Marketing for hotels and accommodation
The argument here is not occupancy, it is what a room night is worth once the channel has taken its cut.
Where the money moves.
A booking is not simply a booking. The same room at the same rate contributes very differently once channel commission comes out, and the case for direct is that the margin left behind is worth more than the cost of winning that guest yourself. That is a maths problem before it is a creative one. Work starts with what you currently pay per room night by channel, then the direct path is built against that number: brand search defence, metasearch presence, the booking engine itself, and the guest records already sitting in your property management system.
Parity clauses limit the rate you can publish, so the direct offer has to be assembled out of everything that is not rate. Late checkout, parking, breakfast, a drink on arrival, a member rate behind a login, a room type held back from the channels. Those levers survive contractual review and they convert, because a guest comparing two identical prices takes the one with something attached. The creative job is making that visible at the moment of comparison, on the metasearch line and the first screen of the booking engine, not buried in a brochure.
Weekday corporate, weekend leisure, groups and conference behave like four separate businesses. Corporate rate season runs through the last quarter for the following year, conference and wedding enquiries carry lead times measured in months, and leisure moves inside a fortnight around events, concerts and school holidays. One calendar cannot serve all four. Planning runs by segment and by demand period, so compression dates are defended on rate while soft midweek periods take the volume push, and reporting keeps them separate instead of averaging everything into a single occupancy line.
Review score is a distribution asset. It moves ranking on the channels, it moves conversion on your own site, and it is the last thing a guest checks after price. Responding properly, at volume, in the property's voice is ordinary work and it slips the moment nobody owns it. Photography sits beside it. Rooms shot honestly, in the light they actually get, showing the view the guest will actually have, close the gap between expectation and arrival, and that gap is where poor reviews and rate resistance are born.
What we run.
Direct booking path
Booking engine flow, metasearch and free booking links, brand search defence and the offer architecture that makes direct the obvious choice at the point of comparison rather than a slower version of the same price.
Guest data and pre-arrival
Segments built from the property management system and CRM, then used for pre-arrival upsell, post-stay return offers and lapsed guest reactivation, which is the cheapest room night the property can sell.
Property and room photography
Rooms, suites, food and beverage and function spaces shot in the light they actually get, cut for the booking engine, the channel listings, metasearch and paid media from one production.
Conference, wedding and group enquiry
Capacity charts, floor plans, delegate packages and real event photography on pages built for the way planners search, with enquiry and phone tracking so the sales team can see the pipeline source.
Review and reputation programme
Consistent responses in the property's voice across the channels and Google, complaint patterns fed back to operations, and post-stay prompts timed to the moments a guest is most likely to write.
Questions we get asked.
It does not have to. The channels earn their volume in discovery and in markets you cannot reach efficiently on your own. Direct work targets a guest who has already chosen the property and is only deciding where to complete the booking, which is your own brand demand. Parity is respected and the offer is built from inclusions rather than rate.
Yes. The booking engine, the PMS and the CRM decide what is actually possible, so the plan is built around what yours can do, including rate types, member logins, packaging and the guest records available for pre-arrival and post-stay contact. No migration gets proposed unless the system itself is the constraint, and then with the numbers attached.
Against revenue, by segment. Direct share of room nights, revenue after channel cost, average daily rate held on compression dates, and cost of acquisition per room night by channel. Occupancy on its own hides too much, and a campaign that fills rooms by discounting is reported plainly as what it is.
Yes. Strategy, buying and reporting consolidate at group level while each property keeps its own position, photography and rate story. The value of the group layer is comparison: which property leans too hard on channel volume, which is holding rate through soft periods, and where the direct programme deserves funding first.
Also in hospitality and food
Talk to us.
9 services under one team, run against the numbers your business already reports on.
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