Create or claim your Google My Business account

To enable Reserve with Google, you should create or claim your Google My Business account. (Besides taking bookings, Google My Business also allows customer engagement, blog posts, marketing tools like discounts, and customer insights.)

Before you do anything else, you should check if your Google My Business listing already exists. The easiest way to do this is to do a Google Search for the name of your business. If your business profile appears, claim it asap and follow the steps on the screen. (If the business information is outdated, please update it as soon as possible in your Google My Business account, as well as your channel settings in TourCMS. Thank you!)

If your profile doesn't pop up, you should create it on Google Maps:

1. Open Google Maps on your browser
2. Enter your address in the search bar
3. Right-click on your businesses location
4. Select "Add your business" on the left
5. Follow the on-screen instructions.

Please fill in all information requested. This information should match with your website as closely as possible. It's also vital that you verify your business with Google. This will legitimate your business for Google and allow you and designated account members to manage your Google My Business account.

Once you verified your Google My Business listing, it makes much sense to SEO-optimize it for better rankings and - hopefully - conversion.

[SOURCE: Google.com: How to claim and verify your Business Profile on Google]

Here are some helpful tips that might help improve your listing on Google:

How to improve your ranking and search results on Google Maps

The listing of your Google My Business is dependant on local SEO (search engine optimization). It's called "local SEO" because, on Google Maps, the physical distance is a significant factor in the search algorithm. Proximity is an important factor, but not the only one. Other factors are known to be of influence too:

• Relevance
• Match to the search term(s)
• Prominence/popularity of the business. 

Here are some helpful tips that might help improve your listing on Google:

Steps to optimize your Google My Business listing:

1. Create or claim your Google My Business listing.
2. Enter your business name, address, and phone number: This information must be consistent with your website, other local listing sites, and your TourCMS channel settings (Homepage > TourCMS Marketplace > Configure).
3. Verify your business listing.
4. Enter all your business information like your website URL and a description with local and target keywords. Work in keywords naturally as Google penalizes "keyword stuffing".
5. Choose a category that matches your operation best. Tour operator is undoubtedly no lousy choice.
6. Enter appealing attributes about your business like "All our tours are accessible to wheelchair users" or "all our tour guides are locals". Add whatever makes your company stand out.
7. Add a lot of high-quality photos or even videos. It's known that local listings with excellent visual illustrations perform much better.
8. Ask your guests for positive Google ratings & reviews. Also, if those reviews aren't 5-star-reviews, the number of reviews can push your prominence massively.
9. Activate the message feature. Answering customer questions publicly and fostering customer interaction is another valuable factor.
10. Create posts on Google for discounts and other promotions or create articles showcasing your great products. (They just last seven days, so do this regularly.)

[SOURCE: Google.com: Improving Your Listing]

[SOURCE: michaelswilder.com - An Introduction to Google My Business]