PROBLEM
Full occupancy, thin margins — OTAs owned the guest
Direct bookings made up just 22% of reservations; the rest ran through Booking.com and Expedia at up to 20% commission, roughly €7,400 a month in fees. The old booking widget bounced guests to a clunky third-party engine that lost 61% of them before payment, and the hotel had no presence in Google’s hotel search results — the first place travelers compare rates.
✕Direct bookings just 22% of reservations — 78% ran through OTAs at up to 20% commission;
✕OTA fees cost the hotel roughly €7,400/month, straight off the top of every booking;
✕The old booking widget added 4 redirect steps and lost 61% of guests before payment;
✕Zero presence in Google Hotel Ads — travelers compared rates without ever seeing the hotel’s own price.
SOLUTION · 10 WEEKS
A booking engine, hotel SEO and a seat in Google’s rate comparison
We treated direct bookings as one system: a fast one-page booking engine synced to the PMS, hotel-specific SEO to win the research phase, and Google Hotel Ads to win the rate-comparison moment — with direct-only perks making the hotel’s own price the obvious choice.
WEEKS 1–2
Funnel audit & data model
Mapped the booking journey end to end, found the 61% drop-off point, and defined a one-page flow synced live to Mews for inventory and rates.
WEEKS 3–5
New booking engine
Rebuilt the guest-facing engine on SiteMinder: one-page checkout, Apple Pay/Google Pay, mobile-first, with direct-only perks — welcome drink, late checkout — built into the rate display.
WEEKS 6–7
Hotel & local SEO
Schema.org Hotel markup, neighborhood and room-type landing pages, Google Business Profile rebuild, review-request flow lifting rating visibility.
WEEKS 8–10
Google Hotel Ads launch
Free booking links plus paid Hotel Ads campaigns, daily rate-parity checks against the 3 top OTAs, direct-only perks called out in every listing.
RESULT · 6 MONTHS
OTAs stopped being the default
| METRYKA | PRZED | PO | ZMIANA |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct bookings share of reservations | 22% | 47% | +25pp |
| OTA commission spend / month | €7,400 | €4,300 | −€3.1k/mo |
| ADR (average daily rate) | €118 | €129 | +9% |
| Organic search sessions / month | 3,200 | 8,900 | +178% |
| Bookings via Google Hotel Ads / month | 0 | 34 | NEW CHANNEL |
“We were fully booked and still losing money to commissions. Now guests book straight from Google or our own site — and the ones who do get a welcome drink no OTA will ever offer them.”