Marketing advice for independent hotel owners
You increased the marketing budget. What did it change?
I help independent hotel owners assess whether their marketing spend is contributing to bookings, understand what the reports can actually tell them, and decide what to do next.
See an example of the work and talk through the question facing your property.
The spending is easy to see. The return can be harder.
An owner I spoke with had doubled ad spending at two of his four properties. He told me he couldn’t see a corresponding improvement in performance against his competitors.
He wanted to know whether the extra spending was worth keeping. But he also raised a harder question: would performance have been worse without it?
Both questions matter.
A marketing report can credit an ad for a booking without showing whether that booking would have happened anyway. Meanwhile, rates, availability, guest reviews, and market conditions can all affect the numbers you see.
Before you increase the budget again—or cut something that may be helping—you need a clearer basis for the decision.
Start with the decision you need to make.
Should you renew a vendor? Keep the higher ad budget? Put more money into direct bookings? Move some of that spending elsewhere?
We start there. Then I examine your website analytics, booking-engine records, vendor reports, and costs together to understand how marketing activity connects to bookings and revenue.
You receive:
- An explanation of what the evidence supports.How the spending, reported results, and booking records fit together, including where they disagree.
- A clear account of what remains unknown.Missing tracking, unreliable categories, or questions the existing reports cannot answer.
- Recommendations for the next decision.What to keep, change, investigate, or test—and why.
Sometimes the records support a useful decision. Sometimes the next step is to repair the measurement or run a controlled test. I’ll explain the difference.
A useful answer starts with numbers you can trust.
At one independent hotel, manually entered reservations were being classified as website bookings. The report showed a direct-booking picture that needed correcting before it could guide spending decisions.
| Reservation | Channel in report |
|---|---|
| Direct/Website | |
| OTA/Booking.com |
The work involved correcting the classification and checking the channel figures against reservation records. That gave ownership a more dependable starting point for judging performance.
This is the kind of detail I look for: something that changes how you read the business and what you do next.
Turn the findings into your next decisions.
After the assessment, we can continue month to month with an agreed scope focused on the questions and opportunities that matter to your property.
- 01
Review performance and decide what needs attention.
We review bookings, marketing costs, and channel economics. You get an explanation of what changed, what deserves investigation, and what I recommend doing about it.
- 02
Build the next marketing budget from what you learn.
Before this year’s spending becomes next year’s budget, we review the existing commitments and proposed increases. What deserves continued funding? Where might money be better used? What needs a limited test before you commit more?
I help you work through those choices, set priorities, and plan how results will be reviewed. The same approach applies to a midyear adjustment or a vendor renewal.
- 03
Carry out selected improvements and tests.
We agree on a focused piece of work, how it will be measured, and when to review it. I handle the analysis and test design, and coordinate implementation with the people involved. Some tests will need several months.
- 04
Keep the economics in view.
Moving a booking from an OTA to your website can help if the cost of winning that direct booking is lower. We look at both sides: the revenue and the cost of acquiring it. The aim is to improve net room revenue.
You’ll work directly with me.
I’m Omar Hashmy, and Mirastra is my consulting practice.
I work through the reporting, explain the findings, and help you decide what follows. I can work alongside your marketing agency, revenue manager, and property team, so the recommendations account for how your hotel operates and who will carry them out.
A few practical questions
We already have an agency. How would you fit in?
The assessment can work alongside your existing agency. I examine its reporting with your booking records and costs, then identify the questions or changes worth working through together. A useful finding may support what you’re already doing.
Can you prove that marketing created additional bookings?
That depends on the evidence and whether a suitable test is feasible. Connecting a booking to an ad is different from showing that the ad caused an additional booking. A controlled test may help answer that question, but the design, booking volume, and time available matter. I’ll be explicit about what we can establish.
What will you need from us?
We start with the decision you’re considering and the reporting you already have. For an assessment, that usually means website analytics, booking-engine reports, vendor reports, and the related costs. We’ll agree on the access and involvement needed before work begins.
What does it cost?
Once I understand the question and the available records, I’ll propose the scope and fee. Continuing work has a defined monthly scope. Any additional implementation or outside costs are agreed before they are incurred.
Bring the question behind your next marketing decision.
Whether you’re reviewing a vendor, setting next year’s budget, or wondering what the extra spending bought, we can start with the decision in front of you.
I’ll show you an example of the work and discuss whether an assessment would be useful for your property.
Prefer email? omar@mirastra.com