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A tourist searching from an unfamiliar neighborhood and a local searching for their regular spot need almost opposite things from your Google Business Profile. Here's how to build one that actually serves both.
A seafood restaurant near the waterfront in Charleston, SC gets two completely different customers searching for it on any given night: a tourist standing three blocks away with no idea what neighborhood they're in, and a local resident who's eaten there a dozen times and just wants to confirm tonight's wait time. Both are searching Google Maps. Neither is looking for the same information, and a profile built entirely for one tends to frustrate the other.
Any business in a tourist-heavy area, restaurants, tour operators, souvenir shops, boutique hotels, salons near a resort district, faces this same split audience, and it's worth being deliberate about serving both rather than defaulting to whichever one feels more familiar to write for.
A tourist searching for your business type has none of the local context a resident takes for granted, they don't know the neighborhood, don't know which street numbering makes sense, and often don't know your business exists until this exact search, while a local searching for your business already knows roughly where you are and is usually confirming something specific, hours, availability, a menu update.
This means tourist-facing content needs to establish basic orientation, what neighborhood or landmark you're near, how to actually get there, while local-facing content can assume familiarity and focus instead on what's new, current, or worth confirming before a repeat visit.
⚠️ Common Mistake: Writing your entire Google Business Profile as if every searcher already knows your city, your neighborhood, and your general vibe. A visitor from out of town needs orientation information a longtime local would find unnecessary.
Action Step: Read your GBP description as someone who has never been to your city, and note what basic orientation information is missing.
Tourist-facing photos should establish what makes your business worth a special trip, distinctive atmosphere, standout dishes or products, a view or setting unique to your location, while local-facing photos can lean into what's currently new or seasonal, since a repeat local customer has already seen your general atmosphere and is looking for a reason to come back now specifically.
A photo gallery that's entirely generic interior shots serves neither audience particularly well. A tourist needs to see why this specific place, out of many options, deserves their limited time in your city. A local needs to see what's changed since their last visit.
📊 Flento Data: Across businesses in tourist-heavy areas that Flento has reviewed, profiles balancing distinctive, destination-worthy photos with current, seasonal content saw stronger engagement from both search segments than profiles using only generic, static interior photography.
Action Step: Audit your photo gallery and confirm it includes both distinctive, "worth the trip" imagery and recent, current content showing what's new.
Tourists disproportionately care about attributes like parking availability, walkability from major landmarks or hotel districts, and whether staff can accommodate visitors unfamiliar with local customs or language, while locals are more likely to already know these logistics and instead prioritize things like loyalty programs, regular hours consistency, or advance reservation options for a recurring visit.
Completing every relevant Google Business Profile attribute, not just the obvious ones, gives both audiences the specific information they're actually filtering on, even though they're filtering on different things entirely.
💡 Pro Tip: If you're in a walkable tourist district, explicitly mention proximity to a well-known landmark or hotel cluster in your description. Locals don't need this orientation, but it's often exactly what a tourist is searching for.
Businesses serving a strong tourist audience often experience dramatic seasonal demand swings that a purely local business doesn't, which means your Google Business Profile posting activity should reflect that reality, increasing ahead of peak tourist season and shifting content emphasis toward whichever audience is actually driving traffic at that point in the year.
During peak tourist season, content oriented toward first-time visitors makes sense. During your local off-season, shifting emphasis toward loyalty, local events, or off-peak specials can help sustain traffic from the audience that's actually available to you at that time.
Action Step: Map your own tourist season against your local, year-round demand, and plan a posting rhythm that shifts emphasis appropriately across the year.
A review from a tourist often speaks to overall experience and whether the visit was worth their limited time in town, while a review from a local more often speaks to consistency and value over repeated visits, and both types of review genuinely help future searchers from their respective segment make a decision.
Don't discourage either type of review or push exclusively toward one style. A future tourist benefits from reading another tourist's experience just as much as a future local benefits from reading about consistency from someone who visits regularly.
🔥 Quick Win: If your reviews skew heavily toward one audience, mostly tourists or mostly locals, consider whether your review request process is unintentionally reaching only one segment, and adjust to capture both perspectives more evenly.
Local Business Content Automation helps businesses in tourist-heavy areas maintain a posting rhythm that shifts appropriately with seasonal demand, without someone manually rethinking the content calendar every few months. Google Business Profile Optimizer flags missing attributes, like parking or accessibility information, that matter disproportionately to visitors unfamiliar with your area.
The Charleston restaurant added landmark-based orientation language for tourists alongside loyalty-focused content for locals, and started converting a noticeably higher share of both first-time visitors and repeat local diners once each audience found what they were actually looking for.
If your profile currently serves only one of your two real audiences well, try Flento free → and build content that speaks to both.
✅ Done? Build a profile that speaks to both audiences finding you → Try Flento free
Should a business in a tourist area write its GBP description differently than a purely local business would? Yes. Tourist-facing content needs to establish basic orientation, neighborhood, landmarks, how to get there, that a business serving only locals can typically assume its audience already knows.
What attributes matter most to tourist searchers specifically? Parking availability, walkability from major landmarks or hotel areas, and accommodations for visitors unfamiliar with local customs tend to matter more to tourists than to locals, who usually already know this logistical information.
How should posting activity change with tourist season? Increase activity and shift content emphasis toward first-time visitor needs ahead of and during peak tourist season, then shift emphasis toward loyalty and local audience content during your local, off-peak season.
Do tourists and locals write genuinely different kinds of reviews? Often, yes. Tourist reviews tend to focus on overall experience and whether a visit was worth their limited time, while local reviews more often speak to consistency and value across repeated visits. Both are useful to future searchers.
What's the biggest mistake tourist-area businesses make with local SEO? Writing an entire profile as if every searcher already has local context and familiarity, which leaves out the basic orientation information a first-time visitor genuinely needs to find and choose your business.
Serving both tourists and locals well isn't about picking one audience over the other, it's about recognizing they're searching with completely different context and building content, photos, and attributes that answer both sets of questions clearly.
Read local SEO for restaurants and local SEO for hotels for how two tourist-heavy categories apply these principles in practice. Start with what local SEO is if your business's fundamentals still need attention.