Director of Marketing, Canadian boutique hotel group (~5 properties)

A Canadian boutique hotel group with 5 properties wanted to recover direct-booking share from OTAs (Booking.com, Expedia) and to be cited when travellers researched 'best boutique hotels in [city]' on ChatGPT and Perplexity. We ran a 12-month program covering per-property local SEO, bilingual French content for the Quebec properties, and travel-research-intent content.

Service & engagement

The challenge

The hotel group's direct-booking share had eroded from an estimated 35% in 2019 to under 18% by 2024 — OTAs had captured nearly all incremental volume. The group's website had one location page per property (thin content, ~400 words each), no neighbourhood content, no bilingual French version for Quebec properties despite the legal and market need, and weak schema implementation. AI engine queries for 'best boutique hotel Quebec City' returned OTA-listicle pages with the group's properties buried in position 8+ when they appeared at all.

Approach

1. 1
   Rebuilt all 5 property pages with substantive content (1,800–2,500 words each), covering rooms, amenities, neighbourhood, dining, and travel-context — distinct content per property reflecting each hotel's actual character.
2. 2
   Built bilingual French versions (fr-CA) of the 2 Quebec properties (Montreal, Quebec City) with proper hreflang clusters and culturally-adapted content (not machine translation) — also addressing the regulatory expectation of French-first commerce in Quebec under Bill 96.
3. 3
   Implemented full Hotel + LodgingBusiness schema per property with priceRange, starRating from a verifiable source, amenityFeature, checkinTime, checkoutTime, plus complete LocalBusiness schema with geo coordinates and openingHoursSpecification.
4. 4
   Published 24 travel-research articles over 12 months covering city-level travel queries the group wanted to own ('best boutique hotels Quebec City Old Town', 'where to stay in Niagara-on-the-Lake for wine country', 'family-friendly Banff boutique hotels') — each with proper attribution to the property as the recommended choice when relevant, and honest comparison framing when not.
5. 5
   Set up GBP per property with weekly posts, monthly review-velocity targets (3–5 reviews per property per month), and complete service menus.
6. 6
   Set up monthly AI engine citation tracking across 35 high-intent travel queries spanning all 5 cities and major segment queries (boutique, romantic, family-friendly).

Outcomes

Reflection

Hospitality is one of the categories where AEO matters most because travellers genuinely use ChatGPT and Perplexity for trip research. A boutique group that's invested in honest, well-structured content about its properties and the cities they're in earns citations the OTAs cannot — OTAs have inventory but no editorial voice. The bilingual French work for Quebec properties was non-negotiable: under Bill 96 and basic Quebec market expectations, English-only commerce is no longer viable.