15 million views.

We found this Instagram goldmine across a string of reels that all open the same way: a 4x4 rolling up the road to a landscape hotel.

On one hand, nobody sits down and brainstorms "the drive in" as a content idea.

But search your topic on Instagram and there it is: the same unglamorous opener repeating, pulling millions every time.

None of those millions had heard of the property before the reel.

That's the part most operators miss.

THE WRONG WAY

A couple newsletters ago, we turned the questions your guests ask you into content (the concierge-in-public move).

A lot of you guys ran with it.

That works. But it only reaches people already circling your property: past guests, warm leads, the ones who already found you.

The blank page comes right back the moment you want to reach everyone else.

So most operators fall back on:

• Posting their own amenities, because that's what they're trying to sell
• Guessing at topics based on what they think travelers care about
• Leaning on hashtags to get found

Hashtags aren't the move anymore. These days, Instagram reads the words in your caption and on your screen to decide who sees a post.

In other words, yhousands of people are searching your area every day, and most of them have never heard of you.

This means you're creating content, based on guesses of what a stranger wants to watch, when the search bar already tells you.

THE PLAY

Use the Instagram search bar the way a traveler who's never heard of you uses Google or ChatGPT.

Open the app on the account you post from, so the algorithm is already tuned to your area.

Then type the most basic thing a traveler would search before a trip near you.

For our Zion client, that was "Zion trip."

Here's what to do with what comes back:

• Note the phrases that repeat. "Zion National Park" kept showing up, so we stopped calling it just "Zion."
• Note the formats that repeat with huge view counts. Driving, itineraries, best hikes, coffee in the canyon, all surfaced again and again.
• Then narrow by your type of stay. For example, "Luxury Zion resort" surfaced "Southwest US," a phrase we never would have written on our own.

Then you make your version, in their words.

Those exact phrases become the hook that stops the scroll.

You're not stealing. You're modeling what already works and reading the room.

The difference is that these aren't your guests' questions.

They're the whole market's, ranked by what's already winning.

THE PROOF

One of our clients was posting reels of their property. Nice shots of the bar, the amenities, the rooms.

Reach was flat. It stayed inside the same small circle.

Then we built content around what their whole city was searching, not just what past guests asked.

A single reel on the hidden bars in Nashville hit:

• 2,000,000+ views
• 14,500 likes
• 22,500 shares

Almost none of those 2 million had heard of the property before that reel.

The topic came from the search bar, not from a brainstorm, and not from their inbox.

THE TAKEAWAY

Stop guessing what to post. Go see what your market is already searching.

This week, open the search bar on your posting account and type the first thing a traveler would search before booking your area.

Write down every phrase and topic that repeats.

That's your next month of content, aimed at the thousands who haven't found you yet.

-- Ben Wolff
Founder, Oasi & Modern Hospitality Accelerator