Hotels, serviced apartments and rural stays
Hotel marketing that moves bookings from the OTA to your own site
Without picking a fight with the portals and without breaking rate parity. We work the Google Business Profile, the website in your guests’ languages and the campaigns, and we measure bookings from the engine. The target is the split, not the occupancy.
No commitment and no lock-in. If you are full all year, we will tell you not to spend.
5.0
Reviews from our Google profile, translated from Spanish.
What every OTA booking actually costs you
A hotel rarely has an occupancy problem. It has a margin problem. The same night, sold on your own site or sold through a portal, leaves a very different result — and the gap is not small.
- Bookings a month
- 300
- Share coming through OTAs
- 80%
- Average OTA commission
- 17%
- Average booking value
- €420
- Commission paid in a year
- €205,000
Shifting just ten points of that 80% to direct is over €25,000 a year that stays in the building. You do not need to leave the portals: you need the people who already found you there to be able to book with you.
Where the direct booking leaks away:
Your own site is more expensive than the portal
If the same room costs the same or more on your site, there is no reason to book there. Parity stops you cutting the rate; it does not stop you adding value. Breakfast, late check-out, an upgrade or a members-only rate are all perfectly legal and all move the booking.
The booking engine frightens people
Three steps, a calendar nobody can read on a phone and a twelve-field form. Guests compare it with the portal experience, which has had years and millions spent polishing it, and go back there.
You do not come first for your own name
Someone discovers you on a portal, then googles the hotel name to find the real site. If the first result in that search is the portal, you have just paid commission on a guest who was already yours.
You only exist in one language
In most resort destinations half the demand searches in English or German. A site in one language drops out of that search entirely — and that is usually the guest who books long stays out of season.
Nobody measures what produced the booking
Without the engine wired into analytics, the direct channel looks like it does not exist and ends up without budget. It is the quietest way to lose it.
Three things we hear in every hotel meeting
“We live off Booking. There is nothing to be done.”
Portals are an excellent acquisition channel and there is no need to fight them. What is not inevitable is that 80% of your bookings go through one. The goal is not to replace them: it is to win back the guest who repeats and the guest who already searched for you by name. Neither of those should cost you commission.
“Rate parity stops me competing with my own website.”
Parity applies to the published rate, not to what you include. A loyalty club with closed rates, breakfast included or a late check-out do not break it and they do move the booking. On top of that, several European countries have limited wide parity clauses by law — it is worth rereading your contract before assuming you can do nothing.
“Marketing is for chains. We have forty keys.”
The opposite. With forty keys, twenty extra direct bookings a month change the year. A chain has to shift thousands to notice. And your local competition does far less than a chain’s does, so getting the basics right puts you ahead.
How we work with a hotel
In this order, because it is the order that returns margin soonest. Neither of the first two steps needs any media spend.
The Google Business Profile and your own name in search
So that searching your hotel name puts you first, with current photos, a link to the engine and reviews answered. It is the cheapest thing to fix and the fastest to recover commission, because it intercepts the guest who has already decided.
Make booking on your site easier than on the portal
We test the engine on a phone with bad signal, cut steps, and make it obvious what a guest gains by booking direct. If the engine itself is the ceiling, we will tell you rather than charge you monthly to push against it.
A site that sells in your guests’ languages
Pages per room type, per facility and per reason to travel, written in each language rather than run through a plugin — with proper hreflang tags, which is where almost every bilingual hotel site fails.
Campaigns on your brand and on demand
Defending searches for your own name, which is the cheapest money in the market, and then reaching people who have not chosen where to sleep yet. On your destination’s real seasonality, not a generic calendar.
Measurement from the engine, not from the website
Bookings and revenue attributed to each channel, with the engine genuinely connected. Without this the direct channel is invisible and ends up unfunded.
What is included
What it takes to move bookings from the OTA to your own site, done by one team.
Google Business Profile, properly worked
Categories, facilities, photos, questions, and reviews answered in the language they were written in. For a hotel this returns more than anything else that costs nothing.
Search visibility in the two or three languages that matter
Content per room type, per facility and per reason to travel. Written, not translated.
Brand and demand campaigns
Google and Meta, on your destination’s seasonality rather than a generic one.
Photography and video of the hotel
We shoot it ourselves, drone included. The six-year-old photo with towel swans is costing you bookings, and it is the first thing someone compares when they are deciding between your site and the portal.
A monthly report with direct bookings at the centre
How many direct bookings, from which channel, at what cost, and how much commission you saved. One page.
What it costs depends on how many languages, the state of the booking engine and whether we are producing photo and video. You get the number in writing after the free audit, with no lock-in.
Get a free auditThe commitment, measured in direct bookings
After the audit we agree a target with you in writing: a number of measured direct bookings at six months. If we do not reach it, we carry on working without charging for the management until we do. At ninety days there is a checkpoint with the engine data in front of you — if it is not going well, you see it when we do and you decide, with no penalty.
Three conditions, and all three are on your side:
- The booking engine is connected to measurement from day one.
- There is a real, visible advantage to booking direct, however small.
- We can publish the website and profile changes on the dates we agree.
Six months because a season does not turn around in a quarter and because search takes time. What does move sooner is the Business Profile and defending your own brand — that usually shows in weeks, which is exactly why we start there.
Get a free audit
Which hotels this works for
It works well if
- You depend on OTAs more than you would like and want the margin back.
- You have your own booking engine, even one you are not happy with.
- Your guests arrive from several countries and search in several languages.
- Someone can answer reviews and messages during the season.
- You can offer something — breakfast, an upgrade, a late check-out — to direct bookers.
It does not, if
- You are full all year with no spare key. Genuinely, do not spend the money.
- You work only with tour operators and do not want direct business. That is a legitimate choice and this adds nothing to it.
- You cannot touch the website or the engine because head office owns them.
- You are looking for the cheapest supplier. There is always a cheaper one.
Frequently asked questions
Can you get us off Booking.com?
Less dependent, yes. Off it entirely, almost no hotel can, and anyone promising that does not know the sector. OTAs reach people who would never have heard of you. The work is different: making sure the guest who already discovered you there — and above all the guest who repeats — can book with you without commission. Moving ten points of the split already changes the year.
Does rate parity stop me competing with my own site?
It affects the published rate, not what you include. A loyalty club with closed rates, breakfast, a late check-out or an upgrade are all compatible with parity and all move the booking. Several European countries have also limited wide parity clauses by law, so it is worth rereading the contract before assuming your hands are tied.
Will you work with the booking engine we already have?
Yes, whichever it is. What we will do is test it on a phone with bad signal and tell you which steps are unnecessary. If the engine itself is the ceiling — and some are — we will say so plainly rather than bill you every month for pushing against it.
How many languages should the website be in?
The ones your real source markets use, which you can see in the PMS rather than guess. Each language needs to be a complete site with its own URLs and hreflang tags, not an automatic translation layered over the original: Google either ignores that or treats it as duplicate content.
How long before it shows?
The Business Profile and defending searches for your own name usually move within weeks, which is exactly why we start there. Website rankings take three to six months. A full season is the honest window to judge the direct channel as a whole.
We are a small independent. Is it worth it?
Usually more than for a chain. With forty keys, twenty extra direct bookings a month change the P&L; a chain needs thousands to notice. And your local competition does far less marketing than a chain’s, so the basics done properly put you ahead.
Do you shoot the photography and video?
Yes, with our own crew, and in a hotel it is one of the highest-returning things we do. Someone deciding between your site and the portal compares images. We also have a drone licence, which in a coastal property is half the sale.
What if we are a holiday let or a rural property rather than a hotel?
It works the same and often better, because the commission hurts more and the search competition is lighter. The details change — average stay, local letting regulations — but the mechanism is identical: profile, a fast multilingual site, and defending your own name.
Get a free audit for your hotel
Give us the hotel website and tell us roughly how much comes through portals. We will look at your Google Business Profile, how you appear when someone searches your own name, and which steps are unnecessary in your booking engine. We will come back either way.
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