We watched hospitality marketing evolve dramatically over the years, starting with the clean, predictable funnel: awareness, consideration, booking. It served us well. We could measure it, optimize it, and feel confident in the process it promised.
NB: This is an article from gcommerce
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But that model is breaking. Today, 60% of searches end without a click. Travelers are not making it to your site the way they used to. Search engines and AI are serving answers before anyone even lands on your page. The journey to booking is no longer linear. It is fragmented, circular, and often invisible.
So what do we do in this zero-click world?
We stop thinking in straight lines and start building adaptive growth loops. Marketing systems that listen, learn, and continually feed back into each other.
Why funnels don’t work anymore
Funnels assume a neat progression: you find us, you compare us, you book with us. Reality is messier. A potential guest might see a display ad, scroll past your property on Instagram or TikTok, check rates on an OTA, revisit your blog, get retargeted with an ad, receive a reminder via email, and only then decide to book. Sometimes they book without ever visiting your site at all.
Trying to force that into a funnel does not just fall short. It ignores how travel browsing actually happens now.
What works instead are loops. Strategies that adapt. Every interaction, whether it is an email open, an ad view, or a review read, feeds into the next one. These loops learn from behavior and make the journey smarter, more responsive, and more personal.
Tactical takeaway: Map your current guest journey. List out every touchpoint where a traveler interacts with your brand. Ask yourself if those touchpoints are connected or if they operate in silos. Look for opportunities to create continuity, such as aligning messaging between your display campaigns and your follow-up emails.
Organic search is fading, but content still counts
Ranking well in Google historically has been marketing gold. Now, AI-generated results and featured snippets are claiming more real estate and more clicks.
That said, this does not mean SEO is dead. Fresh content, helpful blogs, and useful information are more important than ever. Google rewards them, and AI relies on them.
But here is the reality. Organic search is no longer the only hero. We need media, owned channels, and marketing loops that learn from behavior to fill the gaps.
Hotels often ask: What kind of content should we be creating? The answer lies in listening to your guests and your market. Here are some effective ways to uncover topics worth writing about:
