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Hi David,

In the past, I have done a lot of work with Hotels in this arena. Their market is super competitive and varies by country.

I found that various schema with geo coordinates/contact info and hasmap showing the Google Maps link, links to relevant local businesses/newspaper sites, uniform NAPU and localised content on the site saying, for example, what is available around the hotel with travel times and distances.

People search for hotels by location once they have refined their search to staying at a hotel over other accommodation options. This does vary in the UK however over the US. Google Map Listings in general are slightly different here in the UK.

I would have a read of some of the articles on DealerOn, there could be some gems in there for you:

http://www.dealeron.com/about-us/leadership-team/greg-gifford/

Also here is what Google says about prominence:

Prominence

Prominence refers to how well known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local rankings. For example, famous museums, landmark hotels or well-known shop brands that are familiar to many people are also likely to be more prominent in local search results.

Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (such as links, articles and directories). Google review count and score are also factored into local search ranking – more reviews and positive ratings will improve a business's local ranking. Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices apply to local search optimisation.

There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. We do our best to keep the details of the search algorithm confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone.

Is there anything in this specifically that could be improved, articles, reviews, basic overall SEO including schema mark up?

The basic premise is that Google needs to trust the information you supply in your Google My Business account. So here we are talking about the NAP(U) information - Name, Address, Phone Number and URL. So once you set up a GMB account Google goes to various sources online to check the validity of the information you have supplied (directories etc). So think uniformity of your NAP(U) information. Google needs to see that where ever your NAP(U) info is mentioned online that it is consistent, this therefore, builds trust in the information you supply.

Where issues can occur are with aggregator directories. Certain directories online spread your information to other directories, so if your information is inaccurate in one directory this could be spread to other places.

Have a read of Greg Difford's stuff online, he has a site called DealerOn. He is a guru on all things local, he speaks at events all over the world so there are some good videos out there.

Moz Local is good at getting all your NAP(U) details uniform online also BrightLocal are decent.