Traveling is a great way to unwind, and if you’re looking for a cheaper way to explore foreign places, there are always travel agencies that can handle everything—all you need to do is show up and pay! But the thing is, online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Booking.com have quite a hold on Google search results with their multi-billion-dollar marketing budgets. As a result, small-scale and independent operators can only try to outbid them with high-volume keywords like “tours in Paris," which is a quick way to exhaust their ad budgets. But here’s the thing: small-time businesses actually have an ace in their sleeve that can go toe-to-toe with these OTA giants in a very unlikely way.
Before we get into it, let us paint a solid picture of the problem in the travel sector. If you run a small-time local business that offers bike tours in Paris and other historical sites, you can only hope that your local business is the first to pop up in Google. But the reality is that the top results are almost always dominated by OTAs like TripAdvisor or Agoda. They have a multi-million-dollar budget allocated for ads, so you’re guaranteed to lose when it comes to the Google Ads battle.
This is the main problem in itself since when travelers book through these OTAs, they usually take a 15% to 330% commission on that ticket—which is a pretty huge profit cut from the small business that’s actually doing the work. Obviously, these small-time operators cannot match Expedia’s budget for ads, so the only thing they can rely on is hyper-local authenticity.
Many operators are speeding up growth by partnering with agencies that truly understand the travel sector inside and out. Expert travel SEO company targets the intent gaps overlooked by major OTAs, allowing independent brands to step in and establish and build real domain authority and outrank larger competitors. Collaborating with agencies like this significantly improves their smart search strategies and expands their ways to outsmart the tech giants on Google without spending a fortune.
When it comes to exploring new places, travelers would often search for activities online like “bike tour near me" or “day tour in Florence.” From there, search engines like Google would usually display a map with three featured local businesses at the top of the page; this is known as the Map Pack or Local Pack.
Here is where small businesses have an advantage because Google requires an actual physical presence and authentic local connections to feature prominently, which is something TripAdvisor or the likes cannot easily win. As a small-time business owner, you can try doing the following:
Optimize your Google Business profile. Something as simple as providing accurate and up-to-date information, adding high-resolution photos of real tours, and clear business categories can help establish your business presence online.
Collect genuine customer reviews. Encouraging happy and satisfied customers to leave reviews about their happy experience will also do wonders for your business.
Leverage “near me” searches. Using location-focused keywords can help travelers search for activities more easily while already on vacation.
Big-time OTAs use broad, high-volume search phrases like “Florence Hotels” or “Paris Tours," and it’s difficult for small businesses to compete for these terms. What they can do, though, is target hyper-specific phrases, aka long-tail keywords, which reflect exactly what a unique traveler is looking for.
For example, instead of using “Italian food tour," just opt for specific keywords like “gluten-free market tour in Florence.”
Writing detailed website content about specialized topics significantly helps small tour operators by pulling in more travelers who are more than ready to make a reservation ASAP.
Any content that demonstrates first-hand experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T) is rewarded by Google with a higher ranking. If you’ve noticed among big-time OTA websites, many of their descriptions are heavily automated and are derived from thousands of different businesses. Local guides, on the other hand, can create authentic content that a corporate database cannot copy. Some of these include detailed blog posts, insider tips written by an actual local who lives there and has extensive experience, and using real and unedited media of real tour experiences.
This content directly answers travelers’ practical questions about the tour, which boosts the business’s ranking in Google compared to giant listing sites.
All in all, you don’t have to allocate significant funding to your ads to make your small business’s presence have more reach. Doing simple things like claiming your physical presence on Google Maps, publishing genuine local knowledge, and targeting specific niche searches can help you attract more travelers directly.
