Booking.com and Expedia will outspend you forever. Your advantage is direct-booking margin, genuine local expertise and the guest relationship they never own.
Not every service matters equally in every industry. These are the four we lead with here, and we will tell you if one of them is not worth your money.
OTAs win transactional queries but rarely win genuine destination content — itineraries, seasons, local knowledge. That content brings travellers earlier in the journey.
Rate parity, best-price messaging, and a booking engine that does not lose people at step three. Every direct booking saves 15-25% commission.
Travellers who found you on an OTA still search your name. If OTAs are bidding on it and you are not, you pay commission on a booking you had already won.
OTAs keep the guest relationship. Direct bookers give you the email — which makes the second stay dramatically cheaper to sell.
Flat management fees in USD. Ad spend is separate and paid directly to the platforms — we never bill a percentage of your media.
Traffic is not the goal and neither are rankings. These are the five things that, in our experience, decide whether a travel marketing programme produces work worth having.
“Things to do in…”, seasonal guides and itineraries attract travellers months before they book, when OTA bidding is irrelevant.
Bidding on your own name is annoying but far cheaper than the commission on the booking you would otherwise lose.
A visible perk — free breakfast, late checkout, best-rate guarantee — is what converts an OTA browser into a direct booker.
Off-peak packages promoted to your existing email list is the cheapest revenue available to any hotel or operator.
TripAdvisor, Google and OTA reviews all feed the decision. Recency matters more than average in this category.
When someone in your area searches for what you do, you either appear in the top three results or you effectively do not exist.
Predictable enquiry flow instead of feast-and-famine referral cycles, with the volume tied to what you can actually service.
Reviews, credentials and useful content mean prospects arrive already believing you are credible, which shortens the sale.
Better targeting, better landing pages and better tracking mean the same budget produces more customers each quarter.
Every account, dashboard and asset is created in your name. Nothing is rented from an agency.
Call tracking, CRM matching and clean analytics so you can stop guessing which half of the budget is wasted.
No — they are excellent acquisition channels. The goal is converting OTA-acquired guests into direct repeat bookers, not abandoning distribution.
For hotels with reasonable direct conversion rates, usually yes. Google Hotel Ads in particular can be efficient. It needs active management, not set-and-forget.
Shift budget rather than pausing. Off-peak spend builds the audience and email list you monetise in peak season.
On destination and experience content, frequently yes. On “hotels in [city]”, almost never — so we do not spend your budget trying.