Most hotel content shows up to the party way too late. Someone has already decided they are going to Asheville, or Savannah, or wherever, and they are knee-deep in comparison tabs, and only then does your blog post about “best things to do” enter the picture. By that point you are fighting fifty other voices, including the OTAs, for a traveler whose mind is mostly made up.
I want to get there earlier. A lot earlier. Before they have picked the destination at all. That is what I mean by dreaming-stage content, and it is one of the most underrated things an independent hotel can do, because almost nobody bothers to do it well.
Let me walk you through how I think about it.
The four stages, and why almost everyone ignores the first one
The travel marketing world has been chewing on the “five stages of travel” framework for over a decade now: dreaming, planning, booking, experiencing, sharing. You have probably seen it. The problem is that nearly all hotel marketing budget gets dumped into planning and booking, because that is where the spreadsheet shows the conversions happening.
Which makes sense, until you realize everyone is crammed into the same two stages, bidding the same auctions, writing the same “top 10 things to do” posts, and handing the OTAs a fat slice on every booking that does come through.
The dreaming stage is wide open by comparison. This is the person scrolling on a Tuesday night thinking “I need to get away somewhere quiet, mountains maybe, somewhere I can actually hear myself think.” They have not typed your city into anything. They have not opened a booking site. They are just… dreaming. And whoever shows up in that moment, gently and usefully, gets a head start that money literally cannot buy at the booking stage.
Dreaming-stage content does not convert this week. It builds the recall that makes someone choose your property when they finally do start planning, weeks or months later. If you measure it like a booking ad, you will kill it before it ever pays off.
What dreaming-stage queries actually look like
Here is the mental shift. Booking-stage content answers “where should I stay in [city].” Dreaming-stage content answers things that do not even contain a destination yet:
- “where to go for a quiet long weekend in the south”
- “best small towns for a slow autumn trip”
- “romantic getaways that are not the obvious ones”
- “where can I see fall foliage without the crowds”
- “weekend trips where you can actually disconnect”
Notice that none of these mention a hotel. None of them mention your town by name. The traveler is shopping for a feeling and a vibe, not a property. Your job is to be the content that names the place, paints the picture, and quietly happens to be written by the people who run a perfect little inn right in the middle of it.
This is also exactly the kind of question travelers now toss at AI assistants. “Plan me a relaxing 3-day trip somewhere in the Southeast I have not been” is a real prompt people type into ChatGPT every day. If your content is the source those answers get built from, you are present at the very first moment of the journey. I wrote more about getting quoted by AI in is your hotel invisible to ChatGPT, and it is the same muscle.
The content that actually works at this stage
I am going to be blunt: most of what hotels publish is generic, interchangeable, and forgettable. “Top 5 restaurants near our hotel.” Cool, so does every other property in town, and the OTA has the same list. That is not dreaming-stage content. That is filler.
Dreaming-stage content that works tends to be location-led, sensory, and specific to the point of being almost weird. Here is the kind of stuff I push my hotel clients toward.
Theme-led, not place-led
Start from the feeling, not the geography. A post titled “11 places in the US where you can swim in a spring-fed pool that is 72 degrees year-round” is a dreaming-stage magnet, and if your property happens to be near one of those eleven springs, you have a natural, non-salesy reason to exist in that piece. The traveler came for the spring. They left knowing your name.
Hyper-local knowledge the chains cannot fake
This is your unfair advantage as an independent. You actually live there. You know the back road that gets gold light at 6pm in October. You know which café the locals go to versus the one in every guidebook. You know that the second weekend of the month the town square does the thing. A corporate brand blog written from an office three states away cannot touch this, and neither can an OTA listing. Lean all the way into it.
Seasonal and time-anchored inspiration
People dream in seasons. “I want to go somewhere for the holidays.” “I need a spring escape.” Publish a few months ahead of each season so you are indexed and warmed up by the time the daydreaming spikes. Foliage content in July. Holiday-town content in September. Spring content in January.
Visual and skimmable
Dreaming is a visual mode. Big photography, short captions, an honest “here is what it actually feels like to be here” tone. Nobody dreams in a wall of text.
A quick comparison so it sticks
Here is the difference laid out plainly, because the contrast is the whole point.
| Dreaming-stage content | Booking-stage content | |
|---|---|---|
| Traveler mindset | ”Where should I even go?" | "Where do I stay in [city]?” |
| Search example | ”quiet autumn weekend trips" | "boutique hotel downtown [city]“ |
| Competition | Low, few hotels bother | Brutal, including OTAs |
| Payoff timing | Weeks to months later | Same session, often |
| Your edge | Local knowledge, voice | Price, availability, reviews |
| Goal | Get remembered | Get the booking |
You need both. But almost everyone has eight versions of the right column and nothing in the left. Owning the left column is how you stop being one of fifty interchangeable options at booking time, because by then you are the one they already half-recognize.
How this connects to winning back direct bookings
Let me tie this to the thing that actually matters for your business: your OTA mix. When a traveler discovers you at the booking stage, there is a very good chance they discovered you through an OTA, which means you are paying that 15 to 25 percent commission for a guest who is, in a sense, yours anyway.
When a traveler discovers you at the dreaming stage, through your own content, on your own domain, you have started the relationship on your turf. They are far more likely to come back directly when the trip firms up, because they associate the inspiration with you, not with a blue booking button. That does not magically eliminate the OTAs, and I would never pretend it does. They are a real distribution channel and you want to be on them. But it shifts the balance toward a healthier mix where more of your bookings come direct. I broke down the actual commission math in the book-direct math post if you want the numbers.
The earlier in the journey a guest meets you, the more of the relationship is yours. The OTAs are very good at owning the last click. They are terrible at owning the first daydream. That gap is the whole opportunity.
A simple way to start without burning months
You do not need a 40-post content engine to begin. Here is the lean version I give to a hotelier who has a day job running an actual hotel.
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Pick three feelings your property delivers. Not features. Feelings. “Genuinely quiet.” “Walkable and a little romantic.” “Outdoorsy without being rough.” Be honest about what you actually are.
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Write one theme-led piece per feeling that does not lead with your hotel. Lead with the experience and the wider region, and let your property appear naturally as the obvious place to base yourself.
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Anchor each one to a season and publish two to three months ahead of the dreaming spike for that season.
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Make it genuinely useful and genuinely local. If a competitor could have written the same sentence, cut it and write something only you would know.
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Add the structured stuff so AI can quote you clearly, with real place names, real specifics, and a clear sense of who and where you are.
That is five posts a year. That is doable. And it compounds, because dreaming-stage content has a long shelf life. A great “where to go” piece keeps getting found season after season, unlike a booking-stage page that is only useful in the final mile.
A quick note on expectations, because I am allergic to overpromising: you will not see a clean line from these posts to bookings in your dashboard next week. Awareness rarely shows up that cleanly. What you will see, over a couple of seasons, is more people arriving on your site already knowing your name, more direct inquiries, and a slow tilt of your channel mix in the right direction. If you want help making sure these posts can rank and be quoted, that is exactly what our content and reputation work is built around, and the AI visibility side handles getting you into those assistant answers. For the bigger search-foundation picture, the 2026 starter guide is a good next read.
The mindset shift, in one sentence
Stop only fishing where the fish are already biting. Go upstream, to the moment the trip is still just a feeling, and be the voice that turns that feeling into a place, your place, before anyone else even shows up.
If you want a hand figuring out which three feelings your hotel actually owns and building the dreaming-stage content around them, that is one of my favorite things to dig into with a property. Book a call and let’s map out the first few posts together, the ones that get travelers picturing your place long before they ever start searching.