Most hotels evaluate SEO the wrong way — comparing its cost against doing nothing. The right comparison is against what you're already spending to acquire the same guest through OTA channels.
OTA commissions typically run between 15% and 25% of gross booking revenue, depending on your agreement, property tier, and participation level in rate programs. On a $200/night room booked for three nights, that's $90–$150 in commission paid to a third party before a single dollar hits your bottom line.
When a guest finds your hotel through an organic Google search and books directly on your website, that commission goes to zero. The booking engine fee (usually 1–3%) is the only per-transaction cost. That gap — the avoided commission — is the primary financial engine behind hotel SEO ROI.
This framing matters because it changes how you evaluate the investment. A $3,000/month SEO retainer looks expensive when you're comparing it to $0. It looks very different when you're comparing it to the $18,000–$30,000 in commissions your property might pay on 100 incremental bookings at an average booking value of $400.
The question isn't whether SEO costs money. It does. The question is whether the direct bookings it generates — and the commissions those bookings displace — justify the investment over a defined time horizon. In our experience working with hotel properties, the answer depends heavily on three variables: average booking value, current OTA dependency, and how competitive organic search is in your market.
Properties with high ADR, heavy OTA reliance, and moderate organic competition tend to see the strongest ROI cases. Budget hotels in saturated urban markets face a steeper climb. Both can benefit — the math just looks different.