Hotel & tourism marketing company in Saudi Arabia
We run digital marketing for hotels, resorts, serviced apartments and travel agencies across the Kingdom: ranking for the searches that carry booking intent, multiplying direct bookings through your own website, and reducing the dependence on OTA commission that quietly takes a share of every night you sell.
Target indicators for the first 6–9 months of engagement. Actual results vary with property size, starting point and media budget.
In short: who we are and what we do
Steps Grow is a digital marketing agency specialised in the hospitality and tourism sector in Saudi Arabia. We work with hotels, resorts, serviced apartments, chalets, travel agencies and Hajj and Umrah service providers, and we handle the full system: SEO for room and destination pages, paid campaigns across Google, Meta and TikTok, booking engine conversion optimisation, reputation and review management, and Arabic and English content built to appear both in traditional search results and in AI-generated answers. The objective is measurable and singular: more room nights sold at a lower acquisition cost, with a larger share coming direct.
Where exactly is your hotel’s revenue leaking?
Most hospitality properties in the Kingdom do not suffer from weak demand. They suffer from weak capture. The demand exists and searches daily, but it reaches the booking platforms before it reaches you.
Commission eating the margin
Global booking platforms take a percentage of every night they sell. A hotel relying on them for 70% of its nights gives up a fixed slice of annual revenue on bookings that could have arrived directly.
A website that does not rank
Search “hotel near the Haram” or “family resort in Abha” and the intermediaries dominate the results, while the official website of the property that actually owns the product sits on page three.
A booking engine that leaks
The visitor does reach your site, then stumbles: a slow rooms page, unclear rates, too many booking steps, or a confusing mobile experience. The result is an abandoned basket and a booking completed at a competitor.
Unmanaged reputation
Google Maps reviews are the property’s first shop window. An unanswered negative review, or a business profile missing photos and amenities, costs you bookings that never appear in any report.
Commission leak and direct booking impact calculator
Move the sliders to match your property and see immediately how much you pay booking platforms in commission each year, and how much of it you could recover by shifting part of those nights to direct bookings on your own website.
A realistic range in the first year of systematic work is usually between 20% and 40%.
Estimated result
How every 100 nights breaks down after the shift
An indicative planning estimate. It assumes a direct marketing cost equal to 8% of shifted revenue and holds rate and night volume constant. Actual figures are calculated after reviewing your PMS reports and channel distribution.
A complete hotel marketing system under one roof
We do not sell isolated services. We build a system where the channels work together: search captures intent, advertising accelerates demand, the website converts, and reputation closes the decision.
Hospitality SEO
A site structure covering every search intent: a page per room category, pages for facilities, venues and restaurants, and destination and nearby-attraction pages. We handle speed, hotel-specific Schema markup and the crawl issues that dynamic booking sites create.
Local SEO and Google Maps
Full business profile optimisation: categories, amenities, professional photography, Q&A and seasonal posts. The objective is appearing in the local pack for “hotel near me” and “resort in…” searches.
Paid advertising
Search campaigns on high-intent keywords, retargeting for visitors who viewed rooms without booking, and Meta and TikTok campaigns for destinations and seasonal offers, with conversions tied to booking value rather than click count.
Conversion rate optimisation
Reviewing the booking journey step by step: rate and policy clarity, fewer form fields, a visible best-rate advantage for direct booking, and removing the mobile friction where most of the loss occurs.
Reputation and reviews
A system for generating positive reviews after checkout, professional responses to negative ones that protect the brand, and monitoring what is said about the property so it becomes an operational input.
Content and photography
Arabic and English content written to hospitality standards: destination guides, seasonal and event articles, room descriptions that actually sell, plus direction on photo shoots so they cover what guests search for.
Email, automation and CRM
Monetising the guest database you already have: pre-arrival messages that sell upgrades, win-back campaigns for past guests, and targeted seasonal offers. The cheapest booking is a repeat booking from a guest who already knows you.
AI search visibility
Preparing content to be cited inside AI assistant answers and generative search results: direct answers, structured data, and consistent brand mentions across trusted hospitality sources.
Reporting and analysis
A monthly report connecting marketing to revenue: nights sold per channel, acquisition cost, direct booking share and average booking value — not impressions and followers.
Every hospitality segment has a different booking journey
The guest booking a family suite in AlUla does not think like the pilgrim looking for a room close to the Haram. Choose your segment to see how we approach it.
Hotels and resorts
The competition here is not only the property next door. It is the booking platforms bidding on your own name. We build a presence that makes the official website the natural destination for the searcher: independent pages for every room and suite category, pages for the facilities people search for in their own right such as the pool, the spa and the event venues, and seasonal content published weeks ahead of peak so it ranks before demand arrives.
On the paid side, we defend the brand name in search results and target the people who compared rates without booking, with messaging that shifts according to forecast occupancy.
- Room and suite pages built for search and conversion
- Brand name protection against intermediary bidding
- Best-rate-when-booking-direct offers
- Marketing for event and meeting venues
- Seasonal packages for holidays and national occasions
Serviced apartments and furnished units
This segment lives on long stays, families and corporate staff. The buyer searches in a completely different language: “monthly furnished apartments”, “family accommodation with a kitchen”, “units near the business district”. We build content around those phrases and lead with what actually matters: space, kitchen, parking, long-stay policy and proximity to key facilities.
We also create a dedicated path for corporate contracts, because a single corporate account can be worth dozens of individual bookings.
- Targeting monthly and long-stay intent
- A page per district and business area
- A corporate enquiry and RFP path
- Content that states amenities and policies clearly
- Retargeting for temporary-accommodation searchers
Hajj, Umrah services and central-area hotels
A season with sharp peaks and an audience arriving from dozens of countries in multiple languages. Success is tied to early preparation: building the content months before the season, covering the questions about distance to the Haram and walking times and accompanying services, with language versions written for the markets that actually send pilgrims.
We also pace the paid campaigns to scale up as the season approaches rather than burning budget at the wrong moment in the cycle.
- Seasonal content published well before the peak
- Multiple language versions for target markets
- Distance and proximity-to-Haram pages
- Comparable, bookable packages and programmes
- Media scheduling that scales with the season
Travel agencies and tourism companies
An agency sells trust before it sells a ticket or a programme. So we focus on the content that builds that trust and answers the pre-purchase questions: visas, budgets, the best time to travel, and day-by-day itineraries. These articles attract the traveller early in the journey, and we retarget them with the right offer once the decision matures.
That connects to fast contact paths through WhatsApp and short forms, because travel decisions move quickly at the moment of conviction.
- Destination guides and detailed itineraries
- Indexable, comparable package pages
- Instant contact paths with conversation tracking
- Retargeting by the destination browsed
- Holiday season and limited-offer campaigns
Chalets, rest houses and camps
A short-cycle, fast-decision market. The searcher wants an available unit for next weekend and decides on photos, rating and price within minutes. Local SEO, visual quality and response speed decide the outcome here, alongside calendar management that prevents double bookings and reduces cancellations.
We also market private events, because they lift average booking value noticeably.
- Strong presence in Google Maps and local search
- Professional visual presentation of units and facilities
- Fast mobile booking and confirmation
- Weekend and special-occasion offers
- Systematic review generation after checkout
Experiences, activities and destinations
Tours, events and leisure activities sell on inspiration first. We build visual content that shows the experience honestly, supported by pages that can be booked directly rather than handing the visitor to an intermediary, and covering the questions about timing, pricing, age suitability and what the price includes.
During major seasons and events we run short, intensive campaign bursts tied to specific dates with daily performance monitoring.
- Visual content that shows the experience honestly
- Activity pages with instant booking
- Campaigns tied to events and seasons
- Partnerships with hotels and tour operators
- Daily performance tracking during the season
We work with hospitality properties across every Saudi destination
Every destination in the Kingdom has its own season, audience and search language. We build an independent keyword map and local content for each city rather than duplicating one template.
The guest no longer only searches. They ask an AI assistant
A growing share of travel decisions now begins with an open question to an AI tool: “recommend a family hotel in Jeddah near the Corniche within this budget”. A property absent from that answer loses the booking before the competition even starts.
Direct, quotable answers
We write content that answers the question in the first two lines, because generative models quote clear, specific passages rather than long descriptive paragraphs.
Accurate structured data
Marking pages up with hotel, review and FAQ Schema gives the machine an explicit understanding of amenities, rates and location instead of leaving it to infer them.
Consistent brand mentions
Unifying the name, address and property description across directories, hospitality platforms and news sources raises model confidence in recommending you.
Decision questions covered
The questions a guest asks before booking — proximity, breakfast, cancellation, parking, family suitability — are written as clear, standalone content units.
Visibility monitoring
We track how the property is mentioned in AI assistant answers for high-value questions, and correct gaps and outdated information as they appear.
Reputation that supports it
Review volume, recency and response quality are signals both search engines and generative models lean on when choosing between two close options.
Five phases from diagnosis to stable growth
The order is not cosmetic. Each phase is built on the output of the one before it, and skipping any of them is the most common reason budgets get wasted.
Diagnosis and reading the numbers
Reviewing website and booking engine performance, revenue distribution across channels, current acquisition cost, and three direct competitors in the same price and geographic bracket. The output is a report listing the gaps ranked by revenue impact.
Strategy and keyword mapping
Building a complete search intent map for the property and the city, assigning it to specific pages with quarterly execution priorities, alongside defining the message for each guest segment and the measurable targets attached to it.
Technical foundation and content
Fixing speed, structure, structured data and mobile compatibility, then producing the room, facility, destination and seasonal pages in Arabic and English, and reshaping the booking path to remove its leak points.
Media and reputation operations
Launching paid campaigns on a budget curve that follows seasonality, activating the review generation and response system, and running email and automation campaigns to the existing guest base to raise the return rate.
Measurement and expansion
A monthly report reading nights sold, acquisition cost and direct booking share, with a review meeting where we decide where to double investment and where to stop spending that is not returning.
The difference between a general agency and a team that understands hospitality
Specialisation is not a slogan here. It is the difference between measuring followers and measuring room nights sold against acquisition cost.
| Criterion | A general marketing agency | Steps Grow — Hospitality Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Success metric | Reach, followers and engagement | Nights sold, acquisition cost, direct booking share |
| Understanding seasonality | A flat budget all year | Spend that builds before each season and eases after |
| Relationship with OTAs | Ignored entirely | A deliberate balance between intermediary and direct |
| Booking engine | Out of scope | A core part of the conversion work |
| Content | Repetitive general posts | Room, destination and guide pages that actually sell |
| Languages | Usually Arabic only | Arabic and English to international hospitality standards |
| AI search visibility | Not on the table | A permanent part of the content and measurement plan |
Is your property ready to rank and capture direct bookings?
Tick the items you genuinely have in place today and you will get an immediate digital readiness score out of 100, with a candid read of your position and the next priority to work on.
Digital readiness score
Nothing selected yet. Start by ticking what you genuinely have in place.
This is a quick indicative assessment. A real diagnosis includes reviewing website and booking engine reports and revenue distribution across channels, delivered as a written report within one working day.
What hotel managers ask before signing
What makes a specialist hotel marketing agency different from a general one?
A general agency treats a hotel like any other brand and measures engagement and reach. A specialist team understands that the product is perishable: the room not sold tonight cannot be sold tomorrow. So we work on the same operational indicators you do — occupancy, average daily rate, cost of acquiring a booking and direct booking share — and we treat the booking engine and distribution channels as part of the scope, not as someone else’s problem.
How long does SEO take to produce tangible results?
The first improvements usually start appearing within 6 to 10 weeks of fixing technical issues and publishing the target pages, while stable results on competitive keywords typically take 4 to 8 months depending on how contested the city is and the age of the site. Paid campaigns run in parallel to deliver immediate bookings while the organic track matures.
Do you work with properties outside Riyadh and Jeddah?
Yes. We serve hospitality properties across every region of the Kingdom, working remotely with regular online meetings and on-site visits when needed for photo shoots or workshops. Each destination gets its own local content plan built around its seasonality and audience.
How do you grow direct bookings without losing the OTAs?
We do not recommend withdrawing from the platforms. They are an important exposure channel, particularly for international markets. The goal is rebalancing: capturing the searcher who already knows your name before they reach the intermediary, and offering clear value for booking direct such as a better rate, an upgrade or cancellation flexibility, with an easier mobile booking experience.
What does hotel marketing cost per month in Saudi Arabia?
It depends on room count, the number of destinations targeted, competition level and the languages required. Management retainers typically start in the low thousands of riyals per month for smaller properties and rise for chains and multi-site groups. Media budget is separate from the retainer and is set against your revenue target and acceptable acquisition cost.
Do you manage Google hotel advertising?
Yes, including search campaigns on high-intent keywords, brand name protection, and retargeting for visitors who browsed room pages without completing a booking, plus hotel ad channels connected to the booking engine where the necessary technical integration with your system is available.
How do you handle negative reviews?
With fast, professional responses that acknowledge the issue and state the corrective action without public argument, and by categorising recurring complaints into an operational report for management. In parallel we build a steady flow of positive reviews after checkout, because the real fix for a negative review is making it an exception among a large volume of recent ratings.
Do you produce content in both Arabic and English?
Yes, and we treat the English version as an independent marketing asset rather than a literal translation, because the international searcher uses different terminology and comparison criteria. We also configure the technical settings for language versions so they index correctly without conflict or duplication.
What does appearing inside AI answers mean for a hotel?
It means the property gets recommended when a user asks an AI assistant for accommodation matching specific criteria. That comes from content that answers clearly and specifically, accurate structured data, consistent property information across trusted sources, and a strong reputation with recent reviews. This channel is growing quickly, and properties that arrive late lose the window of early, low-competition visibility.
Which indicators do you measure success against?
Nights sold per channel, revenue from direct bookings and its share of the total, cost of acquiring a booking, website and booking engine conversion rate, average booking value, rankings for commercial-intent keywords, and review growth and average rating. All of it appears in a single monthly report tied to targets agreed in advance.
Start with a free diagnosis of your property’s performance
Send us your website link and property name, and within one working day you will get a short report outlining the main gaps in your visibility and booking path, plus the three fastest opportunities to increase direct bookings.