We help hotels increase direct bookings without spending more on marketing

Hotels attract plenty of website visitors.

Largely thanks to their marketing team's fantastic work in driving traffic to the hotel's website.

And yet, 98% of visitors leave without booking directly.

Seriously, the average conversion rate on hotel websites is less than 2%.

If travelers already know they get the best value by booking directly, why don't they?

This page breaks down a strategy that solves this problem.

We will cover:

1️⃣ Why do visitors visit the hotel website but don't book directly

2️⃣ The digital sales strategy that fixes the problem

3️⃣ How and why this strategy works


But first, what is the root cause?


Booking a hotel is a long sales cycle for travellers.

It isn't an impulse decision.

Days, weeks, and sometimes even months.

Travelers are actively researching, comparing, and weighing options.

They are interested but not ready to book yet.

And here's the real issue:

Hotels don't have a clear plan to engage these visitors while they're still researching.

They leave the website. They forget. They book elsewhere.

The goal is not to get them to book on the first visit.

It's to get them to come back when they are ready to book.

In the meantime, hotels should remain top-of-mind for travelers and position their direct booking offers as the obvious choice.


The question is how?


The solution needs to be:

✅ Cost effective

✅ Simple to implement

✅ Easy to measure and optimize

There's already a proven strategy, used across industries that achieve this.

Other industries have perfected it so hotels can already use a proven system.

So, what is this strategy?

It starts with understanding the marketing funnel.


What is a funnel?


Here's the thing: hotels' value proposition is better than OTAs.

But many hotels don't get the chance to position their offer as the best option for travellers.

A funnel helps to break up the hotel's offer into smaller, more digestible pieces of information.

More importantly, the information is presented over time, not all at once, while travellers are researching.

A funnel allows hotels to:

1️⃣ Make sure guests know that booking directly has the best value

2️⃣ Stay on top of their mind while they are researching

3️⃣ Bring them back when they are ready to book

Here’s the challenge:

🚫 The top of the funnel is too expensive and not scalable for hotels.

🚫 The bottom of funnel is dominated by OTAs and they've spent billions optimizing it.

But the middle of funnel is an overlooked opportunity that hotels can capitalize on.

The middle of funnel is like a net. It captures interest and keeps interested visitors away from OTAs and competitors.

Now the only question that remains is:

How to get interested travellers into the funnel?


Getting Visitors Into the Funnel


This is the hardest part of building a funnel for hotels.

Why? Because it's challanging to capture interest as early in the booking process as possible.

Without this, hotels will need to overspend on running expensive ads to bring back visitors.

Once you have captured interest on the first website visit, you can stay on top of mind of the traveller throughout the booking process.

This gives enough time for the hotel to build trust and to position the direct booking offer as the obvious choice over competitors and OTAs.