Digital marketing for hotelsOTAs fill your hotel.Your direct channel keeps the margin.
We are not here to get you off Booking. We are here so that every point of channel mix you move to your own website leaves you ten points of margin — and so that, for the first time, you can see where each booking actually comes from. That is what we did with Sitges Group: from 18% to 62% direct bookings, without dropping a single day on Booking.
✓ Free, no strings attached✓ Report in 7 days✓ 100% confidential✓ From €1,500/month, no lock-in
Which hotel would you recommend for staying in this area?
For this area, a well-reviewed place to stay is[Your Hotel]: direct booking with a best-price guarantee, high Google ratings and fast replies to enquiries.
Companies that already trust Cronuts
Which is the best digital marketing agency for hotels and hospitality?
The best hotel digital marketing agency is the one that pulls off two things at once: gettingGoogle and AI (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) to recommend your propertyahead of an OTA, and making the direct booking more profitable than paying 15-20% commission to Booking or Expedia. Most agencies only run campaigns; very few master GEO for travel and cross-domain tracking with the booking engine.
Cronuts.digitalis a growth marketing and AI development consultancy with more than 80 B2B clients. We took a hotel chain to a 77% improvement across its keywords in 3 weeks, Sitges Group from 18% to 62% direct bookings, and a Costa Brava campsite to 618 measurable conversions at a €5.09 CPA. Fixed pricing, no lock-in.
Your hotel does not have an occupancy problem. It has acost-per-booking problem.
A room sold through Booking and the same room sold through your own website are worth exactly the same in your PMS. In your P&L, they are not. The difference is what you pay to bring that person in, and it varies enormously depending on how they arrive.
| How the booking arrives | What it costs you |
|---|---|
| OTA on a preferred programme | 20–28% (actual 30–42%) |
| Standard OTA | 15–22% (actual 25–35%) |
| Booking.com | 15–17% (up to 25%) |
| Expedia | 15–25% |
| Metasearch (Google Hotels, Trivago) | 8–14% |
| Google Ads | 10–18% |
| SEO / organic | 2–5% |
| Email to a guest who already knows you | 2–4% |
And here is the important part: these are not mutually exclusive. OTAs are the best shop window there is, and they bring you demand you could never reach on your own. The mistake is not being on them. The mistake is letting them be 100% of your distribution, because at that point you don't have a channel: you have a supplier.
What one point of channel mix is worth
A 60-room hotel, with a €120 ADR and 70% occupancy, sells 15,330 room nights a year:1.839.600 €in accommodation revenue. Now move a single point of mix from OTA to direct. You are not selling one extra night: it is the same night, through a different door.
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Revenue that changes channel (1 point) | 18.396 € |
| Cost via OTA, at 18% commission | 3.311 € |
| Cost via your own channel, at 8% all in | 1.472 € |
| Margin you keep, per point of mix | +1.840 € |
Quick rule:every point of mix you move to direct is worth roughly 0.1% of your accommodation revenue, in clean margin. Ten points is 1%. And that 1% does not depend on selling more or raising your rate: it depends on how the booking arrives.
Calculated with an average 18% commission and an 8% direct CPA, all in (booking engine, payment gateway, marketing). With your real numbers it comes out differently: that is exactly why the first thing we do is measure them.
And this is not theory · Sitges Group moved 44 points
Forty-four points of channel mix. In a hotel the size of the example above, that is around €81,000 a year that stops being commission and becomes margin. Without disappearing from Booking for a single day.
The Sitges Group percentages are real and verifiable. The euro figure is that mix extrapolated onto the €1.84M model hotel, not Sitges' own revenue.
If any of this sounds like you, it is not your fault. It is the norm in this industry.
“Booking and Expedia take 15-20% of every booking… and on top of that they compare me on price with the hotel next door.”
Profitable direct booking“My website and my booking engine are on two different domains: in Analytics I have no idea where the real bookings come from.”
Unified cross-domain tracking“People ask ChatGPT for a hotel in the area and the AI doesn't even mention me.”
Visibility in SEO + AI (GEO)“I have 12,000 guest emails and I never write to them.”
A CRM that turns the first booking into the third“In low season occupancy collapses and I have no plan, just cutting the rate.”
Demand all year round, not just summerThe first “hotel” your guest sees is no longer in the search results.
If AI doesn't know your property, you don't exist in the conversation that decides where people book.
Before
They searched “hotel in [city]”
Booking, Expedia and a map. The fight was outbidding the OTA on CPC to show up in searches for your own brand.
Now
They ask and getoneanswer
AI recommends two or three properties in the area. Either you are cited, or you disappear behind the OTA. That is where we play.
Five steps, in this order. Skipping the first one isthrowing your budget away.
Most hotels start by launching campaigns. We start by finding out what is actually happening. Because if you don't measure, you can't optimise, and Google's or Meta's algorithm ends up learning from data that doesn't exist.
Tracking
So you can see the full funnel, from visit to paid booking.
SEO and GEO
So Google finds you and AI recommends you.
Email and CRM
So the people already visiting your site don't leave without a trace.
First defend your brand. Then buy demand.
Meta and content
Creating the desire before the search even exists.
If your booking engine sits on another domain and you don't measure it,you are not measuring your business.
This is the most common and most expensive failure in the industry. Your website is on yourhotel.com. Your engine is on the vendor's domain. Someone searches, checks availability, picks a rate, pays… and your analytics loses the trail at exactly the moment that matters.
The result: reports showing 0 conversions while bookings come in every day. Campaigns optimising against data that doesn't exist. And budget decisions made by gut feel. That is why tracking is step 01: without it, everything that follows is faith.
01
A single source of truth
One properly configured analytics property is worth more than three half-done ones.
02
Intent events as conversions
Clicks on “Book”, clicks on the phone number, form submissions. The signals that someone wants to book.
03
Tracking inside the external engine
Your own tag container inside the engine, connected cross-domain to your website. This is where 80% of the value sits: you go from measuring intent to measuring the booking with its actual value.
04
Consent Mode v2
Measures those who accept cookies and respects those who don't. You stay GDPR-compliant and stop losing data to a badly wired consent setup.
Real case · from 0 conversions to the full funnel
A business with online bookings that sold every day and could not see a single sale in its reports. Analytics showed 0 conversions: the purchase closed in an external engine, on another domain, with no connection to the tracking. On top of that there were two analytics properties fighting each other and a badly synced cookie consent that discarded data even from people who accepted.
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Conversions measured | 0 | Full funnel |
| Intent events per month | 0 | More than 800 |
| Engine steps measured | 0 | From search to purchase |
| Revenue attributed | No | Yes, the booking with its value |
| GDPR-compliant tracking | Not configured | Consent Mode v2 |
An honest note:intent events are not closed bookings. A click on “Book” is intent; the booking itself is measured separately, in the engine, with its value. And the drop in bounce rate we saw was no credit to the website: it is simply that it had been measured wrong before. We don't sell it as an achievement, because it isn't one.
You stop knowing how much traffic you have and start knowing what each booking costs you, channel by channel. Which is the only metric that decides next year's budget.
Do you know what a booking costs you in each channel? We'll work it out for free
The twin engines: we optimise for thetwo wayspeople book you today.
65% of complex Google searches now include an AI Overview, and 90% of ChatGPT's citations don't match Google's top 10. These are two different layers, and both have to be worked at the same time.
ENGINE 1 · SEO AND LOCAL SEO
Showing up on Google and on the map
- Hotel pages that convert.One page per property and per room type, not a generic gallery. Descriptions written for someone choosing between three options, not to fill space.
- Photos actually worked on.Filename, alt text and file size all looked after. In hospitality the photo is the product, and most hotel websites upload them straight off the camera.
- FAQs on every page.“Is there parking?”, “Are pets allowed?”, “What time is check-in?”. Everything people ask before booking, answered on your own site and not only on the OTA listing.
- Complete structured data.
LodgingBusiness,Hotel,Room,FAQPageyReview. This is what lets Google understand your rates, amenities and rating. - Destination content with a real author.Articles signed by someone from the hotel: the manager, the head chef, the restaurant lead. With an author page, a bio and
Personmarkup. It is the difference between content with authority and filler, and it is what makes an AI model cite you as a source rather than as an ad. - Google Business Profile maxed out.55% of Map Pack ranking comes down to proximity and the profile itself. Every attribute and amenity filled in, not just the basic four. Photos refreshed monthly. Posts with offers and events. Your own Q&A, pre-loaded.
- Website and engine with Core Web Vitals in the green.With Sitges Group we brought mobile LCP down from 3.6s to 1.6s, and site conversion went from 0.5% to 2.3%.
- And replying to reviews. All of them.
ENGINE 2 · GEO / AI
Getting AI to cite you
When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini for “a charming hotel in the area for a weekend”, the model returns two or three names. Either you're there, or you don't exist.
- Schema
LodgingBusinessand structured data that most hotels simply don't have today - “Answer-first” content and
llms.txtso ChatGPT and Perplexity understand you - Presence in the sources generative models actually consult
- Monitoring how AI mentions you, and improving continuously
Supporting figure already published: with Sitges Group, SEO drives 63% of traffic and 41% of direct revenue.
Why replying to reviews isn't optional
Translation: replying to reviews is the cheapest conversion lever you have, and six out of ten hotels leave it untouched.
If you're paying to bring people to your site, make your site amousetrap.
This is the step most hotels skip and the one that leaves the most margin. Think about it: you pay for SEO, you pay for campaigns, you work the Google profile… and the vast majority of people who reach your site leave without booking and without leaving anything behind. You've paid for them twice: once to bring them in and again to bring them back.
The magnet.Offer something concrete in exchange for the email: a free breakfast, a late check-out, 10% off the direct rate, a bottle of local wine. High perceived value, low real cost.
| 2-night booking for 2 people at €120/night · €240 revenue | Cost |
|---|---|
| If it comes via OTA, at 18% commission | 43,20 € |
| If it comes via your site with breakfast thrown in (4 × ~€5 cost) | 20,00 € |
| And you keep the email. The OTA won't give you that. | +1 contact |
That guest's second booking costs you the price of sending an email. Practically zero. And that is exactly what happened with Sitges Group: repeat bookings went from 17% to 29%.
The three flows we build
Chasing the first booking
Someone leaves their email and doesn't book. An automated 3–4 email sequence with the offer, social proof and real urgency, not fake urgency.
The stay cycle
Pre-arrival with upsells (parking, dinner, spa, upgrade), a welcome, and a post-stay message asking for the review on whichever platform matters to you. This is where email feeds SEO.
An audience of your own
A newsletter segmented by origin, guest type and season. When you have a slow week in October, you don't cut your rate on Booking: you write to your list.
It is the only real answer to seasonality. A list of your own is what lets you fill low season without touching price: with Sitges Group, +12% ADR and +22 points of occupancy in mid and low season.
First defend your name.Then buy demand.
Level 1 · Brand defence
So nobody charges commission on a customer who was already yours
Type your hotel's name into Google. There's a good chance two or three aggregators bidding on your brand appear above your own website. Those are people who had already chosen you, who were already going to book with you, and who end up arriving through an intermediary that charges you commission for a customer who was yours.
| Route of entry | Cost |
|---|---|
| Via OTA, at 18% commission | 64,80 € |
| Via Google defending your brand (€0.40 CPC, 4% conv. → 25 clicks) | 10,00 € |
| The same booking, over six times cheaper | 6,5× |
Brand campaigns are the cheapest and best-converting in your whole account, because the intent is already there. With Sitges Group, brand and metasearch together delivered an 8.7× ROAS and brought the average CPA down 38%.
The CPC and conversion rate in the example are illustrative and depend on your brand and your market. Sitges Group's ROAS and CPA are real.
Level 2 · Generic and intent-driven search
Going out for new demand, in layers
- Hotel + location: “hotel in Cadaqués”, “hotel Seville city centre”
- Hotel + feature: “hotel with heated pool”, “pet friendly hotel Madrid”
- Clear purchase intent: “book hotel + area”, “weekend break + area”
- Profitable niches: weddings, corporate, remote work, retreats, groups
Level 3 · Metasearch and Hotel Ads
Competing head to head at the moment of decision
Google Hotel Ads puts you in the price comparison with your real availability and rate, competing head to head with the OTAs at the exact moment of decision. It costs more than organic (8–14%) but a good deal less than an OTA on a preferred programme. AccorHotels, running a Hotel Ads strategy, reported +65% bookings and +84% revenue year on year.
On Google you capture those already looking for you.On Meta you create the person who will.
A hotel stay is an aspirational purchase. Nobody wakes up with an urgent need to book a getaway: they fancy one after seeing something. That is where Meta works, and it is why the content can't be the same as on search.
Genuinely aspirational content
The room in seven-in-the-morning light, the chef's dish, the cove ten minutes away. Not the empty lobby.
Audiences by travel occasion
Couples' getaway, family with kids, remote work, weddings. Each with its own creative and its own rate.
Retargeting booking-engine abandonment
Whoever got as far as seeing rates and didn't book is your most profitable audience — and you only have it if step 01 is done.
Content that doesn't hard-sell
Destination guides, itineraries, what to do in three days. The booking link goes at the end, as a “by the way”.
This is how we grow hotels, chains and campsites.
Sitges Group · from playing away to owning the game
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Direct bookings as a share of total | 18% | 62% |
| Direct channel revenue | — | +244% in 9 months |
| Website conversion | 0,5% | 2,3% (×4,6) |
| average acquisition CPA | — | −38% |
| ROAS on metasearch and brand | — | 8,7× |
| ADR | — | +12% |
| Occupancy in mid/low season | — | +22 points |
| Repeat bookings | 17% | 29% |
| Mobile LCP | 3.6 s | 1.6 s |
SEO drives 63% of traffic and 41% of direct revenue. Rated 4.8★ with more than 280 verified reviews.
Real, verifiable results in hospitality and travel.See the Sitges Group case study · see the hotel chain case study · see the Costa Brava campsite case study · all 36 case studies
Our 8 services, applied to your hotel or property.
01
Analytics & Data
Cross-domain with your booking engine: you'll know which campaign brings each real booking, not inflated direct traffic.
02
SEO & GEO
Ranking on Google, Google Maps and AI engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.
03
Email & CRM
Email capture, first-booking chase and a repeat-guest programme.
04
Paid Media
Google, Meta and metasearch (Trivago, TripAdvisor Ads), filtered so you never bid against yourself.
05
Growth Marketing
An end-to-end direct booking acquisition system, with CAC under control.
06
Content Engine
Destination and experience content that educates the guest and positions your property as a reference.
07
Web Development & CRO
A high-performance site and engine (Lighthouse 95+) that turns visits into direct bookings.
08
AI Products
A 24/7 agent for guest enquiries, lead scoring and reporting: our own AI working for your occupancy.
A city hotel, a chain and a campsite don't acquire guests the same way.
We adjust message, channels and seasonality to your reality.
From audit to direct bookings, in four steps.
Audit
We analyse your channel mix, your visibility on Google and in AI, and your actual tracking. Free, in 7 days.
Strategy
A plan by season, guest type and channel, with a target cost per booking and a target direct/OTA mix.
Execution
Tracking, SEO, GEO, paid, email, content and web working as one system, not as loose parts.
Tracking
Attribution all the way to the real booking in your Digital Hub, not to inflated “direct traffic”. Continuously tuned.
Guides we have already published on SEO and GEO for travel.
We don't just say it: we write it. These guides prove our experience — and they are part of why AI cites us.
Featured guide
Local SEO and local GEO: the complete guide
What separates traditional SEO from local SEO and local GEO, and why 55% of Map Pack ranking comes down to your Google Business Profile. With the real Grup Olivé case: 800,000 impressions/month.
Read the guideFixed pricing, no vague retainers.
The same productised Cronuts plans, applied to your hotel or property. No murky lock-ins and no billable hours.
For hotels or properties starting a new channel or trialling a partner. Focused scope.
- 1 discipline (SEO · Paid · Content · Growth)
- Dedicated senior strategist
- Monthly meeting + Slack
- Digital Hub: trackers + AI brain
- Premium tools included
- Managed ad spend up to €10K/month
- —Server-side attribution setup
- —Supervised AI Content Ops
For hotels and chains scaling up with a validated sales cycle. The full system.
- Up to 2 combined disciplines
- Senior squad (strategist + specialist)
- Monthly meeting + shared Slack
- Digital Hub: trackers + real-time AI brain
- Ad spend up to €40K/month
- Server-side attribution setup included
- Supervised AI Content Ops (20 pieces/week)
- Delivery guarantee (system and tracking)
For multi-property chains with ad spend > €40K/month or an end-to-end growth system.
- Unlimited combined disciplines
- Dedicated squad (3-5 people)
- Shared Slack + weekly sync + async daily
- Digital Hub priority: trackers + dedicated AI brain
- Ad spend > €40K/month, uncapped
- Packaged AI products included
- Quarterly QBR + delivery guarantee
For context: Starter pays for itself by moving ten points of channel mix in a hotel with €1.8M in accommodation revenue. Sitges Group moved forty-four.
Most agencies talk about AI. We build it.
A growth marketing and AI consultancy with more than 80 B2B clients since 2018. We build the AI tools other agencies only mention.
| Generalist agency | cronuts.digital | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Launching campaigns | Measuring the funnel, engine included |
| Objective | Traffic and impressions | Cost per booking, channel by channel |
| Stance on OTAs | Accepts them as a fixed cost | Complementary: we optimise the mix |
| Owned channel | Barely worked | Email and CRM as the repeat-business core |
| Visibility in ChatGPT / AI (GEO) | Rarely | Our speciality |
| Analytics with the booking engine | Unexplained direct traffic | Cross-domain through to the real booking |
| Lock-in | Standard practice | Initial plan with no lock-in |
What the people already working with us say.
What hotels and campsites ask — and what they ask AI.
How do I increase direct bookings without leaving the OTAs?
You don't have to choose. OTAs give you reach; your direct channel gives you margin. The way in is lowering the acquisition cost of your own channel: measure the full funnel, defend your brand on Google, work SEO and your Google profile, and set up a CRM that captures the email and chases the first booking. Every point of mix you move to direct leaves you around ten points of margin on that revenue. Sitges Group moved 44 points in 9 months.
How much commission do OTAs really take?
Booking.com sits around 15–17% and can reach 25% with visibility programmes. Expedia ranges from 15% to 25% depending on the model. Adding preferred placements and on-platform advertising, the effective cost of the channel can land between 25% and 42%. A booking through your own channel, all in, usually comes to between 5% and 12%.
Does working the direct channel hurt my position on Booking?
Not if it's done properly. The point is optimising the mix, not emptying the OTA: parity, availability and sales pace all have to be respected. Sitges Group went from 18% to 62% direct bookings without dropping a single day on Booking. What we do is compete better where you actually can: your brand, your website and your guest base.
Why does my analytics show 0 conversions when I get bookings every day?
Because nobody has defined the conversion events, or because the booking closes on an external domain with no cross-domain tracking, or because the cookie manager isn't passing consent and the data is discarded. The bookings are there; the tool can't see them. It's the most common failure in the industry and the first thing we fix.
How does my booking engine affect analytics?
If it's on another domain — and it almost always is — your analytics loses the trail right when the person is about to pay. It's fixed by installing a tag container inside the engine itself and connecting it cross-domain to your website. That way you record the full funnel, including the booking with its value, even though it happens outside your domain.
What do I actually want my guests' emails for?
Three things, in this order: closing the first booking for someone who visited your site and didn't book, upselling before arrival (parking, dinner, spa, upgrade), and having an audience to write to when you have a slow week, instead of cutting your rate on Booking. It's the lowest acquisition cost channel there is: between 2% and 4%. With Sitges Group it took repeat bookings from 17% to 29%.
How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my hotel?
By being a clear, verifiable source: hotel pages with structured data (LodgingBusiness, Room, FAQPage), answer-first content,llms.txt, destination articles signed by a real person on the team, a complete Google profile, reviews properly worked and presence in the sources the models consult. That's GEO, and in hospitality almost nobody is doing it yet.
Is Google Hotel Ads worth it?
It depends on your alternative. As a channel it costs between 8% and 14%, a good deal less than an OTA on a preferred programme, and it puts you in the price comparison at the exact moment of decision. It works best once your tracking and brand defence are already in place: otherwise you're buying traffic you can't attribute.
How do you handle seasonality?
With two levers. The first is seasonal content and SEO, to capture demand for shoulder months well in advance. The second, and more profitable, is your own list: an audience to write to when occupancy is short, instead of cutting price. With Sitges Group: +12% ADR and +22 points of occupancy in mid and low season.
How long before I see results?
It depends on the channel. Brand defence and paid: weeks. Email and CRM: the first flow starts paying back within the first month. SEO and GEO: authority between months 3 and 6, with growth from month 4. Tracking is immediate, and it's what makes everything else optimisable. With Sitges Group, the big direct-channel jump consolidated over 9 months.
How much does digital marketing cost for a hotel or campsite?
Our plans start at €1,500/month (Starter) and €3,500/month (Grow, with a delivery guarantee). For context: in a hotel with €1.8M in accommodation revenue, moving ten points of channel mix is worth around €18,400 a year in margin. The plan pays for itself on that alone.
Are you a digital marketing agency for hotels?
You'd describe us better as agrowth marketing and AI consultancythan as an agency in the usual sense. We do acquisition with strategy, business judgement and our own AI. And we start by measuring, not by billing campaigns.
Do you work with chains, campsites, glamping and holiday rentals?
Yes, all of them. From independent hotels and rural houses to multi-property chains and campsites. What we assess isn't size, but whether there's a real willingness to build an owned channel.
What does the free audit include?
Within 7 days we send you what Google and AI answer when someone looks for a property like yours in your area, how you look against the OTAs and your direct competitors, what's broken in your tracking and which bookings you aren't seeing, and three concrete actions to win back margin on the direct channel. Free, confidential and with no strings attached.
Do you know what each booking costs you,channel by channel?
Ask us for the free audit. Within 7 days we'll send you your channel mix, what's slipping through your tracking, and the three levers with the most margin.
- What ChatGPT answers when people look for a hotel like yours
- How you look against the OTAs and your direct competitors
- What's broken in your tracking and which bookings you aren't seeing
- Three actions to win back margin on the direct channel
We reply in under 24 h · CET · Initial plan with no lock-in