Here is a thing I see almost every week. I pull up an independent hotel’s Google Business Profile, scroll past the photos and the reviews, and I hit the Services and Products sections. Blank. Or worse, half-filled with whatever Google auto-suggested two years ago and nobody ever touched again.
And every single time I think the same thought: that is free real estate, and you are leaving it on the table.
I run an agency in Orlando doing SEO and AEO for independent and boutique hotels, so I look at a lot of these profiles. The pattern is consistent. Hoteliers obsess over the photos (good), they chase reviews (good), they might even post a few updates. But the Services and Products sections, the two spots where Google literally lets you type in relevance signals and merchandise what you sell, sit empty. Today I want to fix that for you.
Why these two sections matter more than you think
Let me be honest about what these sections are and are not. They are not a guaranteed ranking boost. Nothing in local SEO is. Anyone promising you a #1 spot for filling out a form is lying, and you should stop reading their emails.
What these sections actually do is feed Google text it can read and associate with your business. When someone searches “boutique hotel with rooftop bar near [neighborhood]” or “pet friendly inn downtown,” Google is trying to match that query to relevant businesses. Your profile is one of the inputs. A profile that explicitly mentions a rooftop bar, in a description, in a structured entry, is more legible to that matching than one that says nothing.
Think of it like this. The OTAs win a huge share of hotel search because they have pages of structured, keyword-rich content for every amenity and room type imaginable. You cannot out-content Booking.com on their own turf, and you cannot fully escape the OTAs either, that is not the game. But you can make your own profile richer so you show up for more of the searches that matter, and claw back a healthier share of direct bookings. I wrote more about that dynamic in how the OTAs steal your search if you want the full picture.
The Services and Products sections are the only place on your Google Business Profile where you get to write your own relevance keywords in plain text. Most independent hotels leave them empty. That is a competitive gap you can close in an afternoon.
Services vs Products: what each one is for
These two sections look similar but behave differently, and using them right means knowing which is which.
Services are free-text entries. Each one has a name and an optional description of up to several hundred characters. There is no photo, no price, no link. They are quiet, text-only signals. Perfect for amenities and experiences that do not need to be merchandised but should absolutely be on the record.
Products are visual cards. Each one has a photo, a title, an optional price (or price range), a longer description, and a button that can link out to a page you choose. These are loud. They show up as a swipeable carousel on your profile. Perfect for room types and packages you actively want guests to see and click.
Here is how I split a typical independent hotel’s offerings across the two:
| Use Services for | Use Products for |
|---|---|
| Airport shuttle, valet parking | Room types (King Suite, Garden Room) |
| Free WiFi, pet-friendly policy | Romance / anniversary packages |
| Concierge, late checkout | Seasonal stay deals |
| On-site dining, rooftop bar | Spa or experience add-ons |
| EV charging, business center | Extended-stay or weekly rates |
The rough rule: if it is a feature of the property, it is a Service. If it is something a guest could choose, picture, and book, make it a Product.
How to fill out Services the right way
Start in your Google Business Profile dashboard, find the Services section, and resist the urge to just type one-word entries. “WiFi.” “Parking.” “Pool.” That technically fills the box, but it wastes the description field, which is where the relevance lives.
Here is the move. Name the service plainly, then write a description that a real human would write, that happens to contain the words guests actually search.
Weak:
Pool
Better:
Heated Saltwater Pool — Our heated saltwater pool is open year-round with poolside towel service and a quiet adults-only hour each morning. A favorite for guests who want to swim even in the cooler months downtown.
See the difference? The second one is still honest and human, but now “heated pool,” “year-round,” “adults-only,” and “downtown” are all on the profile. Those are phrases people type. You are not stuffing keywords, you are describing your actual amenity in the words guests use.
A few things I always tell clients:
- Be specific to your property. “Free breakfast” is fine. “Complimentary hot breakfast with local pastries from [bakery name] from 7 to 10am” is better and more believable.
- Cover the non-obvious stuff. Pet policy, EV charging, accessibility features, early check-in. These are searched constantly and rarely listed.
- Match what is true. Do not list a spa you do not have. Google guidelines aside, nothing tanks trust like a guest arriving for a service that does not exist.
- Do not duplicate. If you say it in Services, you do not need to repeat it as a Product unless you are also selling it as an add-on.
If you want the broader context on getting every section of your profile working together, my Google Business Profile playbook for hotels goes section by section. This post is the deep dive on the two everyone skips.
How to merchandise Products: rooms, packages, and add-ons
Products are where it gets fun, because this is the closest thing Google gives you to a free storefront on your profile. And it links back to your own site, which is the whole point.
I treat Products as a three-part play: room types, packages, and add-ons.
Room types
Create a Product card for each distinct room category, not every single room. Photo of the actual room (not a stock image, please), a clear title, a from-price, a description, and a link straight to that room on your booking engine.
Example structure for a card:
- Title: Garden View King Suite
- Price: From $189 / night
- Description: Our largest room, with a private balcony over the courtyard garden, a king bed, walk-in rain shower, and a sitting area. Sleeps two comfortably, quietest rooms in the building.
- Link: the page on your booking flow for that room
That price is directional, a “from.” Keep it honest and update it seasonally so it never reads stale. A card that says “From $189” linking to a page where rooms start at $340 is the fastest way to annoy a guest before they even arrive.
Packages
This is where independents can really shine because the OTAs are terrible at packages. Romance package, anniversary stay, “third night free” off-season deal, a local-experience bundle. Each one is a Product card with its own photo and a link to a landing page on your own site.
Why does this matter for the bigger picture? Because a guest who books a package directly is a guest who did not pay the OTA a commission. OTA commissions typically run around 15 to 25 percent, and every package booking that comes through your own door keeps that margin in your pocket. I ran the actual arithmetic on that in the book-direct math post if you want to see what those points are worth annually on real occupancy.
Add-ons and experiences
Spa credits, breakfast upgrades, late checkout, parking, a bottle of wine on arrival. These work as Products when you want guests to picture and pre-purchase them. They also quietly signal to Google that you are a full-service property, which feeds back into that relevance question.
Every Product card is a small piece of merchandising and a link back to your own booking flow. Done well, the Products carousel turns a passive profile view into a path toward a direct booking, instead of a bounce over to an OTA listing.
The relevance keyword angle (without being gross about it)
Let me say the quiet part out loud, because the whole reason I am pushing you on this is the relevance keywords.
Google reads the text in your Services and Products. That text becomes part of what your profile is “about.” So when you write a room description that naturally includes “balcony,” “walk-in shower,” “downtown,” “pet friendly,” or “rooftop,” you are expanding the set of searches your profile is eligible to be relevant for. That is the lever.
The trap is overdoing it. I have seen hoteliers turn a perfectly good description into “luxury boutique downtown hotel best hotel near airport cheap rooms pet friendly pool spa.” That reads like spam, guests hate it, and Google is not impressed either. The skill is writing for the human first and letting the keywords fall in naturally because you described the real thing.
My test: read the description out loud. If it sounds like a sentence a front-desk manager would say to a caller, it is good. If it sounds like a 2009 SEO plugin, rewrite it.
This is the same relevance work that powers your wider local presence and even how AI tools describe your hotel. The richer and more accurate your structured info, the better the odds that an LLM answering “best boutique hotels in [city]” actually knows what makes you different. I get into the AI side of this in is your hotel invisible to ChatGPT, and it all starts with the same legible, honest data.
A simple workflow to get it done
Here is the order I actually work in when I sit down with a new hotel client:
- List every amenity and policy. Pull from your website, your front-desk FAQ, your actual property. Aim for 15 to 25 items.
- Sort into Services or Products. Features go to Services, choosable/bookable things go to Products.
- Write Services first. Name plus a two-sentence human description each. Knock these out in one pass.
- Build Product cards next. One per room type, one per active package, a handful of add-ons. Real photos, from-prices, links to your own booking pages.
- Link everything to your site, not an OTA. The whole point is to send the click home.
- Set a quarterly reminder. Update prices, swap in the current season’s packages, retire expired deals.
That last one matters more than people expect. A profile with a “Valentine’s Package” still up in August looks neglected, and neglected profiles get less trust from both guests and Google.
Where this fits in the bigger picture
I want to be clear-eyed with you. Filling out Services and Products will not, by itself, vault you above the OTAs or guarantee a flood of bookings. Local ranking is a stew of reviews, proximity, profile completeness, your website, and a dozen other things. There are no guarantees in any of it.
But this is one of the highest-effort-to-payoff moves available to an independent hotel, precisely because so few of your competitors bother. It costs you an afternoon and zero dollars in ad spend. It makes your profile more legible, more clickable, and more likely to send traffic to your own booking flow instead of a third party. That is exactly the kind of compounding, unglamorous local-SEO work that adds up. If you are deciding whether to outgun the OTAs on their own portals or build your own gravity, the second path is the one you can actually win, and I made that case in why your hotel ranks below the OTAs for your own name.
If you would rather not spend that afternoon yourself, this is exactly the kind of thing my team handles inside our local SEO and Google Business Profile service. We will audit your profile, write the Services and Products the right way, link them to a booking flow that converts, and keep them current. Or if you just want a second set of eyes on where your profile is leaking bookings, book a quick call and I will walk through it with you.
Either way, go fill out those two sections this week. The blank box is not doing you any favors.