Every Commission Check You Write to Expedia Is a Vote Against Your Own Business.I help resorts stop renting guests and start building empires. Here's how.

I'm going to tell you something that most agencies won't because it makes their job harder: Your current marketing model is designed to fail.

You build a $50 million property. You hire 200 staff members. You obsess over thread counts and menu presentations. Then you hand 18% of every booking to a company that contributes nothing except a search box.

I've sat across from resort owners who've paid $2.3 million in annual OTA commissions while their 'SEO agency' sent monthly reports celebrating a 12% increase in organic traffic that didn't move the booking needle at all.

Here's what those agencies won't tell you: You cannot win the keyword game against OTAs on transactional terms. They have infinite content budgets, decades of domain authority, and algorithmic sophistication you can't match. 'Resort in Cancun' belongs to them. Accept it.

But 'Sunrise meditation retreat overlooking Caribbean coves'? 'Private chef experience featuring Yucatan cuisine'? 'Couples reconnection package with underwater photography'? Those searches belong to whoever has the audacity to create content that actually answers them. That's your territory. That's where we win.

Standard SEO advice for resorts reads like a cookbook written by someone who's never cooked: 'Optimize your meta titles. Build some backlinks. Write blog content.' It's technically correct and practically useless.

After 12 years in this industry — and after building AuthoritySpecialist to 800+ pages of genuine authority content — I've developed approaches that work specifically for hospitality:

The Affiliate Arbitrage Method: Traditional link building is begging. Sophisticated link building is creating assets so valuable that linking to you becomes self-interested behavior. Since 2017, I've cultivated relationships with over 4,000 travel writers, bloggers, and journalists. These aren't cold contacts — they're people I've helped, collaborated with, and built genuine professional relationships with.

When we work together, I don't pitch your resort to them cold. I create assets on your site — comprehensive destination guides, interactive experience maps, exclusive itineraries — that serve their readers. Then I facilitate introductions that benefit everyone. Sometimes we structure affiliate arrangements where writers earn commissions on bookings they drive. Suddenly, you have an army of commission-only salespeople with established audiences.

The Content as Proof Framework: Your competitors write 300-word amenity descriptions and call it content. We prove expertise through depth that can't be faked. If you have a spa, we don't just describe it — we create authoritative content about the therapeutic traditions behind your treatments, the sourcing of your products, the training of your practitioners. Google's algorithms recognize genuine expertise. So do guests who've been burned by resorts that over-promised and under-delivered.

I want to share something that frustrates me about this industry: Resort owners invest millions in property improvements but accept websites that actively repel bookings.

I've audited over 200 resort websites. The same technical diseases appear in roughly 73% of them:

The Beautiful Disaster Syndrome: Gorgeous full-screen videos that take 8 seconds to load on mobile. Stunning image galleries that aren't lazy-loaded. Parallax effects that cause layout shift. The design team got awards; the revenue team got headaches.

The Booking Engine Black Hole: Most resort booking engines (IBEs) are technical SEO nightmares. They use iframes that Google can't crawl. They exist on subdomains that dilute authority. They break tracking between marketing site and conversion action. I've seen resorts unable to attribute any organic conversions because their analytics couldn't follow users through the booking process.

The Core Web Vitals Crisis: Google now explicitly uses page experience as a ranking factor. If your Largest Contentful Paint exceeds 2.5 seconds (most resort sites hit 4-6 seconds), you're losing rankings to competitors with faster sites — regardless of content quality.

My technical team specializes in solving these problems without sacrificing the visual experience that hospitality demands. We've achieved 70%+ improvements in Core Web Vitals scores while maintaining design integrity. It requires expertise most agencies don't have.

Here's where I break from conventional marketing wisdom: The advice to 'niche down' is wrong for resorts.

You're not a single-product business. You're simultaneously a wedding venue, a corporate retreat center, a family vacation destination, a wellness sanctuary, a romantic escape, and an adventure hub. Forcing yourself into one positioning box abandons entire revenue streams.

My 'Anti-Niche Strategy' builds distinct content silos for each vertical on your domain. Each silo operates as a standalone authority play:

- Wedding Silo: Capturing 'destination wedding [location]' searches with venue tours, vendor partnerships, planning guides - Corporate Silo: Targeting 'executive retreat [location]' with meeting space specs, team-building activities, connectivity details - Family Silo: Dominating 'kid-friendly resort [location]' with children's programming, safety features, multi-generational activities - Wellness Silo: Owning 'spa retreat [location]' through treatment menus, practitioner credentials, transformation stories

Each silo has different keyword targets, different content approaches, and different conversion paths. But they share domain authority. A wedding feature in Martha Stewart boosts your wellness content's ranking. A corporate mention in Forbes helps your family pages climb. The synergy compounds.

I believe in radical honesty, so let me tell you who shouldn't work with me:

If you want quick fixes: SEO is compound interest, not a lottery ticket. I've seen meaningful results in 90 days, but transformational results take 12-18 months. If you need immediate bookings, invest in PPC while we build your organic foundation.

If you expect hands-off magic: My best client relationships involve active collaboration. You understand your guests better than I ever will. I understand search better than you ever will. The combination produces results neither of us could achieve alone.

If you're optimizing a bad product: SEO can't fix a resort that delivers disappointing experiences. Reviews will destroy you faster than I can build you. Make sure your operations deserve the traffic before investing in acquisition.

If budget is your only metric: I'm not the cheapest option. I'm the option that produces results that justify the investment. If you're comparing my proposal against $500/month SEO packages, we're not speaking the same language.

For everyone else — resort owners who understand that direct bookings are an existential priority, who are prepared to invest in assets they own, who want a partner rather than a vendor — I'd welcome a conversation.