Travel SEO Industry Report 2024

Four core updates later, a few meltdowns on X, followed by a well-deserved Christmas break and 2024 is done. It’s been a year to remember for many industries, but really that’s no truer than for travel.

The travel industry SERPs have changed dramatically, even dating back to 2023, and 2024 has only amplified that – with Google Travel’s dominance, new SERP features and AI Overviews. Here’s a concise overview of the key trends from 2024 and how travel brands can prepare for SEO success in 2025.

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Key Takeaways from 2024

Travel Trends

1. Travel Confidence Rebounds: Confidence in travel saw a notable rise, with 21% of respondents in an ABTA survey expressing high confidence in travelling, up from 15% in 2023.
2. Record-Breaking Flights: Over 282,775 flights departed from UK airports in Q3 2024, setting a new record with 51.24 million seats.

SEO Insights

1. Organic Search Dominates: Organic traffic accounted for a significant portion of visits to major travel websites, with some brands seeing over 73% of their traffic coming from search engines.
2. Visibility Shifts: Airlines saw a remarkable 66% increase in search visibility, while review sites experienced a 38% decline due to algorithm updates prioritising first-hand experience.

Emerging AI Trends

1. AI travel tools, like Booking.com’s smart filters and Expedia’s ChatGPT-powered planner, gained traction but faced mixed reception regarding SEO and user experience.

Challenges and Opportunities in 2025

Core Challenges

1. Rising Competition from Google Travel: Google continues to prioritise its own platforms (e.g., Google Flights), making high-volume keywords even harder to rank for.
2. Increased AI Overview Presence: AI-generated summaries now appear for 30% of travel-related queries, influencing travel site visibility.
3. Travel Bloggers Continued Struggles: Small scale travel bloggers continue to struggle with organic visibility drops from ’23 HCU but the ones that have succeeded have longstanding authority and experience in each location they talk about.

Opportunities

1. Leverage Local SEO Content: Google ups the preference for authentic, localised content written by regional travel experts like VisitBritain as opposed to overly optimised SEO sites.
2. User-First Content: Emphasise first-hand experience and expertise (E-E-A-T) to align with Google’s priorities.

Best Practices for 2025

1. Optimise for the Travel Buyer’s Journey:
   • Create inspirational content (e.g., “best family holidays”).
   • Provide practical research tools like itineraries and comparison guides.
   • Focus on conversion-optimised product pages and loyalty-building strategies.
2. Embrace Google’s AI Integration: Align content strategies with AI Overviews, conduct checklist comparisons of competitors that are attribute and SEO test for results.
3. Target Low-Competition Keywords: Focus on regional and zero-volume keywords.
4. Consider EEAT at the Keyword Research Stage: Avoid over-optimisation for SEO; prioritise authentic, value-driven content that your brand has experience and expertise in.
5. CTR Optimisation: Use travel-specific schema (e.g., Hotel, Review).
6. Strengthen Link-Building: Reactive PR and hero content with credible data remain key to improving offsite authority.

If 2024 was the “death of SEO” for travel sites, 2025 is the rebirth of a new and improved SEO strategy – ditching over-optimisation for brand and experience focused content that caters to the whole travel buyer’s journey. All the while, travel sites need to take a curious and experimental approach with SEO testing and reactive PR. This is the balanced and long-term approach to limit algorithmic change and see continued growth.

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