Tourism SEO + AI Search
Help travellers and planners discover your destination, find relevant hotels, venues and experiences, and take the next step toward a stay, visit or event.
20 years in search · Former Head of SEO, Expedia ANZ
Request My Search ReviewFor Destination Marketing Organizations, Tourism Boards and Convention & Visitors Bureaus
With tourism SEO and AI-search optimisation. Focus your search investment on the audiences and travel periods that matter to your destination, not simply a bigger traffic number.
Start with one destination priority. Get three recommended improvements and a clear next step.
Does this sound like your team?
The answer isn’t to abandon your existing marketing. It’s to make search a more useful part of it.
Your website attracted visitors. The campaign generated engagement. Then someone asks: “What did this do for our accommodation providers, attractions and venues?” You need a clearer answer than another chart of sessions and rankings.
Local businesses need more interest during quieter weekdays or shoulder seasons. But your search activity isn’t clearly connected to those periods. More attention at the wrong time isn’t the same as useful demand.
You maintain destination guides, partner listings and itineraries. Yet when you check an important planning search, a travel publisher, booking platform or competing destination appears before your official website.
A planner asks about venues without sharing dates, delegate numbers or accommodation requirements. Your team spends time clarifying requests that may never fit the destination.
You already have campaigns to manage, partners to support and content to approve. An audit that adds dozens of unexplained tasks doesn’t solve the problem. You need priorities, practical help and clear responsibility for getting changes live.
Publish another article. Refresh another listing. Launch the next campaign. Pull the monthly report. Each activity may have a purpose. But the connection between them can still be missing: Which visitors are we trying to reach? What do they need to decide? Where should they go next? What can we measure?
The new way
The aim is a clearer path from planning question, to destination information, to a relevant local business, to measurable action.
A quieter travel period. A priority visitor segment. A group enquiry your venues are equipped to handle. That becomes the starting point for your SEO and AI-search work.
Connect useful destination content to the accommodation, venues, attractions and experiences that help someone put a plan together.
Know what deserves attention first, who is responsible and which changes depend on your website provider. Give leadership a clearer account of progress: what changed, which actions were observed and where the evidence stops.
Get three recommended improvements and a clear next step.
A travel search becomes useful when it helps someone reach a relevant local business.
How your destination search programme works
We start with the result your team is trying to support. That could be midweek short breaks, shoulder-season stays, conference enquiries or greater discovery for a particular part of the destination.
The work can include technical fixes, page edits, content briefs, clearer destination facts and better connections to relevant local businesses.
We agree on the actions that matter and check how they can be measured. Depending on your systems, that may include referrals to partner websites, completed planner enquiries and visits to booking systems.
Start with a Destination Search Opportunity Review
You don’t need to commit to a full search programme to work out where to begin. Bring one audience, travel period, destination product or priority market. I’ll focus the review on that opportunity.
Understand which planning questions matter, how your destination currently appears and which pages deserve a closer look.
You get: A clearer view of the priority opportunity.
Receive three prioritised recommendations, including the pages involved, why each change matters and what implementation would require.
You get: Three recommended improvements with practical next steps.
Get a suggested measurement approach that distinguishes useful visitor actions from general website activity.
You get: A short written review and an annotated example of one priority page.
The review is a separate first step. Any implementation or ongoing support is agreed separately.
Bring one priority. Get a clearer next move.
Tourism search experience from inside Expedia
At Expedia Australia and New Zealand, I helped recover more than 40% of lost organic traffic and subsequently grow organic search into the region’s largest revenue channel.
The work brought together technical recovery, destination pages, hotel partners, public relations and tourism relationships.
That experience informs how I approach destination search today: understand the decision someone is making, improve the information they find and give them a useful next step.
For your DMO, the focus is your official website and the local businesses it supports.
40%+ of lost organic traffic recovered · Organic search became Expedia ANZ’s largest revenue channel. Historical career results, not a forecast for your destination.
Share your official website and the opportunity you want to support.
Frequently asked questions
The work can sit alongside your existing team. We first establish what is already being handled and where specialist support would add something useful. That might be destination-specific search research, improving priority pages, AI-search assessment or connecting search reporting to partner actions. There’s no assumption that you need to replace a provider.
I offer strategy and hands-on implementation, with responsibilities agreed around your website, access and existing team. Before work starts, you’ll know which changes I handle, what your team needs to approve and what requires your website provider. The initial review identifies priorities. Implementation is scoped separately.
A rebuild is not the starting recommendation. First, I assess what can be improved within your current platform. Where a platform limitation creates a genuine obstacle, I’ll explain the issue and the options before recommending a larger project.
AEO means answer engine optimisation. In this service, it means assessing how your destination information can support AI-generated answers as well as conventional search results. There is considerable overlap with SEO: useful content, accurate information, clear structure and technical accessibility. Google states that its AI search features do not require a separate set of special optimisations. The work is not about filling your website with generic AI-written articles.
No. I can improve the content and technical foundations within our control and monitor selected searches and answers. I cannot control which sources an AI system selects or guarantee inclusion. Google also makes clear that meeting its requirements does not guarantee a page will be indexed or shown.
That can be the focus of the work. We investigate the audiences, trip types and planning questions connected to the period you want to support. The opportunity needs to match something your destination can realistically offer. The plan should reflect your visitors’ planning lead time, not a promise that search can fill an immediate gap on demand.
Yes. The work can focus on leisure visitors, meeting planners or group organisers. For business events, the content may need to answer questions about venue capacity, accommodation, transport, accessibility and local experiences. We also look at what your enquiry process needs to collect so the next conversation is useful.
We start with what your website can observe. For example, suitably configured analytics can record clicks that send someone to another website. Confirmed bookings require suitable partner data or connected systems. A referral is not counted as a booking, and a booking is not automatically treated as an additional sale caused by this work. Your report will make those distinctions clear.
The first review provides priorities, not a promise of immediate traffic or bookings. Search changes take time to be processed and evaluated. Google notes that some effects can appear quickly, while others can take months; not every change produces a noticeable improvement. Your plan will distinguish delivery milestones from the outcomes we are working toward.
I’ll respond to confirm your destination priority, the review scope and any information needed. You’ll know the format, timing and any fee before the review begins. Requesting a review does not commit you to an ongoing programme.
Bring one priority. Get a clearer next move.
About Brent Manning
I’m Brent Manning, an independent search consultant working with destination organisations and hospitality businesses.
My search career began in 2006 and includes leading SEO at Expedia Australia and New Zealand. Today, I bring that experience to organisations that want a stronger connection between online discovery and useful commercial action.
Outside the work. Away from search, I spend time paddleboarding, training Muay Thai and making music with my wife, Gal. Home is Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Help your destination become easier to discover, easier to choose and more useful to the local businesses that make it worth visiting.
Request My Search ReviewTell me about your destination
Bring one priority. Get a clearer next move. The Destination Search Opportunity Review will focus on that priority and identify three recommended improvements, what they involve and how to assess progress.
Submitting this form does not commit you to an ongoing service. Your details will be used to respond to this request and discuss your destination’s needs.
Request My Search Review
