How to promote a hotel online: A strategic guide to secure those direct bookings

You’ve poured your soul into creating an exceptional hotel — a haven of design, service, and unique guest experience. But the hard truth for any CEO or owner is that building a perfect product is only half the battle. Now, you have to get guests through the door, and the competition is tougher than ever.

You're facing a formidable challenge from Online Travel Agents (OTAs) and metasearch giants, who dominate search results and demand hefty commission fees. And a modern traveller's journey is complex. They often begin their research and inspiration-gathering months in advance, looking at an average of almost 150 pages before booking a trip, according to Expedia. They’re looking for compelling travel storytelling, not just a price and a “book now” button.

To win this competition, you can’t just buy fragmented ads; you need a genuine, strategic advantage.

This guide is your roadmap, a digital marketing strategy for hotels, forged by Peregryn’s two decades of experience helping travel brands pivot, adapt, and conquer the digital space. We’re going to show you how to move beyond basic campaigns and build an integrated promotional engine. How to make your compelling hotel brand identity and website copy work seamlessly with high-impact tactics like SEO and paid search (PPC - Pay Per Click). How to drive high-value, direct bookings. 

It’s time to stop paying a premium to the intermediary giants and start building your own digital empire.

A cohesive experience between website and hotel brand identity

Your unique brand story and voice — the 'soul' of your hotel — must be consistently reflected in every visual, textual, and functional element of your digital home. This is what we define as digital cohesion: a seamless and unified experience where your website's design, photography, copy, booking process, and customer service tools all speak with the exact same tone and uphold the same luxury standards. This unwavering cohesion validates the luxury promise you offer, builds immediate, subconscious trust with potential guests, and critically, eliminates any friction or doubt, ultimately turning first-time visitors into confident, direct bookers right on your site.

Not just a homepage, your digital home

A beautiful website is a starting point, but pretty’s not enough and it doesn't pay the bills. Your website must be meticulously engineered to serve as your single most effective sales tool, driving direct revenue and reducing your reliance on OTAs. If your site looks stunning but is confusing or slow, you're handing commissions back to the intermediaries.

The real difference-maker is web copywriting for hotels that sells. 

Forget simply listing your amenities (we all know you have a pool). Instead, your content must sell the experience, creating an emotional connection that resonates with the traveller's aspirational journey. Does your copy evoke the scent of the signature lobby candle, the feel of the linens, or the memory they'll take home? Evocative hotel copywriting is a crucial part of promoting your hotel online, alongside those pretty pictures. You can also offer a discount or something of added value for direct bookings. If you make this clear on the website, it's a great message for someone who comes to your website from an OTA to verify your hotel. If they see they can save 10-20 percent (which can still be lower than the OTA commission you pay) or enjoy a complimentary massage, they'll be more inclined to book directly with you.

Finally, your site’s operational function must be frictionless. Ensure your booking process is lightning-fast, requiring minimal clicks. And it must be mobile-first. Over half of travel research is done on a phone; if your mobile checkout is clunky, you're losing high-intent customers right at the finish line.

The power of identity

Your brand has a soul. An OTA only has an algorithm. 

To promote your hotel online effectively, you must leverage that soul — your unique hotel brand identity. OTAs can only sell dates and room rates; they can never sell the genuine character, the bespoke feeling, or the distinct atmosphere that defines your property.

A strong, unique brand voice is the ultimate filter, instantly setting you apart from the sea of competitors. This voice must be consistent and unwavering across every single touchpoint. From that evocative copy on your homepage to the automated confirmation emails, the welcome note on the pillow, and the tone of your hotel’s social media content — it must all feel like it’s coming from the same confident, authentic source. This consistency builds trust and converts transient interest into deep-seated guest loyalty. 

At Peregryn, we help you define and deploy that voice, ensuring your story is flawless both online and at the heart of the guest experience, with your unique travel storytelling resonating all the way through to your in-hotel content.

Be seen. Be an authority.

The most important part of how to promote your hotel online is ensuring you are visible at the exact moment that a high-intent traveller begins their search. To do this, you need a cohesive strategy across local SEO and long-form authority content, to be seen at the right moment and capture attention.

Local SEO for hotels and Google Business Profile (GBP)

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free tool from Google that allows you to manage how your business appears across Google Search and Maps. It is the profile that displays key information about your hotel when people search for it or hotels in the area. Your GBP is a dynamic sales tool and very often the first impression a potential guest has. Think of it like your hotel’s second homepage. Ensure every field is meticulously optimised, using high-quality photos, accurate, updated hours, and detailed amenity lists. Promptly and professionally respond to reviews, turning service recovery into public brand diplomacy.

When thinking about keywords, focus on geo-targeted phrases that capture immediate intent, such as: "luxury hotel near the Colosseum" or "boutique stay in [specific neighbourhood]." This strategy ensures you appear for guests who are already physically near or planning a visit to your location.

Content marketing with an authority-building blog

While the GBP handles immediate local searches, your blog builds the Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust (E-E-A-T) that Google rewards with higher rankings in search engines. Your blog is a top-of-funnel tool designed to capture travellers weeks or months before they book, pulling them into your narrative before an OTA ever gets the chance. 

Think of it as a gateway for people who don't yet know your brand but are searching for information relevant to your location or services — for example, "best restaurants near [Your City]" or "things to do in [Your Region]." By answering these search queries, you introduce potential guests to your hotel early in the planning process. 

Furthermore, maintaining a frequently updated blog demonstrates to Google that your website is a current and active source of information. Google's algorithm favors fresh, high-quality content, meaning your regularly posted blog articles can significantly boost your overall search engine ranking and visibility.

Your content pillars should focus on:

• Destination guides: Position your hotel as the ultimate local expert (e.g., "The best 48 hours in [city name]" or "A local's guide to hidden culinary gems").

• Experiential content: Showcase the unique essence of your property (e.g., "Behind the scenes of our signature spa treatment" or "A day with our head mixologist").

• Seasonal content: Capture traffic around peak booking cycles (e.g., "Your ultimate summer poolside retreat package").

This content is part of a clever hospitality marketing strategy, establishing your brand as a trustworthy source and securing the booking before the guest moves on to comparing rates. You don't need to be producing loads of content. Even if you’re only committing to one blog a month, that's still a great starting point to tell stories and will help boost your rankings over time.

Technical SEO checkup

Finally, the most powerful content and most beautiful design are useless if the machinery is faulty. Periodically run a technical SEO checkup to ensure the fundamentals are flawless. This means verifying your site speed is exceptional (especially on mobile), confirming mobile-friendliness is perfect, and validating that you have correct structured data and schema markup applied. These are essential signals that Google uses to properly categorise and visibly display your hotel in search results.

Site speed

Site speed refers to how quickly your hotel website content loads for a user. Google prioritizes fast-loading websites because they offer a better user experience. Slow load times can increase bounce rates, negatively impacting your SEO. Optimising images, leveraging browser caching, and choosing a good host are key to improving site speed.

Mobile-friendliness/Mobile-first

Mobile-first indexing means Google primarily uses the mobile version of your website for ranking and indexing. Your site must be fully responsive, ensuring all content, images, and functionality are easily accessible and load correctly on smartphones and tablets. A seamless mobile experience is now essential for good search rankings.

Structured data

Structured data is a standardised format for providing information about a page and classifying its content. It helps search engines like Google understand the information on your page, such as your hotel's address, star ratings, and review count. Implementing this data in code allows your listing to appear with rich snippets in search results.

Schema markup

Schema markup is the specific vocabulary (code) used to implement structured data. It's a set of tags you can add to your HTML to improve how search engines read and represent your content in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). For hotels, using specific schema types like Hotel or Review is crucial for better visibility.

Using strategic advertising and loyalty to drive direct bookings

Winning back market share from OTAs requires you to advertise strategically, not just broadly. Your paid budget should be focused on capturing high-intent users directly and re-engaging those who almost converted. While organic SEO provides the foundation, a truly robust digital marketing strategy for hotels requires a proactive approach to capturing high-intent traffic. To compete with the astronomical budgets of OTAs, hotel owners must move from "blunderbuss" advertising to sniper-like precision, focusing on the channels that offer the highest return on investment.

Precision PPC: Dominating Google and Meta

Paid search and social advertising are the most powerful levers for online hotel promotion, but they are also the fastest way to deplete a marketing budget if not managed with clinical precision. Google remains the primary battlefield for intent; here, your strategy must move beyond generic terms to focus on high-conversion "long-tail" keywords and brand-protection bidding. However, a successful campaign is not just about showing up — it’s about the constant refinement of your "negative keyword" list to ensure you aren't paying for irrelevant clicks.

Simultaneously, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) serves as the visual engine for discovery. Here, you aren't just selling a room; you are selling an aspiration through travel storytelling. The danger in both arenas is the "vanity metric" of the click. At Peregryn, we emphasise that a click is only an expense until it converts. To protect your ROI, your campaigns require daily monitoring: adjusting bids based on seasonal demand, testing ad copy, and ensuring that the landing page experience is frictionless. If your paid traffic isn't converting into direct bookings, your "money" isn't working—it’s simply disappearing into the algorithm.

The Art of Retargeting: Staying Top-of-Mind

Most travellers do not book on their first visit; they browse, compare, and hesitate. This is where retargeting becomes essential for promoting your hotel online. By using tracking pixels, you can serve tailored ads to users who have previously engaged with your site. The key to high-performing retargeting is segmentation. Rather than showing a generic brand ad, show a spa-themed ad to the user who spent five minutes on your wellness page. When executed with the right frequency and creative variety, retargeting acts as a gentle, sophisticated nudge that brings the guest back to your site to complete their booking, significantly lowering your overall cost-per-acquisition.

Cultivating Loyalty: Direct Communication Channels

The most profitable guest is the one you already know. Email marketing for hotels remains the highest-ROI channel in the hospitality industry because it allows you to bypass intermediaries entirely. Instead of "renting" your guests from an OTA, use your digital presence to build a proprietary database. A sophisticated loyalty strategy isn't just about points; it’s about personalized communication. Use your email lists to offer exclusive "direct-only" perks, early access to seasonal packages, or personalized birthday offers. By owning the relationship through direct channels, you reinforce your hotel brand identity and turn a one-time visitor into a lifelong brand advocate, ensuring your revenue stays in your pocket rather than going toward third-party commissions.

Loyalty and re-engagement through email marketing

Once a guest enters your digital ecosystem, email becomes your most personal and profitable tool for cultivating loyalty. Almost 65 percent of a company’s business comes from previous customers.  Email marketing for hotels offers a way to target those customers and bring them back for more. The joy of email marketing is that it is so easy to segment and meet the user at the point they are in their journey. You can automate the process, personalising emails to different segments of your audience:

• Abandoned cart emails: These are crucial for hotels. A well-timed, persuasive email can significantly recover bookings lost at the last moment due to cart abandonment. For hotels, this means more revenue. Consider sending an email with a dreamy photo of your hotel, for example, gently reminding the potential guest of the stay they almost booked.

• Pre-stay campaigns: Go beyond the standard confirmation. Send personalised messages with tailored upsells for spa services, dinner reservations, or room upgrades, immediately boosting ancillary revenue.

• Post-stay campaigns: The gold standard for loyalty. Send a sincere thank you, gently solicit a review (to build that all-important social proof), and provide an exclusive "Return Guest" offer or loyalty program invite to secure their next direct booking.

The key is compelling email copy that builds a personal connection and reinforces your brand voice. You’re not just pushing a generic discount, but treating their inbox like your hotel lobby, where guests appreciate what makes you unique.

Community as a brand asset

Your hotel’s content marketing strategy must embrace the community aspect of modern promotion. Social media is where your aspirational guests go for inspiration, and your review channels are where they go for verification. Both are crucial to capturing the traveller’s imagination and trust.

Visual storytelling on social media

Social media for travel is inherently visual, and platforms like Instagram and TikTok build buzz. Eighty-nine per cent of Gen Z travelers discover destinations on TikTok, and 40 per cent book trips after viewing content. These platforms demand high-quality, authentic content that sells the feeling of being there. Focus on:

• Short-form video: Use Reels and TikToks to give a quick, dynamic, behind-the-scenes look at the guest experience, from the perfect cocktail creation to a walk-through of the best suite.

• High-quality photography: Every image posted should reinforce your unique brand voice. Don't just show a room; frame the moment—the sunrise over the skyline, the steam rising from the espresso cup.

Crucially, lean heavily on User-Generated Content (UGC). When real guests share their authentic, high-quality photos and videos, it instantly builds trust and credibility far beyond anything your in-house marketing team can create. Repost, celebrate, and actively encourage this content as part of your hotel’s social media strategy.

Reputation management as a marketing tool

Review platforms like TripAdvisor and Google Reviews should be viewed as an integral part of your hotel’s content marketing ecosystem, not just a service metric. Your guests’ reviews are powerful, public-facing copy, as are your responses to them.

A proactive approach to reputation management is essential:

• Be present: Dedicate time to monitor and respond to reviews across all major channels.

• Be professional: Treat every review — positive or negative — as a chance to showcase your commitment to service. A prompt, professional, and gracious response can turn a negative review into a brand endorsement and further demonstrates to future bookers that you value the guest experience.

• SEO benefit: Consistently receiving and responding to reviews, particularly on your Google Business Profile, provides fresh, relevant content that search engines reward, further bolstering your local SEO.

An integrated ecosystem for hotel digital marketing

Successful online hotel promotion isn’t about mastering one single tactic. 

It's about engineering an integrated ecosystem where every element — from the evocative copy on your mobile site to the timing of your retargeting ads and the professionalism of your review responses — works in perfect harmony. Content isn't a cost; it's the premium fuel that drives this engine, reinforcing your hotel brand identity, building trust, and ultimately pulling those high-value guests away from the intermediary giants.

Think of SEO as your long game, slowly building authority and destination trust during the early inspiration phase. Meanwhile, PPC is your tactical short game—perfect for capturing high-intent searches, protecting your brand from rivals, and quickly testing which messages truly grab people's attention.

That crucial data should then feed right back into your website and email marketing. When your best-performing ad copy becomes your landing page headlines, and your SEO-rich blog posts become the viral 'hooks' for your social media, you create one seamless experience. This kind of consistency is what builds the brand love needed to convert a casual visitor into a loyal, direct-booking guest.

Measuring the ROI: Track your success

Of course, your digital marketing strategy is only as good as the revenue it generates. Here are some metrics you can check to ensure your strategy is impacting your bottom line…

1. OTA commission savings

The most immediate way to measure success is by tracking your Direct Booking Ratio.

You should begin to notice an uptick in direct bookings. Put a number on it by looking at that booking total, calculate the 20 per cent OTA commission and that’s the profit you’ve reclaimed. 

2. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Keep an eye on your CAC. By switching from unfocused advertising to a precision model with retargeting, you should sea your CAC reduce over time. It is an indicator you’re becoming more strategic. 

3. Enhanced Guest Lifetime Value (LTV)

When someone books direct, they become more than a one-time transaction. You now own that data and through email marketing and loyalty strategies, you have the opportunity to track how many direct bookers return. This is almost 100 per cent profit, minus the operational cost of their stay. 

Let’s get started

Are you ready to move from scattered efforts to a cohesive, revenue-driving strategy? 

Peregryn Agency offers the strategic blueprint, the creative content, and the technical execution needed to simplify this complex process and deliver measurable results. Talk to a Peregryn hotel brand consultant today and start building your own, commission-free digital empire.

Promote my hotel