Glossary
Hotel digital marketing, in plain English
40 terms hoteliers hear in meetings, proposals and dashboards — defined the way we would explain them on a call, with links to the guides that go deeper.
Search & SEO
Whether Google can find you, understand you and show you for the searches guests actually type.
Crawlability
Whether search engine bots can read your pages at all. If key pages block crawling or hide content behind scripts, they cannot rank for anything — a core check in a SEO audit.
Indexing
Whether Google has added a page to its index so it can appear in results. You can check this with a site: search or in Google Search Console; a submitted sitemap does not force it.
Canonical tag
A line of code that tells search engines which URL is the real version of a page when duplicates exist. Missing or wrong tags split ranking signals across several URLs and weaken all of them.
Structured data
Machine-readable code (schema markup) that tells Google what a page contains — prices, reviews, availability. It can improve how results look, though it never guarantees rich results. Checked as part of a technical SEO review.
Sitemap
A file listing the pages you want search engines to crawl. Submitting it in Search Console helps discovery, but it does not guarantee indexing or ranking on its own.
SERP
Search engine results page — the page Google shows for a query. What appears above the fold (ads, map pack, OTA listings) decides who gets the click before organic results matter.
Backlink
Another website linking to yours. Quality and relevance matter far more than volume, and bought links are a penalty risk rather than a shortcut.
Local SEO
Optimising so you appear when nearby guests search for places to stay. It leans on your Google Business Profile, reviews and consistent contact details — see the local SEO guide.
Content audit
A structured review of what you publish — pages, posts, photos, room descriptions — against what guests actually search for. Our hotel content audit covers this area.
Wayfinding
How easily a visitor finds their way from any page to a room and the booking button. Confusing navigation costs bookings before price ever enters the conversation — a focus of the website conversion guide.
Bookings & distribution
How rooms reach guests, who sits in the middle, and what each channel costs you.
OTA
Online travel agency — a site like Booking.com, MakeMyTrip or Expedia that sells your rooms to guests and charges commission on each booking. Listing quality is audited in an OTA listing audit.
Direct booking
A reservation made through your own website or phone, without an intermediary taking commission. Growing it is the point of most digital work — see the direct booking guide.
Channel manager
Software that pushes your rates and availability to every channel at once, so you are not updating each extranet by hand. Its configuration affects how accurately parity holds across channels.
GDS
Global Distribution System — the network travel agents and corporate booking tools use to sell rooms. It matters more for business and city hotels than for leisure resorts.
Meta-search
A comparison layer — Google Hotels, Trivago, Kayak — that shows prices from many sellers side by side and sends the click to whichever channel the guest picks.
Google Hotel Ads
Google's paid metasearch product that shows your rates directly in search and on Google Maps. You pay per click or per booking depending on the model, so feed quality and landing pages decide the return.
Free booking links
Google's unpaid listings in the hotel search module, shown alongside paid slots. They cost nothing, but need a rate feed or a connected booking partner to display live prices.
Booking engine
The software on your own site that takes the reservation and payment. If it is slow or confusing, every other marketing effort leaks — reviewed in a booking engine audit.
Commission
The percentage an OTA keeps from each booking. It is the price of their demand, and the reason direct share matters commercially — the direct booking guide explains the trade-off.
Length of stay
The number of nights in a booking. Minimum-stay rules shape pricing and must match across channels, or guests and parity checks both get confused.
Cancellation policy
The rules governing free cancellation and no-shows. Policies that differ between channels cause guest disputes and are one of the most common parity complaints.
Pricing & revenue
The numbers that tell you whether your rates are actually working.
ADR
Average Daily Rate — room revenue divided by rooms sold. It shows what guests actually paid, ignoring unsold rooms, so it is always read next to occupancy.
RevPAR
Revenue per available room — room revenue divided by total rooms available, including unsold ones. It combines occupancy and rate, which makes it the better single-number health check.
Occupancy rate
The share of available rooms sold over a period. High occupancy at heavy discount can still be a poor result, which is why it is never judged alone.
Rate parity
Whether the same room, dates and conditions are priced the same across every channel. Parity breaks quietly through member discounts, mobile rates and mismatched inclusions — our rate parity guide covers how.
Net rate
The rate you keep after commission and taxes — what the room actually earns you. A higher gross OTA rate can still net less than a direct booking at a lower headline price.
BAR
Best Available Rate — the lowest publicly bookable, unrestricted rate for a room type. Member rates, packages and promotions are all anchored to it.
Reputation & local presence
How you look to a guest who has never heard of you — in reviews, in maps and across the web.
Google Business Profile
The free listing that controls how you look in Google Search and Maps — photos, hours, categories, reviews and posts. Audited field by field in our Google Business Profile audit.
Map pack
The block of local results Google shows above organic listings for location searches. Profile completeness, relevance and reviews drive who appears — covered in the local SEO guide.
Review velocity
How quickly new reviews arrive. A steady flow reads as a living property to both guests and algorithms; long gaps raise questions neither needs.
Response rate
The share of reviews you reply to, and how fast. An unanswered review costs more than the complaint itself — the review response guide covers tone and structure.
NAP consistency
Name, Address and Phone number appearing identically across your site, Google profile, OTAs and directories. Inconsistency confuses search engines and weakens local ranking.
Analytics, ads & conversion
What happens after someone lands on your site — and whether the money spent getting them there was worth it.
Conversion rate
The share of site visitors who complete a booking. Small improvements in flow and speed compound because they apply to every visitor — a focus of the website audit.
Bounce rate
The share of visitors who leave without interacting. A high bounce on a room page usually means the page did not match what the searcher expected, rather than one broken element.
Funnel leakage
Where guests drop out between landing, room selection, checkout and confirmation. Each abandoned step is a booking you already paid to attract — mapped in the direct booking audit.
Remarketing
Showing ads to people who already visited your site. Useful when booking decisions take days, provided frequency is capped and past guests are excluded.
Performance Max
Google's automated campaign type that runs across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail and Maps from one budget. Control is limited, so tracking and feed quality matter more than usual.
Pay-per-click
Paid search ads where you pay only when someone clicks. For hotels it often means competing with OTAs on your own brand terms — usually the first thing worth checking.
Click-through rate
The share of people who click your listing or ad out of everyone who saw it. A low rate with decent rankings usually means the title or snippet is not earning the click.
Return on ad spend
Revenue generated per unit of ad spend. Without accurate conversion tracking it is a guess dressed up as a metric, so tracking is fixed before budgets are.
Know the terms. Now see where you stand.
An audit turns this vocabulary into a scored, prioritised view of your own property.