Google Business Profile for hotels: the complete listing

It is the cheapest channel a hotel has and the most neglected. Someone searches “hotel in Palomino”, sees your listing, looks at three photos and decides whether to message you. All of that happens before your website.

What to fill in (and almost nobody does)

• The right primary category. “Hotel”, not “Lodging”. The category decides which searches you appear in.
• Secondary categories: restaurant, bar, event venue, if they apply.
• Attributes: wifi, pool, pet friendly, accessible, breakfast included. Google uses them as filters.
• Real opening hours and special holiday hours. Wrong hours are a negative review waiting to happen.
• Booking link and a WhatsApp button.
• A 750-character description with the name of the place and what makes you different, written for people.

Photos: how many and in what order

Listings with more than 30 photos get considerably more clicks than those with 5. The minimum:

• Façade and entrance (so people find you on arrival).
• Every room type, with the real view.
• Common areas, pool, restaurant.
• Breakfast served.
• The team at work.
• Surroundings: beach, park, street.

Upload new photos every month. A listing that never updates loses ground to one that does.

Posts: they do work

One post a week with an offer, a piece of news or an event. They last seven days and show on the listing. It is free and almost none of your competitors do it.

Questions and answers

You can post your own questions and answer them. Do it with the ten doubts that reach you most on WhatsApp: parking, pets, children, how to get there without a car, hot water. Every answer saves messages and builds trust.

What to check every month

• How many times you appeared in searches and for which terms.
• Calls, messages and direction requests.
• Clicks to the website.
• New reviews and average rating.

If directions go up but calls do not, the problem is the main photo or the rating. If you get lots of brand searches and few category searches, you are missing work on categories and attributes.

Mistakes that sink a listing

• Wrong category. A hotel listed as “inn” does not show up in hotel searches for the area.
• Imprecise address. If the pin lands on another street you lose “near me” searches and gain lost guests calling.
• A phone nobody answers. Google measures calls; so does the person calling.
• Photos from four years ago. The listing gets compared with reality and ends up in a review.
• Duplicate listings. Two listings split the reviews and neither ranks. Claim and merge them.

Ghotel in guachaca

Hotel Mendihuaca

4,5 ★★★★★ (1240)

Beachfront resort · Guachaca · Santa Marta

Position 1 · local results

How you climb in the map pack

Google ranks local results on three things: relevance, distance and prominence. You cannot change distance; you can change the other two:

• Relevance: complete categories and attributes, a description naming the place, services loaded one by one.
• Prominence: how many reviews and how recent, plus mentions of your hotel elsewhere (directories, local press, travel blogs) with the same name, address and phone everywhere.

That data consistency is boring, and it is half of local SEO.

A 30-minute monthly routine

1. Upload 5 to 10 new photos.
2. Publish four posts (one per week).
3. Answer every pending review.
4. Check new questions and answer them.
5. Write down the month’s four numbers and compare with the previous one.

Half an hour a month, done every month, moves a listing more than any trick.

That monthly upkeep is what we do in the Google Business Profile service.