On Google UK's first page for "escorted tours", 880 searches a month, every organic result is a tour operator or a travel seller, and there is no aggregator: no Booking.com, no Tripadvisor, no Wikipedia (DataForSEO data, Google UK, September 2026). For a hotel that almost never happens. It is the first thing to know about SEO for organised travel: the first page can still be won by an operator's own site, even a small one.
Tourism SEO is the work that makes a tour operator, a travel agency or a destination findable when someone searches for a place to go, a type of trip or a time of year, before they search for a name. It is built around the destination rather than the company, runs mostly on informational content and is measured in enquiries and bookings, with a seasonality few other sectors have.
This guide covers tour operators, travel agencies, experience providers and destinations. Hotels have a different results page, taken up by OTAs and the Google Hotels block, and we cover them separately in the guide to hotel SEO.
How people search when they are buying a trip
We pulled two reference results pages with DataForSEO in September 2026, on desktop, on Google UK. The first is "escorted tours": in order, rivieratravel.co.uk, travelbyinspire.co.uk, globusjourneys.co.uk, justyou.co.uk, escapeworldwide.co.uk, greatrail.com, inewstravel.co.uk, americansky.co.uk and rivieratravel.co.uk again with a second page. Nine organic results, all of them selling tours. No local pack and no ads detected at the top in the desktop scan; there is an AI Overview between the first and second result.
The comparison with hotels makes the point. On "hotels london" (60,500 searches a month) 6 of the 9 organic results are OTAs and metasearch sites (Trivago, lastminute.com, Kayak, Booking.com, Google Travel, Trip.com), with three Google Hotels blocks between them. In organised travel that wall is not there: escapeworldwide.co.uk, americansky.co.uk and travelbyinspire.co.uk are small operators and they sit on page one.
The second results page is "beach holidays uk" (2,900 searches a month). Here there are eight organic results: onthebeach.co.uk, haven.com, sykescottages.co.uk, hoseasons.co.uk, awayresorts.co.uk, watersideholidaygroup.co.uk, parkdeanresorts.co.uk and simplyseaviews.co.uk. All eight sell holidays or holiday lets. Above everything there is an AI Overview, and we come back to it below.
The questions Google shows in the "People also ask" box for "escorted tours" tell you what searchers want: "Which escorted tour companies are the best in the UK?", "Which is the best escorted tour company in Europe?", "What is the difference between escorted and guided tours?", "What are the best tours of England for seniors and over 50s?". Comparison, definition, segment. The related searches add the departure point: escorted tours near London, near Manchester.
Then there is seasonality, which in travel sets the calendar for everything. "Escorted tours" moves between 590 and 1,600 searches a month, with a steady 1,000 a month from January to March. "Beach holidays uk" goes from 880 searches in November 2025 to 6,600 in July 2026: seven and a half times as many in eight months. A page published in June for July arrives late.
Why the blog brings in more traffic than the package pages
The most common belief among the operators we meet is that package pages are the ones that matter and the blog is there for image. The data from three UK operators says otherwise, at least for anyone who is not already a household name.
We analysed the top 40 keywords by traffic for tui.co.uk, rivieratravel.co.uk and explore.co.uk. Keywords with informational intent are 17 out of 40 for TUI, 27 out of 40 for Riviera Travel and 40 out of 40 for Explore. For Explore, 18 of those 40 keywords land on blog articles such as "the definitive guide to Machu Picchu", "Greek islands to visit" and "exploring the souks of Marrakech". For Riviera Travel, 12 do, led by a Sicily travel guide that ranks on "sicily" (90,500 searches a month).
TUI is the exception that explains the rule. Its top 40 is dominated by the brand (10 keywords out of 40) and by deals pages: the last-minute holidays page is first on "last minute deals holidays", 368,000 searches a month, and brings in an estimated 111,872 visits on its own. A calendar page works the same way: /destinations/deals/bank-holiday-breaks is first on "holidays bank holiday" (110,000 searches) with an estimated 33,440 visits. Explore does the same with its content: its Machu Picchu guide is third on "machu picchu", 74,000 searches a month.
| Domain | Organic keywords | Estimated organic traffic/month | Keywords in top 10 | Informational keywords (out of top 40) | Paid keywords |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tui.co.uk | 136,895 | 10,821,697 | 86,554 (63%) | 17 | 236 |
| rivieratravel.co.uk | 6,666 | 189,968 | 2,649 (40%) | 27 | 56 |
| explore.co.uk | 8,526 | 104,356 | 2,146 (25%) | 40 | 1 |
One limitation of this data needs saying. Estimated traffic measures where visits come from, not where bookings come from. We do not know what share of the trips Explore sells start from a "what to see in Bolivia" article. We do know that the article puts the brand in front of someone deciding where to go, months before they type "Bolivia tour". The rest is done by remarketing, the newsletter and the destination page linked from the article.
Recommended reading: how to create content for SEO.
Build the site around the destination, not the company
The unit of measurement in tourism SEO is the destination. TUI is first on "spain lanzarote" (135,000 searches a month) with the page /destinations/europe/spain/lanzarote/holidays-lanzarote.html, first on "italy lake como" (110,000), on "dom rep" (110,000) and on "finland and lapland" (90,500), second on "maldives" (165,000) and third on "cape verde cape verde" (450,000). Explore is third on "honduras" (27,100) with /destinations/central-america/honduras and third on "nairobi" (27,100) with /destinations/africa/kenya/nairobi. Riviera Travel is second on "jordan petra" (40,500) with /escorted-tours/jordan-petra.
These URLs follow geography: continent, country, place. Each level has its own page, which stays the same year after year while dates and prices change. On many agency sites the opposite happens: the "Egypt August 2026" package has a URL that dies in September and comes back at a different address the following year, and each time Google starts from scratch.
Alongside geography there is theme. Riviera Travel is first on "european river cruise" (12,100 searches a month) with /river-cruises/european-river-cruises and second on "river cruises" (22,200) with its category page /river-cruises. Explore ranks third on "balkans" (27,100) with a tour page and third on "silk road" (22,200) with /destinations/asia/silk-road, a route rather than a country.
A structure that works, drawn from these three sites, has four axes:
- Destination: continent, country, place, with a stable URL for each.
- Type of trip: beach, mountains, adventure, coach tours, river cruises.
- Segment: groups, solo travellers, over-50s, families, young travellers.
- Time of year: Easter, bank holidays, New Year, the summer holidays, with pages updated every year on the same URL.
Product pages (the single package with dates and price) sit below these, linked from the destination page. In the sample, once you set aside TUI's brand and deals keywords, almost all of its top 40 are destination names: Lanzarote, Lake Como, Lapland, the Maldives, the Dominican Republic, Cape Verde, Disneyland Paris. For Explore and Riviera Travel the keywords that are not destinations are almost all themes: river cruises, solo holidays, the Silk Road, the Seven Wonders.
Recommended reading: how to build an SEO-friendly website.
Pages that rank and hardly anyone builds
The data and the results pages point to four formats that bring in traffic and that do not exist on most agency sites.
The comparison page. "Which escorted tour companies are the best in the UK?" is the first question in the "People also ask" box for "escorted tours". Whoever asks it is comparing, and if you do not write the answer, someone else will. A page that compares your tours with the alternatives, honestly, is a page that competes for that question.
The segment page. Riviera Travel is first on "solo holidays" (12,100 searches a month) with /solo-holidays. "Singles holidays" gets another 6,600 searches a month, and "the best tours of England for seniors and over 50s" is one of the questions Google shows for "escorted tours". A page per segment, with the packages filtered and a text that explains who the group is, ranks on keywords no destination page can take.
The calendar page. TUI's bank holiday breaks page and its last-minute holidays page are among its biggest non-brand traffic sources. These are keywords that come back every year and should be managed on a URL without the year, updating the content.
The people page. In group travel, the person leading the trip is part of the product. A page for each tour leader or guide, with their trips and their background, gives people a reason to trust you and gives Google another page to rank, including on the leader's own name once they become known.
| Keyword | Searches/month | CPC | Who is on page one |
|---|---|---|---|
| escorted tours | 880 | £2.98 | 9 tour sellers out of 9 + AI Overview |
| group tours | 590 | £3.10 | not analysed |
| coach holidays | 9,900 | £0.54 | not analysed |
| singles holidays | 6,600 | £1.19 | not analysed |
| beach holidays uk | 2,900 | £1.16 | 8 holiday sellers out of 8 + AI Overview |
| hotels london | 60,500 | £1.93 | 6 OTAs and metasearch out of 9 + Google Hotels |
| travel marketing | 140 | £9.03 | agencies and consultants |
| tourism seo | 210 | n/a | agencies and consultants |
The last two rows are an honest note about this very article: "tourism seo" gets 210 searches a month and "travel marketing" 140, at £9.03 a click. These are agency keywords, searched by people who sell marketing, not by travellers. The real traffic, for an operator, is in the thousands of destination keywords, not in the ones about marketing.
Recommended reading: how to do keyword research.
How much the brand matters, and how much it does not
Keywords containing the company name are 3 of Explore's top 40 and 4 of Riviera Travel's. On their own, though, "riviera travel" (60,500 searches a month) brings in about 10% of Riviera Travel's estimated organic traffic, and "tui" (1.83 million searches) about 5% of TUI's.
The two things do not contradict each other. The brand is one huge keyword, built over years of advertising and word of mouth. Growth comes from the others: destinations, themes, times of year. On projects for Costa Crociere we saw how much branded search weighs in a large travel group; the SEO work that drove growth, there too, was on destinations and itineraries.
The sample has a limitation: 40 keywords per domain out of 136,895 in total for TUI. The share of traffic from the brand across the whole site may be somewhat different; the order of magnitude holds.
What changes with AI Overviews
On "beach holidays uk" the AI Overview is in position 1. It lists five destinations (St Ives, Tenby, Woolacombe, Bamburgh, Holkham) and cites nine sources: the beach holiday pages of Away Resorts and Parkdean Resorts, the National Trust's coastal cottages page, a Sykes Cottages travel guide, three YouTube videos, a Facebook video from Rural Retreats and an Instagram reel. It closes by asking who is going, whether you want a holiday park or a quiet cottage, and whether you need dog-friendly options.
On "escorted tours" there is an AI Overview too, loaded asynchronously, so our scan did not capture its sources. Both are cases where the searcher still has to choose where or how to go, and that is the kind of query the AI summary picks up. For an operator this means two things.
First: guide pages by region, structured with the information the AI is looking for (type of coast, price range, suitable for children or dogs), are the ones that get cited. Away Resorts and Parkdean are cited with their beach holiday pages, not with a generic article. Second: five of the nine sources are videos or social posts. An operator that publishes destination videos on YouTube has one more chance of being cited, and in travel it is a channel few small operators use with search in mind.
Since June 2026 Search Console has included reports on AI features, with impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page and by country. For a travel site it is the first report to open, because "where to go" keywords are the ones AI picks up first.
Recommended reading: the factors that get a page into AI Overviews.
The local travel agency: the Google profile and the town
Everything we have measured so far concerns national operators that sell online. The keyword "travel agent + town" is a separate topic, and our data does not cover it: we say so before giving advice.
What we can say comes from the other local sectors we have analysed with the same method: on "business + town" searches Google almost always shows a local pack with Google Business Profile listings and reviews. For an agency with a shopfront, the Google Business Profile is the first channel, with the right category, real photos and reviews collected every time clients come back from a trip.
The site, however, should not be built only around the town. An agency in Leeds that sells group tours to Jordan competes for "jordan tours" with Riviera Travel, which ranks second on "jordan petra", not with the agency down the road.
Recommended reading: the guide to local SEO.
Which links and mentions count in travel
The National Trust is one of the sources cited in the AI Overview for "beach holidays uk". National and regional tourist boards, DMOs, local destination partnerships and travel publications publish lists of operators, itineraries and press releases every season. These are links an operator earns with work it does anyway (a partnership with a tourist board, a trade fair, a press trip for journalists), and they almost always end up without a link to the site, or with a link to the home page instead of the right destination page.
The second channel is people. An operator with ten guides has ten Instagram profiles that could link to ten pages of the site, and they usually link to none.
Recommended reading: how to do link building.
How to measure without being fooled by the season
In travel, month-on-month comparisons tell you nothing. If "beach holidays uk" goes from 880 to 6,600 searches between November and July, a site with three times as many visits in July as in April may be standing still. The only comparison that holds is with the same month of the previous year, page by page, in Search Console.
The numbers to follow: impressions and clicks by page group (destinations, blog, segments), positions on the 30-50 destination keywords that matter, enquiries by landing page. On a project outside travel, Sunscape, we tracked in this way the move from 329 to 5,809 monthly organic impressions in six months, from March to August 2026, with clicks going from 46 to 195: the method is the same, only the calendar changes.
A word on timing. TUI's positions on "spain lanzarote" or Riviera Travel's on "river cruises" are the result of years. For anyone starting from zero, the first movements on secondary destinations arrive in three or four months; keywords with tens of thousands of searches are a matter of seasons.
SEO or Google Ads?
The three operators answer with their own figures. TUI buys 236 keywords on Google Ads, with estimated paid traffic of 4,201 visits a month and an estimated spend of £5,362 a month, against 10,821,697 organic visits. Riviera Travel buys 56, with 584 visits and £1,266 a month estimated, against 189,968 organic visits. Explore has a single paid keyword detected, with 72 visits and £224 a month estimated.
DataForSEO's spend estimates are approximate and should be read as orders of magnitude (converted from USD at £1 = $1.3242). What they show is the proportion: paid traffic is a tiny fraction of organic, concentrated on a handful of keywords, while a generic keyword such as "escorted tours" costs £2.98 a click.
For a smaller operator the two channels fit together: Google Ads covers the destinations on sale right now, with a budget shaped around the seasonal curve, while SEO builds the pages that within a few seasons will no longer need those clicks to be bought. We have written about how to set up the paid side in Google Ads for tourism, and about the general reasoning in SEO and Google Ads: how to make them work together.
Frequently asked questions
What is tourism marketing and how is it different from SEO?
Tourism marketing is the set of digital channels an operator uses to sell trips: SEO, Google Ads, social media, email, OTAs and metasearch. SEO is the part that works on unpaid search. On the three sites analysed it is the channel that brings in the most visits: from about 104,000 to 10.8 million a month, against between 72 and about 4,200 paid visits.
Can a small agency sit on page one next to TUI?
On "escorted tours" escapeworldwide.co.uk, americansky.co.uk and travelbyinspire.co.uk already do. On "maldives" or "lanzarote" they do not: there you need years and an authority a small agency does not have. Choosing the destinations and segments to go after, and checking the keyword difficulty of each, decides everything.
Does a tour operator really need a blog?
For Explore, 18 of the top 40 keywords by traffic land on blog articles, and all 40 are informational. It does, as long as it is made of "what to see" guides for the destinations you sell, linked to the destination page, and not of company news.
How long does it take to see results?
Three or four months on secondary destinations, several seasons on the big ones. The extra constraint is the calendar: a page should go live at least three months before the peak, which for UK beach holidays is July and for escorted tours is the January to March booking period.
How much does tourism SEO cost?
It depends on the number of destinations and the state of the site. An operator with thirty destinations needs thirty well-written pages and a blog with a few dozen guides, and that is editorial work before it is technical work. We have given the orders of magnitude in how much SEO costs and described how we work on the SEO service page.
Recommended reading: where you can still beat the big portals.
Where to start
Take the ten destinations you sell most and check whether each has its own stable URL that does not contain the year. If not, that is the first job, before any article. Then open Search Console, filter queries in positions 8-20 and look for destination names: those are the pages one step from page one, and in travel one step can be the difference between a season with enquiries and a season without.
If you want an opinion on how your site measures up against the numbers in this article, get in touch.
