hey Travis!
Thanks for mentioning Wyndham's photo push - sounds like they are going with the tide on this. Interesting! Makes good sense - I've stayed at some of their properties and they are pretty solidly nice (and have kitchens! *see my earlier comment). And good for you, Travis, for challenging yourself to be more out and about in the world at wide. Life on the computer can be a bit isolating at times ... I'd say a busy hotel would be the perfect antidote!
Appreciate you sharing some thoughts on this thread.
-
I actually started working nights at a business class hotel. It made sense to me. Get paid extra while working on projects in the back, and overcome my hermetic ways. (the level I like to isolate myself is totally unhealthy, for a number of reasons)
I mean, I was staying up all night and making coffee anyway. If business is slow for a month, the bills are covered. Ah yes, the rough & tumble early days. Plus I have strong incentive to do that whole 'hygiene' thing. (remain presentable in button-down shirt, tie, slacks and dress shoes - does wonders for the morale)
Most people, if they're unfamiliar with the property, are most concerned with what the rooms will look like - after price. And with the listing changes, they would see both - from the drop - before they even call. I know the Wyndham family is in the midst of a big 'photo refresh' push, across all of their franchises. (sorry, photogs... it appears they've already selected their people)
Point being, exterior shots aren't being prioritized - it would appear - though there will be some exterior shots.
It all seems entirely reasonable.
-
Hi Robert!
You know - that's a really smart idea! I can totally see how the Assisted Living industry would relate to this topic and that the quality of the rooms residents stay in would be a major feature. Great observation, and I hope the next monthly meeting starts a great conversation about that.
For me, when I look for lodgings, the first think I check for is kitchens! I have to be able to cook anywhere I go and even the nicest bedroom in the world won't sell me if the lodging lacks a kitchen. So, innkeepers everywhere, show me your kitchens!
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts on this. I enjoyed reading your comment.
-
This is a great bit of insight! Thank you for bringing it to the community! I have to say that from an outside observer/regular traveler point of view... I would agree to the premise of this post. I personally check exactly what my room and other rooms look like, how nice the pool is and if there is an onsite gym before I make a purchase decision. I could care less about the face of the Hotel, or the parking situation, as long as my room has a desk, a nice bed and a spacious bathroom.
We don't currently represent any Hotels or B&B's with our SEO Services, but we do represent a number of Assisted Living businesses and I'll be bringing this up at our next monthly meeting with them. Could bolster their residency percentages.
-
Thanks for taking the time to reply! I wondered exactly that same thing about restaurants. I wonder if interiors or food shots are more influential. I'd love to see a study on that, if someone does one.
-
Makes sense, and we will be exploring this approach with our clients. I'm curious if they would take a similar approach to restaurants, either focus on photos of the interior or maybe even the food.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Disconnect MOZ Local and Google My Business
I've had problems with one of our eight branch locations when I connected GMB to Moz Local about a year ago. The location was suspended for being a duplicate. I would like to sever the connection so I could keep Moz Local live but at least temporarily delete the suspended Google My Business. Also, if you might have any guides or tutorials on performing this task it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Local Listings | | gallowaywebteam0 -
Categories for Google My Business pages - do they need to match terms on website?
I have a chiropractor client with three locations. Because the Chiropractor category is very competitive, whomever originally set-up their GMB pages elected to use the category "Pain Control Clinic" for two locations, and "Medical Center" for the third location. They rank badly for these categories. Their website does not contain many signals for pain control or medical center; it is very much chiropractor focused. Is this something Google takes into consideration when deciding how to rank GMB pages?
Local Listings | | Marce5210 -
Google Suspended My business listing
hi there, Google has Suspended By Google Business Listing Google has suspended your page due to quality issues. there is No spam Things in My Business, i have Requested Google, But It has not made active Since 10 Days, Is there any way to make My listing Publish on Google please Guide me to which steps Need take Thnx
Local Listings | | innovative.rohit0 -
Google Business Listing with no physical office location
Hey, everyone! As a business owner who works from home and doesn't have a physical office location. Is setting up a Google business listing without location going to hurt my local search ranking? Should I get a virtual office so I have a physical location? Thank you!! 😃
Local Listings | | ichorstudios0 -
For Google's Structured Data, should I change my listings from Product schema to Local Business schema?
I was reading Google's Structured Data spec, and I'm considering changing the schema of our listing pages from the Product schema to the Local Business schema. Is this a good idea? To give you a little more info, the pages that I'm classifying are listings for physical spaces that our website rents out for activities, such as meetings. Here's an example of a listing: https://www.peerspace.com/pages/listings/550ddcde2f352d0800fc186b Our goal is to add the proper schema.org tags to the page so that our spaces show up in local searches, such as "meeting space in San Francisco." The problem is that when we add location microdata (addressLocality, addressRegion, etc.) to our current "Product" schema, Google tells us that "Products" can't have a location. However, we aren't quite a "Local Business" either, since we don't publicly share our space's street addresses—only the space's neighborhood/city/state for privacy reasons. As a result, we get an error from Google's Structured Data Tool as a "Local Business" page because "streetAddress" is required for Local Businesses. Should we switch to the Local Business schema anyway, even though we get structured data errors for streetAddress? Or is it better not to include the location information in the microdata so that we don't have errors? Does Google penalize you for incomplete tags? Any input is appreciated!
Local Listings | | stuartstein0 -
Google not finding my site
I built a website, http://deeprootshgc.com. I submitted the site to google and have set up analytics. When I search for the site, deep roots home and garden center, I get their facebook page, manta and everything but the actual URL. Any thoughts?
Local Listings | | MarkBolin1 -
Report Google Plus Pages for Catergory Stuffing?
Doing some analysis for a clients and it have come to our attention that some of the competitors in this area have 16 to 18 categories, many duplicate and keyword stuffed. I tried to find a specific action to report this to Google, I am aware you can report spam for websites does this apply to the places pages as well? Can you just use the report abuse or report spam links? Anyone have any experience with this type of action with Google? Thanks.
Local Listings | | AFoust1 -
Google Authorship issues with a 200+ person company
So, I wanted to say thank you ahead of time for any help the amazing Moz community may be able to provide me with. I am going to start with giving a little background to the company I work for and then I will ask the question. We are a 200 person CFO Services firm (www.b2bcfo.com). We have partners almost all over the country and our research with potential partners and clients has shown that they like having a national presence, but they also need a regional/local presence too. To that end, we set up Google Places accounts for each of our partners as they are technically separate businesses under our umbrella. We also have the main national site (www.b2bcfo.com) and we have regional websites (e.g. www.houstonb2bcfo.com). We want to set up Google Authorship on each of our partners sections of the regional website, in the process of setting this up, we realized that the Google Plus pages we were using were Local + pages and it didn't seem to give us the option to add the "Contributor on" links to get Google Authorship working. It seems to me as if the only way we can get Google Authorship working is to set up additional Google Plus accounts (users) and then manage 2 accounts for each professional. I was wondering if anyone in the community knows a way of getting the Google plus local pages to work with authorship? Or do you have any other suggestions on how this may work? Please let me know if you need more information, Thank you.
Local Listings | | B2B.CFO0