The holiday season is a pivotal time for the hospitality industry, and in 2025, the digital landscape is more complex than ever. When we look at Google Insights for holiday travel over the past several years, the most compelling trend is the surge we’re seeing in 2025, with interest spiking particularly in July and August. These months alone show a lift of roughly 137% compared to last year, representing the highest level of interest in the past four years.
However, this year has seen an unprecedented growth of LLMs and AI-powered search, and a shift in guest journey. Many businesses across industries have seen traffic declines. All of this has created uncertainty. In this article, we explore how hoteliers and marketers can turn this growth in holiday season demand into bookings and revenue.
How the 2025 Holiday Season is Different
Let us start with exploring how the 2025 holiday season is different from previous years. In addition to the significantly higher demand, this year has seen the emergence of a new kind of consumer behavior. Travelers are becoming more strategic planners. They’re tuned into conversations about inflation and rising prices, and they’re acting early—no longer waiting for traditional booking windows. Instead, they’re searching for holiday deals as far in advance as possible.
This change carries powerful implications for the hospitality industry. The opportunity to capture holiday demand no longer begins in the fall—it starts months earlier. Two key factors that will impact hoteliers this year are:
-
AI-Powered Search: One of the biggest shifts is being driven by AI. This year has seen a sharp increase in searches happening on LLMs. At Milestone, we have seen a hockey-stick like growth in traffic originating from LLMs to websites on our platform. This means, travelers are looking beyond traditional search. These new platforms engage searchers in a conversational, personalized experience and provide synthesized answers to their questions, reducing the research time significantly. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode also provide similar experiences. As a result, 0-click searches are on the size and the increased search demand isn’t translating into increased traffic for many businesses.
![— Source: Milestone Inc.]()
![— Source: Milestone Inc.]()
— Source: Milestone Inc. - Search Innovations: Google recently released an AI-powered feature in Google Flights that makes it even easier for travelers to research and compare holiday trips. For example, if a traveler from New York wants to find the best deal for Christmas travel, this tool will surface insights and recommendations instantly, helping them decide when to book and where they will get the most value.
This matters for hoteliers because travelers are making smarter, earlier decisions. They’re using AI to find deals months in advance, not just during the traditional booking window.
Google’s AI-driven search and Large Language Models will increasingly impact traffic to websites. Saturating AI-powered search channels is key to being visible and attracting travelers.
To stay competitive, you need to have your holiday promotions and offers visible early enough to capture this demand before AI directs your potential guest elsewhere. An omnichannel approach to any holiday strategy is critical to ensure you saturate channels—from your website to local listings and paid and social media—with conversion tactics to effectively drive revenue.
Your Four-Pillar Omnichannel Strategy
To effectively saturate your digital channels, focus on these four key pillars:
1. Optimize Your Website
Your website is your most valuable asset. It needs to act as the data-hub that feeds consistent information, images and videos across all channels. The more consistent the information, the more likely it is to be surfaced in AI-powered search.
Dig deeper: From search to answer engines: How to optimize for the next era of discovery
The first step is to create a captivating online presence for the holiday season.
- Holiday-Themed Pages: Feature holiday promotions prominently on a website banner and create a dedicated holiday landing page. This page should highlight holiday events, activities, dining, and special packages (e.g., Thanksgiving, Christmas, Cyber Monday).
-
AI-Powered Content & Personalization: Outshine the competition with content that delights travelers, generated fast and consistently across every channel. Use an AI Content Studio to create a variety of holiday-focused content, such as local event guides, festive promotions, and travel tips. Augment these campaigns with website personalization, tailoring content for specific audience segments to boost conversions. This allows you to personalize multiple sections on a page and preview the personalized experience before publishing.
Dig deeper: How to boost your marketing revenue with personalization, connectivity and data
2. Dominate Local Search
Local search is a high-impact channel for capturing nearby travelers. However, local search or local SEO is no longer about just listings management or data accuracy. Search engines look for a variety of signals before surfacing your site or content in map results for relevant searches with a local intent.
Dig deeper:AI and local search: The new rules of visibility and ROI in 2025
The four keys to success during the holiday season are listings, images, attributes, and posts.
- Update Listings: Update restaurant holiday hours on local listings through platforms like Milestone Local, which pushes changes to core channels such as Google, Apple, and Facebook.
- Enhance Your Presence: Update your local listings with festive holiday photos and relevant attributes, like “fireplace” or “live music”.
- Engage with Social Posts: Use social posts on Google, Facebook, and Bing to capture festive travelers’ attention with timely offers and announcements. Highlight special holiday services, events, or even restaurant menus.
3. Launch Strategic Paid & Social Media Campaigns
Paid media is essential for reaching a high-intent audience.
- Targeted Ads: Launch paid search and social campaigns early to target travelers as they begin planning. Use platforms like PMax to expand your reach with AI-driven targeting across all Google channels.
- Compelling Offers: Create ad copy that highlights key elements like offer details, benefits, and cancellation policies. Drive direct bookings with offers like “Breakfast Included,” “Free Parking,” or “Extended Stay Packages”.
- Leverage Ad Extensions: Use Google Ads extensions to showcase specific holiday offerings. Countdown extensions can create a sense of urgency for limited-time offers, while sitelinks can feature “Christmas Packages” or “Holiday Dining,” and promotion extensions can announce “Save 20% on Festive Stays.”
Dig Deeper:Integrating SEO into omnichannel marketing for seamless engagement
4. Maximizing Conversions
Once you’ve optimized your digital presence and attracted travelers to your website, the final step is to turn that demand into direct bookings. In a landscape where travelers are more informed and deal-focused than ever, maximizing your conversion rate is essential. By leveraging new technology and strategic tactics, you can ensure your website experience compels visitors to book directly with you.
Here’s how to maximize your conversions this holiday season:
- OTA Rate Comparison Module: To combat the price-shopping behavior of today’s traveler, implement an OTA rate comparison module directly on your booking engine. This tool shows visitors that your direct booking rate is the same or better than what they see on third-party sites. It provides instant transparency, reinforces your “best rate guarantee,” and encourages the user to book directly with you.
- Limited Time Offers: Creating a sense of urgency is a proven conversion tactic. Use limited-time offers to motivate visitors to book immediately. This can be as simple as a banner promoting a flash sale with a countdown timer.
- Revenue Recovery Module: It’s inevitable that some visitors will abandon their booking. A revenue recovery module helps recapture this lost business by using intelligent automation. The module can trigger personalized pop-ups as a user is about to leave or send a targeted email to a guest who has abandoned their cart, reminding them of the details of their intended stay and encouraging them to complete the booking.
- A/B Testing and CRO: Top of the funnel “research intent” visitors are increasingly finding answers within AI-powered search channels. Travelers visit websites when they have the intent to book. Engaging and converting these visitors is critical to maximize revenue during the holiday season. Analyze the traffic to your website to see where they drop off. Test different calls to action and messaging to determine what resonates with your audiences. Do conversion rate optimization (CRO) to improve engagement and conversion.
Your Strategic Takeaway: Turning Demand into Revenue
The holiday season presents a massive opportunity for the hospitality industry to drive revenue and build lasting guest relationships. By implementing a comprehensive omnichannel digital marketing strategy—one that optimizes your website, dominates local search, and leverages strategic paid media—you can ensure your property is visible and appealing to travelers at every step of their journey. A cohesive and integrated approach is the key to turning the surge in holiday demand into a record-breaking season.
About Milestone Inc
Milestone drives online leads and customer acquisition for over 2,000 companies by seamlessly integrating “Experiences” and “Discovery” into its AI-First Digital Experiences Platform. Milestone’s robust solutions include SEO-First CMS, Schema Platform, Local Listings, Events Calendar Software, Analytics Platform, AI Content Studio, AI Agents Platform, and Performance Marketing services. Serving the hospitality businesses of all sizes, from Chains and Management companies to Independent Hotels & Resorts, Milestone enables businesses to achieve sustained online growth. Milestone is recognized as one of the highest-rated martech platforms, with accolades from Forrester, G2, US Search, the Adrian Awards, and more. Learn more at www.milestoneinternet.com.
