Local SEO for the tourism industry

Imagine: someone is standing in Ghent on a Saturday morning and types on their phone “kayaking Ardennes next week”. Or someone is comparing three B&Bs in Haspengouw via Google Maps, three weeks before their booking. In both cases, the Local Pack, reviews and a set of local signals decide who is visible and who is not.

Tourism is the sector where local SEO delivers the most direct returns. Your hotel, holiday home, restaurant or attraction is by definition location-bound. You cannot deliver a stay in Bruges or a cycling trip through the Belgian Ardennes online. The visitor has to come to you. That fact makes local SEO not an optional layer on top of your marketing strategy, but the core of it.

This article is a collaboration between ClickForest and Tourism Marketing Group, specialists in digital strategy for the tourism sector. Together we guide tourism businesses in building a local online presence that generates more direct bookings.

Tourism is the ideal sector for local SEO

Not every type of business benefits equally from local SEO. An internationally oriented webshop has little use for it. A tourism business is in a unique position: its product only exists on-site.

Search intent is high, purchase readiness too. Someone searching for “boutique hotel Bruges” or “day trip with children Kempen” is already well along in their decision-making process. Google calls this an “I-want-to-go moment”: the moment when someone is looking for a concrete destination or activity and is ready to book.

That is what sets tourism apart from many other sectors. In tourism, local visibility is not just a marketing objective, it is a commercial lever that directly affects reservations, occupancy rates and revenue.

An additional benefit: local SEO reduces dependence on booking platforms like Booking.com or TripAdvisor. Whoever is organically visible in Google generates direct bookings without paying commission. For smaller players, especially in the tourism sector, that is a significant difference.

The Local Pack: your digital shopfront

For local searches, Google shows three businesses on a map at the top of the results. That is the Local Pack, also known as the “map pack” or “3-pack”. Whoever is not in it simply does not exist for that searcher at that moment.

Someone searching for “bed and breakfast Durbuy” or “activities Ardennes” is literally ready to book. The three factors that determine whether you appear are:

• Relevance: how well your profile matches the search query
• Distance: how close you are to the searcher or the searched location
• Prominence: how strong your online presence is (reviews, links, listings)

Each of those three factors can be influenced. It starts with your Google Business Profile, but it does not stop there.

Your Google Business Profile as foundation

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the starting point of every local SEO strategy. Free, but half-heartedly filled in by a surprisingly large number of tourism businesses. According to Google, fully optimised profiles are 2.7 times more credible to potential customers than incomplete ones.

Below is an overview of the essential GBP elements for tourism businesses and the most common mistakes:

Use Google Posts actively for seasonal offers, events and package deals. Add UTM parameters to the links so you track traffic from your profile correctly in your analytics. Want to see what that looks like in practice? Tourism Marketing Group helps tourism businesses with the complete set-up and management of their digital profile.

Local landing pages per location or activity

A strong Google Business Profile is step one. Step two is your website.

Most tourism businesses have one generic page describing their offering. That is not enough to rank for the specific searches that actually generate commercial value.

A separate landing page per location, activity or region gives Google the context to match you with the right searcher. Pages like “weekend break Haspengouw”, “bike rental Belgian Ardennes” or “family activities Eifel” speak directly to both the searcher and the algorithm. This is also the logic behind thorough keyword research: knowing which terms your target audience uses, and linking those terms to specific, relevant content.

Each local landing page ideally contains:

• A unique description of the location or activity, with authentic local context
• Practical information: accessibility, parking, opening hours per season
• A FAQ block with questions local searchers ask (“How far is this from Brussels?”, “Is this suitable for young children?”)
• Reviews or testimonials referring to that specific location or experience
• A clear call-to-action to your booking page or contact form

Conversion optimisation plays a role here too: a page that ranks well but converts poorly does not help your revenue. Consider adding an AI chatbot to your landing page that answers visitor questions about the activity, price or availability directly, without them leaving your page.

Reviews in tourism: the new word-of-mouth

In tourism, reviews are not a secondary concern. They are the purchase decision.

The Whitespark & BrightLocal Local Search Ranking Factors report of 2026 shows that reviews now represent 20% of local pack ranking factors, up from 16% in 2023. Google analyses not just whether you have reviews, but what they say: the tone, the specific words visitors use, the regions and activities they mention.

A positive review with words like “peaceful setting”, “perfect for children” or “authentic Ardennes atmosphere” works doubly: it helps your ranking and sells your product to the next reader.

“If your business is not consistently getting new reviews, competitors will quietly pass you in the rankings. You probably won’t notice until it’s too late.”

— Darren Shaw, founder, Whitespark

Practical advice for tourism businesses:

• Actively ask for reviews after every stay or activity, preferably via an automated follow-up flow by email or SMS
• Always respond to negative feedback, empathetically and promptly. Future visitors are watching
• Encourage guests to use specific words: the region, the type of activity, the season, what surprised them

Hyper-local link building: rooting yourself in your region

Links from local websites, news platforms, associations and niche blogs count towards local rankings. In tourism, the opportunities are particularly rich.

Useful sources for local backlinks:

• Listings on regional portals such as Toerisme Vlaanderen, Visit Brussels or Wallonie Belgique Tourisme
• Collaboration with local events: a cycling race, jazz festival or Christmas market
• Guest posts on walking or cycling blogs, food blogs or travel bloggers visiting your region
• Press releases with local media for new offerings or expansions
• Sponsorship of local cultural initiatives in exchange for a mention on their website

Listings on recognised tourism platforms also contribute to what Google calls “prominence”: proof that your business exists and is relevant beyond your own website. Tourism Marketing Group has a strong network within the Belgian tourism sector and supports businesses in building that local presence.

Voice search and zero-click: how the modern tourist searches

More and more searches are made by voice and in natural language. In tourism that sounds like:

• “What are fun things to do in Ghent this weekend?”
• “Which hotel has a swimming pool in the Ardennes?”
• “Open now: pancake restaurant Bruges”

Answering these long-tail queries requires something different from classic keyword use. They call for conversational content, direct answers and correct markup so search engines correctly understand your opening hours, location and offering. Voice search optimisation for tourism content follows different principles from classic SEO text optimisation.

Zero-click is a related phenomenon: Google gives the answer directly in the search results, without the user clicking through. The importance of zero-click for local businesses grows as Google shows more context directly from structured data.

“Mobile devices made up 70.5% of global online travel traffic in 2024.”

— Search Engine Journal

Make sure your content is written in natural language, that opening hours are correct in your GBP and that your website loads quickly on mobile. Structured data plays a technical but decisive role in all of this.

GEO: AI is increasingly shaping the outcome in tourism too

Beyond Google, a new category of search engines is playing a growing role: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and similar AI systems. When someone asks “What are the best small-scale hotels in the Belgian Ardennes?”, such a system generates an answer based on available web content, reviews, blogs and structured data.

This is what Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) means: ensuring that your tourism business is citable for AI systems, not just findable in traditional search engines. For webshops, a similar logic applies: agentic commerce describes how AI agents increasingly compare products and services autonomously on behalf of users. In tourism, it works no differently.

“76% of people who search on their smartphones for a product or service offered nearby visit a business within a day.”

Google Think with Google, “I-Want-to-Go Moments: From Search to Store” — thinkwithgoogle.com

For tourism businesses, GEO means in practice:

• Writing content in natural language that answers questions a traveller asks
• Being listed on reputable tourism portals, so AI models recognise you as a reliable source
• Structurally and semantically strong texts on your website, with clear entities: location, activity type, target audience, season
• Regularly updated information, as AI systems weigh freshness and reliability

The boundary between classic SEO and GEO is blurring faster and faster. More on the evolution of SEO and AI combined is available elsewhere on our blog.

“Reviews have risen to 20% of local pack ranking factors in 2026, up from 16% in 2023.”

Whitespark & BrightLocal, Local Search Ranking Factors 2026 — brightlocal.com

From theory to execution

Local SEO for tourism has clear priorities. In order of impact:

• Start with a fully and correctly completed Google Business Profile, per location or venue
• Create separate landing pages per location, activity or region, optimised for the specific search intent
• Build a systematic review strategy: ask actively, respond consistently
• Source local backlinks via tourism platforms, event partners and regional media
• Optimise content for voice search and conversational queries
• Invest in GEO visibility for AI-powered search engines

Not sure where you stand? A digital audit quickly maps the strengths and weaknesses of your current presence. ClickForest guides tourism businesses in building a tailored local SEO strategy, in collaboration with Tourism Marketing Group for those who also need broader tourism marketing or strategy support. No abstract recommendations, concrete execution: from technical optimisation to content that reaches AI systems.

Book a video call and discuss what local SEO can concretely mean for your tourism business.