How do you market a hotel on TikTok?
Treat TikTok as a search engine. Find the searches guests make for your destination and type of stay, see who ranks for them, and get into those results with your own videos and with creators who already rank. In 15 US TikTok hotel searches we checked, hotels' own accounts held 14 of the 300 top-20 results, and 1 of the 45 top-three places.
By Angelica Handover, Co-founder and CEO, SocialSeal Published
TikTok is a search engine for hotels
People don’t only scroll TikTok. They search it, and they search for hotels the same way they search Google: “best hotels maldives”, “st tropez best luxury hotel”, “luxury boutique resort”. The videos that rank for those searches shape which hotels a guest considers.
Ask Google how to market a hotel on TikTok and its AI Overview lists what to post: room tours, POV videos, the 80/20 rule, behind-the-scenes. It’s a reasonable list, and its first source is a TikTok by a social media marketer, not a hotel. None of it tells you who your guests find when they search, or whether that’s you.
Who ranks when guests search for a hotel
We looked at the top 20 TikTok results for 15 hotel searches made from the US, captured between 16 September and 21 October 2026.
| Account type | Top-20 results | Share | Top-3 results |
|---|---|---|---|
| Creators, and accounts that repost travel videos | 272 | 91% | 44 of 45 |
| Hotels and hotel groups (own accounts) | 14 | 5% | 1 of 45 |
| Travel agents and concierge services | 14 | 5% | 0 of 45 |
| Total | 300 | 45 |
The one hotel in a top-three spot was a resort with “Premium” in its name, at number two for “premium resort”.
Hotels’ own accounts appeared in 10 of the 15 searches, but apart from that resort they sat lower down, between positions 4 and 18. Creators answer most of these searches.
What ranks instead
Reading the 45 top-three videos, three kinds stand out:
- A creator’s own stay at one named hotel. “We loved this hotel so much I was actually sad to leave.” “The best service I’ve ever experienced.” These are the most common.
- Rankings and comparisons. “Our honest ranking of the 10 best luxury resorts in the Maldives for 2026” held two of the top three places for “top luxury maldives resorts”.
- Alternatives to the destination. The number one result for both “best hotels maldives” and “top luxury maldives resorts” was a video about an overwater resort closer to home for US viewers: “You don’t need a 20-hour flight to experience the Maldives.” A destination search can be won by a hotel that isn’t in the destination.
What the hotels that did rank had in common
They answered the search with the place. One Saint-Tropez hotel appeared from its own account in 3 of the 4 Saint-Tropez searches, at positions 5, 6 and 8. Its caption sells the day a guest would have: by the pool, at the table, under the stars.
They used creators’ footage on their own account. A Sydney hotel’s video, which ranked for “luxury hotel” and “luxury stay”, credits a creator for the footage.
They matched the words guests type. The “Premium” resort ranked second for “premium resort”. A Maldives resort ranked sixth for “best hotels maldives” with a caption naming its atoll and its private overwater pools.
A plan for your hotel
- List 15 to 30 searches your guests make. Start with your destination and type of stay, then add who is travelling and the feature you’re known for. See what travellers search before booking a hotel.
- Search each one on TikTok from your guests’ main markets. TikTok shows different results in different countries, so a search made from your own country won’t show what your guests see. Note the top 10 and who made each video: you, a competitor, a creator or a seller.
- For each search, decide how to get in. Where creators hold the top places, work with the ones already ranking. Where nobody answers well, make the video yourself, built around the words in the search.
- Brief each video to its search. Show what that traveller wants to see, and put the place and the type of traveller in the caption and on screen.
- Re-check the same searches every month. Count the results you hold, not just the views.
Where ads and TikTok Go fit
TikTok offers travel ad formats and TikTok Go, which lets creators earn commission on bookings. Both work better once you know which searches matter and which videos already rank. Boost the videos that rank, rather than paying to push the ones that don’t.
Next
- How to use social media to get more bookings: the full method.
- How to track AI answers for the same searches: Google’s AI Overviews cite TikTok and YouTube videos for hotel questions.
How we know
- Searches: 15 US TikTok searches tracked in SocialSeal for a luxury hotel group, a client shared without being named: "best hotels maldives", "top luxury maldives resorts", "st tropez best luxury hotel", "best luxury hotels to stay st tropez", "saint tropez luxury resorts", "st tropez south france top hotels", "boutique hotels south of france", "luxury boutique resort", "boutique luxury resort", "best luxury boutique resorts", "boutique hotel", "premium resort", "luxury hotel", "luxury stay" and "5 star resort".
- Observation window: The latest capture of each search, between 16 September and 21 October 2026, top 20 results each: 300 result slots from 199 accounts.
- Classification: Each account was classed by hand from its handle and captions as a hotel or hotel group posting about its own property, a travel agent or concierge service, or a creator or an account that reposts other people's travel videos. 10 accounts were hotels or hotel groups, and 6 were agents or concierges.
- Limits: One client's search list, weighted towards luxury and resort stays, captured from the US. The market is where the search ran, not a verified viewer location. Results show what surfaced for these searches, not how many people searched.
Other questions
- Should a hotel post on TikTok every day?
- For search, relevance matters more than frequency. A handful of videos that answer real searches, such as "where to stay in [destination] with kids", does more for being found than daily posts that answer nothing. Check the same searches each month to see which videos hold their place.
- Are TikTok ads worth it for hotels?
- They can be, once you know which searches and videos work. TikTok offers travel ad formats, and Spark Ads let you boost a creator's existing video. Start with organic search visibility, so you know what to boost.
- Do hotels need to work with influencers on TikTok?
- For search, yes. Choose them by what they rank for rather than follower count. In our sample, creators and repost accounts held 272 of 300 top-20 results for hotel searches. The fastest way into those results is often a creator who already holds them.
See who ranks when guests search for you
The free Visibility Check runs the searches guests make for hotels like yours on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, and shows whether they find you, your competitors or creators.
Get your free Visibility Check