Ranking for [Keyword] + Destination but not [Keyword] on it's own.

[Alim]

Our homepage is optimised for [Keyword] and we have a bunch of sub pages for various destinations around the world.
All of our destination pages are ranked 1-3, beating our competitors destination pages, however our homepage is ranking 7-9 for the keyword on it's own with the same competitors above us.
Just curious if there are any obvious reasons this might be happening without me having to provide more specific info? I find it odd that our destination pages easily outrank our competition, yet when it comes to the exact match keyword we seem to struggle to keep up with the same competitors. If anyone has been in a similar situation and/or can give some insight as to the possible causes it would be much appreicated.
Sorry if this is not an appropriate question or if I'm being too vague.

[Wilburforce]

@Alim - Welcome to Webmaster World!

A few years ago Google's focus on geolocation sharpened considerably, and location is now a strong factor in ranking.

This makes obvious sense for location-specific services: if I am looking for lawn-mower repairs, it will probably be somewhere near where I am. For other types of service (like holiday chalets) it may not make quite the same sense, but again, if I'm looking for one without specifying where I am then where I am makes as much sense as anything. Even relatively location-neutral services (e.g. online retail) are affected.

Server location (both of site and the searcher's ISP) can affect this, so if you are searching from City 1 in Country 1 but your ISP's server is located in City 2 in Country 2 you may well see results that are biased towards City 2 or Country 2. If you check your own and your competitors' IP addresses it might give you some idea of whether this is affecting the results at all.

How much this affects your business depends on the product or service you are providing, but if most of your actual customers search for "widgets location" then your ranking for "widgets" isn't particularly important anyway.

However, ranking is of page, not of site, so It may just be that for your Hompage keyword, your competitors have slighlty better ranking factors than you.