Hospitality marketing
statistics 2026

Paid online advertising in hospitality (EU, 10+ staff)

• 30.5% of EU hospitality businesses paid for ads targeted on web content or searched keywords in 2024; 20.3% for ads based on the user's location (Eurostat, 2024)
• Accommodation (hotels and other lodging) advertises more: 56.9% of EU accommodation businesses paid for online ads in 2024, against 41.6% across all of hospitality (Eurostat, 2024)
• In the Netherlands, 41.8% of hospitality businesses paid for online ads in 2024, almost exactly the EU average (41.6%) (Eurostat, 2024)

What hospitality websites offer (EU, 10+ staff)

• 71.6% of EU hospitality businesses show a description of their offer or price list on their website; 38.0% offer content in at least two languages (Eurostat, 2025)
• Only 9.8% offer a chat service for customer support on their website; 23.2% advertise job vacancies there (Eurostat, 2025)
• Accommodation businesses are almost all online: 95.7% have a website and 81.0% let guests book online (Eurostat, 2025)

Where US hospitality businesses are active

• US food and drink businesses (1 to 50 staff) are actively present on Facebook (47%), Instagram (46%), their own website (40%), Google Business Profile (35%) and TikTok (31%) (BrightLocal, 2026)
• Only 22% of US small business owners name Google as one of their top two channels for winning customers (BrightLocal, 2026)

Partnering with an SEO agency that understands local search helps restaurants and hotels turn these channels into bookings.

Social media use by hospitality businesses

• 47.3% of EU hospitality businesses use multimedia content-sharing sites such as YouTube; 46.6% use two or more types of social media (2023, 10+ staff) (Eurostat, 2023)
• Facebook (47%) and Instagram (46%) are the most actively used channels of US food and drink businesses; TikTok follows at 31% (BrightLocal, 2026)
• Dutch hospitality is more social than the EU: 85.9% of Dutch hospitality businesses use social media, against 78.3% in the EU (2025) (Eurostat, 2025)

Platform reach (Netherlands example)

• Instagram reached 8.15 million people in the Netherlands at the end of 2025 (44.4% of the population), Facebook 7.50 million and TikTok 6.30 million adults (41.9% of adults) (DataReportal, 2026)
• Meta takes 65.5% of Dutch social advertising budgets (first half of 2026), TikTok 17.2% (DDMA, 2026)

Restaurants and hotels increasingly bundle organic social with paid social through a dedicated Facebook Ads agency.

Google Business Profile for restaurants and hotels

• The average restaurant profile got 6,386 views in Google Search and 5,439 in Google Maps per month, with a 3% action rate (data 2017-2018) (BrightLocal, 2019)
• Hotels got 13,042 Search and 14,434 Maps views per month; 53% of hotel views came via Maps and the median hotel had 150 photos (BrightLocal, 2019)
• Businesses with photos receive 42% more requests for directions and 35% more clicks to their website than those without (Google, cited by BrightLocal) (BrightLocal, 2019)
• Customers are 70% more likely to visit and 50% more likely to consider buying from businesses with a complete Business Profile (Google, 2026)

Local search behaviour

• 30% of all mobile searches are related to location (global, April 2016); mobile searches for "food open now" or "stores open now" grew 2.1x in a year (US, 2016) (Think with Google, 2016)
• 73% of US consumers started their last local search on mobile; 52% started in Google Search and a further 9% in Google Maps (BrightLocal, 2026)
• During the search, 44% look at address or distance, 38% at the star rating and 37% at the number of reviews; negative reviews (33%) are the top reason to drop a business (BrightLocal, 2026)
• Google Maps lists 250 million businesses and places, and 500 million users contribute reviews, photos and ratings each year (Google, 2025)

See also our complete local SEO statistics and Google Business Profile statistics for 2026. Hospitality brands typically combine local SEO, review management and GMB optimization to win the local pack.

Forecasts for 2026 and beyond

• ABN AMRO forecasts for the Netherlands in 2026 (volume): restaurants +2%, fast food +1.5%, catering +1.5%, cafés +1%, delivery +1%, hotel overnight stays -2% (ABN AMRO, 2026)
• Dutch tourism board NBTC expects 0.5% guest growth in 2026, slowed mainly by the VAT increase (cited by ABN AMRO) (ABN AMRO, 2026)
• 55% of Dutch hoteliers name the VAT increase as an important negative factor for margins and 52% staff shortages and wage costs (Hotel Leaders Network and ABN AMRO survey 2026) (ABN AMRO, 2026)
• AI is becoming a discovery channel: 45% of US consumers used ChatGPT or other AI tools for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier (BrightLocal, 2026)