How Tour Operators Should Optimize Their Google Business Profile

Most operators use only about 30% of what Google gives them, and your Google Business Profile is often the first thing a traveler sees before they book. 

In this episode of the Tour Operator Growth Podcast, Nikki and Greg break down how to turn your profile from a static directory listing into a mini landing page that actually drives bookings, plus the features almost nobody is using.

What you'll learn:
- The foundation that matters most: NAP consistency, the right categories, services, and a strong description
- Why authentic photos, recent reviews, and a real response to every review build trust (and why a 4.7 beats a 5.0)
- The underused features (Google posts, messaging, booking links) that signal you're active to both travelers and Google
- How to measure success with Insights and UTM tracking so you're counting bookings, not vanity metrics

If this episode helped, share it with a tour operator who's letting their profile sit there, and subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

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Chapters:
3:16 The foundation: NAP, categories, services & duplicate listings
6:19 Photos & videos: keep your profile active and authentic
8:08 Reviews: responding, why a 4.7 beats a 5.0, and recency
13:50 Scenic segment: Google warns against buying AI mentions
15:03 The features nobody uses: posts, social links & messaging
17:15 Turning your profile into a booking entry point
19:13 Measuring success: Insights, UTMs & vanity metrics
21:31 Quick audit: check your profile live with us

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Tour Operator Growth Podcast, where we share the strategies, systems, and rural world lessons helping tour operators grow more direct bookings, spend less time buried in admin, and build stronger businesses. Brought to you by Resmart, the leading team behind booking software, websites, marketing services, and digital waivers built for tour operators by people who still actually run tours. Now let's get into today's episode. All right, guys, a lot of what we covered in previous episodes touch on Google business profiles in one way or the other, whether SEO, reviews, websites, trust signals, but we've never really dug deep specifically on optimizing your GDP. So your Google business profile isn't just a place where your reviews live. It's often the first thing potential guests see before they book, and it's continuing to become an even bigger factor in local search, AI search, and direct bookings. I don't think that's going to change in the next few years. So today we're going to break down how to actually optimize it and some of the things that most operators don't think about when it comes to this. And just a note, Resmark Web, we do optimize our clients' G VP profiles as long as you're on our visibility plan. So don't worry about that. If you're a client, we are doing this for you. But if you're not a client of ours, take what we are talking about today. Make sure that you tell your SEO team and make sure that they're doing these things because some SEO teams don't do GBP along with their other things. Or if you don't have an SEO team, make sure that you're actually optimizing it yourself. So let's start here. Why does your Google Business profile matter? Well, a few years ago, we thought Google Business Profile was specifically for local visibility. Think when you are looking for a hairdresser or a barber or a restaurant, you're typing into Google, barber near me, restaurant near me, that sort of thing. And the local results are going to show up in that map section on Google. But it goes so far beyond just local search. Most people are going to Google your company before booking. So maybe they heard of you through a referral on social media, through OTAs, through an ad, but they haven't booked yet. But now they want to go to Google and actually search your name. So your DVP basically becomes a credibility check in a lot of ways. And that's because if you're a buyer like me, I find your company on ChatGBT, I see you on social media, I see you in all these places. And I want to see your Google reviews because they are not influenced by you specifically in terms of you being the one that writes the review. So there's a little bit less of a biased opinion. So I'm able to see everybody's review, what they think of you. I'm able to see the pictures that they add themselves. So I love having that point of view when I'm looking for a company to go with. But the other thing is search behavior is changing with AI. We know that. So people might not go to Google anymore. People might just stick to their LLM of choice, so chat GBT. But this is only making having an optimized GBP more important.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Yeah, it's interesting, Nikki. AI tools and AI-powered search rely heavily on the same signals as local SEO. So still super important, even if people aren't seeing certain things as much as they used to, those same signals are being used to determine what's being shown in different places. Things like reviews, profile completeness, website authority, and brand consistency, they all matter. But before we talk about optimization, let's talk about the foundation. What do you need? What is essential in making sure that you get this right? So the first obvious thing is making sure that your name is accurate. You have the right address and you have the right phone number on your GBP post. That's called listing.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Yeah, and that's called your nap. So name, address, phone number. A lot of SEO specialists will say your nap consistency.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

Yep. And then next is choosing the right primary category. So this is just going to help you show up in the right searches, right? If you have the wrong category and someone has a certain search, you might not show up there because of the way you categorize your company. And then there's the opportunity to have secondary categories. These are important as well because it shows Google that, hey, this is their primary, but there's other things that they do as well. So let's see if it's important to show them in these other search queries that relate to those categories. Um, filling out your services and products, so it's really easy for the user, but also Google to know what it is that you offer. Writing a strong business business description. This is especially important with AI because that business description can be used to kind of be pulled into that AI overview to help bring you up higher in the listings on AI and in Google as well. And then make sure you don't have duplicate listings. This is something we we often see where maybe you created a listing and your agency that you were working at at the time created a listing because they didn't have access to yours. Or maybe you created a listing and then you created another listing forgetting that that one existed, whatever it might be. Duplicate listings are more common than you would think. And it's important to not have those as well. And so consolidating those down.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Not to confuse that with multiple Google business profiles. If you have multiple locations, that is totally fine as long as you are doing it and setting it up the right way.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Yeah, that's a great clarification. So the key here is to give a clear picture to the user and of course to Google and the LLMs so that it they clearly understand who you are, what you offer, and why they should rank you amongst other businesses, right? So what else is important to have, Nikki?

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Yeah, so I talked about people can upload photos in their reviews, but this is specifically what you can do on your Google Business profile. You want to make sure that you are updating your photos and videos inside your profile with authentic photos. So and videos, so making sure that you're not utilizing stock photos, making sure that you're actually showing guides faces, guest faces, just general photos of the trip itself, landmarks. It doesn't all have to be faces, you know, but it has to be actual photos of your trip, making sure that you're not utilizing stock image for that. You also want to upload photos consistently. So maybe this is every month you're updating a few, or every three months you're updating a few. I know for us at Resmark, we update it once or twice in a year, but that's because we don't um get together too often. We're a remote team. So when we have conferences like the America Outdoors Conference or Arrival, we're making sure that we're taking photos and we're actually, as soon as we get those photos, I upload them to our Google Business profile. So update it as often as you can is a great place to show not only the user or the person looking up your Google Business profile that you have updated photos, but that's a good signal to Google that you're updating it. The other thing, like I said, videos, making sure that you are uploading videos. You could upload uh short video clips to your Google business profile. And like I said, an active profile feels like an active business, not just from the user's point of view, but from Google's point of view. Greg, do you actually look through the photos on somebody's Google business profile?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah, so when I'm looking at like Google search, I don't, to be honest. I rarely ever click on them. But I use Google Maps probably more when I'm searching for things like that than Google search. Um and on Google Maps I do. I am always looking at different images depending on what business type I'm looking at for, but I tend to do it a lot more on Google Maps and Google search. Um but I will say, seeing the number of reviews and your overall rating, I do notice that a lot more in Google search and on Google Maps as well. But I'm more likely to click in and read those. And so it's important to have your reviews listed as well and have authentic reviews. Don't be paying for reviews. Make sure you're responding to reviews as well. So if people are coming in, they're they're posting reviews, be authentic in responding to the reviews as well. Because that shows that as a business you care about that person. And if you can make it relatable to whatever tour they went on, I think that's even better. Like whether that's having your actual guides be the ones responding to the reviews for the trips that they did. I don't know if that's super realistic, but it makes it that much more authentic of like, hey Jenny, I love that you came on the trip. I had a great time. Hope you come back.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

And the one thing with that is make sure that you don't have AI automatically responding to your reviews. I'm not saying you can't use AI to help you with those reviews. And I know we covered this in a previous episode, but if you skip that episode, make sure you listen to this. Don't just copy and paste what AI has given you and don't use an automated AI tool. A lot of CRMs out there will have it toggled on automatically. So sometimes when you hook up your Google Business profile to your reputation management software, you have to make sure that AI responses is turned off. So just make sure that you don't have AI responses turned on. And I honestly don't recommend it in any situation that I can think of, at least. So just make sure you're spending some time to reply to those reviews.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, one more thing I wanted to mention on reviews is a lot of people worry about their rating and oh, I need to have a perfect rating, or I need to have a really high rating. And for me personally, if I see a five-star rating on a company, I usually don't trust it because no company's perfect. I've never had an experience that I've had the most perfect like experience, right? I'm not one to go and leave a bad review because of something small, but there's definitely people that are gonna leave bad reviews. And so if your business doesn't have any, then it makes it a little suspicious to me that something else is going on. You're either paying for reviews or you're doing something to make sure that you're not getting the bad reviews. And so for me, when I'm searching things, I actually like seeing bad reviews, and I like seeing your response to the bad reviews because that shows that one it's happening. Like people are having experiences that they're not as happy with. You're addressing it, and it just makes it real and authentic. And so I'm more likely to choose your business. Now, if your ratings like a 3.0, probably not a good thing. If that that's showing there's probably a lot of not great reviews, I'm not talking about that. Like a 4.5, 4, 4.9, whatever is way more realistic to me than a striving for a 5.0, to be honest.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

They've done a lot of studies on this, Greg, and the psychology is a 4.6 or higher. So there has actually been several, several studies along the lines of, and I can't quote them right now, but it was along the lines of there has there's no difference in the buyer's psychology whenever they are choosing a tour operator or comparing it, if they have the 500, 600 reviews and one's at a 4.7 and one's at a 5.0. So just remember that because I know as business owners, you can be really hard on yourselves when you get that 4.0 and your rating is not a five star. But take it from a customer's point of view or take it from a future buyer's point of view that doesn't want to be a 5.0. Greg and I would rather it not be a 5.0.

SPEAKER_00 12:48

Yeah, and I will say one last thing that came to mind is the recency of your reviews matter. If I see a 4.9 and a 4.9 business, and this business had reviews, you know, business A had reviews a year ago was their latest, and business B had a review 21 minutes ago, I'm probably choosing business B because that shows that one, they're they're probably actively asking for reviews, but two, they're actively receiving them, which means they're probably doing a good job. Whereas I start to question, why is this company not getting new reviews? Something is going on here.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

Awesome. And like we said, we did a whole episode, actually two episodes on reviews and making this part of your system, making it automatic. That was episode 22 and 23, I believe. So head back there if you're trying to get more reviews.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

Hey, I hope you're enjoying today's episode. But before we continue, let's take a quick scenic route.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

We have another interesting SEO update this week, which comes from Barry Schwartz's monthly Google Webmaster Report. One thing that really stood out to me is that Google has officially warned businesses not to try to manipulate AI search results by buying mentions or citations. In other words, if somebody promises that they can get your tour company featured in AI overviews or ChatGPT by paying for placements or gaining the system, run away. Google made it clear that the same spam policies that apply to traditional search also apply to AI search. That's actually good news for tour operators. It means that the businesses that are going to win are the ones doing the fundamentals well: earning role reviews, publishing helpful content, keeping their Google business profile updated, getting talked about in legitimate places, and building a brand that people actually trust. As AI search continues to evolve, shortcuts are going to become even more riskier. So focus on building a business that's genuinely worth recommending. And that's what Google and AI are both trying to surface.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

All right, and back to the conversation.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Let's talk about the features nobody uses. Okay, so when we're talking about an optimized Google business profile, we want to utilize any feature that Google allows us to. And I'll be honest, Google is going to update its feature over features over time, add new features over time. It's kind of like Instagram and social media. If it has a new tool or something new that you can use, use it because the algorithm is going to like it. Or it's a little bit different for Google, but hopefully you get the picture. So some of the things that you can do right now, connect your social profiles. Make sure that your social medias are all connected to your Google Business profile. Make sure that you are actually writing Google posts. So Google posts are like social media posts that actively live directly on your Google business profile. So you could do these once a month, twice a month. And a post can be updates, seasonal promotions, new tours. Maybe you want to announce that, special events, booking reminders. So you can post about anything that you want, but it's a great place to show Google that you're active and the future customer that you're active as well. And something important with this is that you're not posting for your existing audience, you're posting for people who are already researching you. Somebody has searched your company, opened up your profile, and they're trying to decide if you are worth booking. So, like I said, fresh posts are going to signal that you're active, operating, and paying attention. Lastly, messaging. So Google allows customers to message you directly from your Google business profile. This can be a great thing, but it could also be really bad. So only turn this on specifically if you have somebody to respond fast. So a quick, a quick response can get you a booking, but a slow response can lose you one and Google will not want to rank you. Most operators only use about 30% of what Google gives them. If the feature is available, use it. All right, great. How can Tor operators generate direct bookings from their Google Business Profile? Because at the end of the day, that's what we want, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Yeah, Google Business Profile is becoming much more than a directory listing like it once was. For tour operators, the goal obviously is to turn that profile into another booking entry point. We're not just creating it and spending time with it just to have it sit there and be something that people can look at, right? So a few ways to do that is we've we've talked about optimizing your services and products inside DBP. So add everything we've talked about so far so that the customers can evaluate their options directly within Google. Use Google's booking integrations. Some booking platforms offer the ability to go straight from search into the reservation flow. So if your booking platform offers that, utilize it. Keep your profile conversion focused. So strong photos, recent reviews, accurate availability, and FAQs, and posts that help someone choose you when you are comparing tour operators is super important. So don't just post a post. It's not like your personal social media. Post with intent. Create content is another option. Um creating it around searches that travelers actually make. So understand what are people searching for that relate to your business and have content on your listing that helps answer those and helps direct people to your business. And then finally, booking links. Make sure your Google business profile points travelers to the right booking page. So if someone's searching for a specific tour, the the link should go to that specific tour. It shouldn't just go to your home page or your contact page, make sure it's going to the right place. The biggest shift is that the customer journey is happening earlier in Google. Tour operators need to treat GPP less like a business card and more like a mini landing page that can drive bookings.

SPEAKER_02 19:13

And this is where your profile starts becoming more than a directory listing. So, how do we measure success of all of this? Don't spend time optimizing your Google business profile and then never actually checking whether anything is improving. If you're not measuring it, you're just guessing. So start with Google Business Profile Insights. It gives you a simple dashboard showing your profile views, your calls, your website clicks, and direction requests. So don't just look at those numbers, look at the trends. Are more people finding you? Are more people taking action? Website clicks are especially important because they're often the bridge between discovery and booking. And if you want to get a little bit more advanced, you could use a dedicated UTM tracking link in your Google Business Profile website field. This lets you see in Google Analytics exactly how much traffic bookings and revenue are actually coming from your profile. If you ever click on somebody's Google Business profile, if you click on the website button and open up their website, you might see a URL that has a bunch of parameters attached to it. That's that UTM that they're using. So if you don't have one, it's really easy to set up. Go ahead and do that. And yes, clicks are nice, but bookings are what we actually care about, right? If your profile generated 200 visits and 15 bookings last month, now you know that you're driving actual business through your Google business profile. Direction requests can also be surprisingly helpful. They can help you understand where guests are coming from if they're driving, and they may influence where you focus your future marketing efforts on, especially if you are more locally focused. For people who want to go a little bit deeper, you could utilize tools like Bright Local or Local Falcon to help you track if you're ranking in local search across different parts of your destination. We use local Falcon at Resmark. And there are so many other tools that you can use. So but it's a great place to see where you're ranking. But don't get caught up in the vanity metrics. The goal isn't to get more views and clicks. The goal is more bookings, like I said. So check your numbers monthly and make sure your Google Business profile is actually contributing to the bottom dollar. Let's do a quick audit. I want you to pause this episode, pull up your Google business profile. Let's look at some things together. Greg, do you have them?

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yeah. So now that you've unpaused, hopefully, obviously you have. So the first one is look at your hours. Are they accurate? Is your phone number correct? Is your website link working properly? Going to the right location? Is your website Link using UTM tracking code so you can properly track where that it's coming from your GBP. Is your primary category the best and most option, most specific option available? Double check this because Google updates these occasionally, and there might be something that's a little bit more specific to what your business is than what it was six months ago, right? Check to see if you've added relevant secondary categories. Look to see are my services and products fully filled out? Have I uploaded any new photos in the last 30 days? If not, get some good photos and go update them now. Have I posted a Google post recently? How recent is my newest review? Have I replied to my last five reviews or any reviews recently? Are my social profiles connected? And lastly, does my profile look active or does it look abandoned? It's the same as like a social media. If you're active, people are more likely to engage than when you're not using it.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

I know I've said this before, but I think it's something that unless you're in marketing, you don't always think about this, isn't just for your future buyers. This is for Google. So this signals to Google that you are active and you're utilizing its features. So it's a good thing to do these on Google's behalf too.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

Now do one more thing. Open up Google and search best tour type in your location. So an example is best zip line in St. Thomas. Don't search your business name. Search the phrase a traveler would actually search. Then ask, do I show up? Who outranks me? Do they have more reviews, better photos, more recent reviews, a more complete profile?

SPEAKER_02 23:58

I love doing this exercise because now you can compare who is showing up. Are you showing up? If you're not showing up, what do you have to do to beat out what the people who are showing up are doing? So if the people are showing up, all have over 100 reviews and you have 12 reviews. Well, guess what? You have to work for 100 reviews. If they all have a bunch of new photos and they're replying to all the reviews and they're having Google Bus Google posts, you're going to have to do that too. You should be doing it anyways, but this should show you more about what you need to do. And finally, click your own booking link. This is important. If a traveler found you right now, could they get from your Google Business profile to a completed booking without confusion or friction?

SPEAKER_00 24:44

So to wrap everything up, remember that your Google Business profile is probably one of the most inexpensive marketing assets that you might not be actively managing. If you're not, make sure you're doing what we've mentioned above. It's going to influence trust, visibility, and it's going to help you get more bookings. I want you to do one of the following things this week. Update your category, add photos, complete your service section, respond to reviews, or add FAQs. Then put it on your monthly marketing checklist and do it on a regular basis so that you're always showing Google that you're active and you're adding value to the end user.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

That's it for today's episode of the Tour Operator Growth Podcast. If you got value out of today, follow the show wherever you listen and leave us a quick review. It's the best way to help other operators find it. And if you want help putting any of this to work in your own tour business, book a call with the team at resmarksystems.com. Thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next one.