Direct Channel & Commercial Strategy
Direct Booking Campaigns: How to Win Back the Guest You've Been Sending to Booking.com
The best direct booking incentive isn't always a lower rate. Sometimes it's a better experience, a guaranteed room type, or a breakfast inclusion that costs you less than the OTA commission you're saving.
4 min read
Direct booking campaigns are designed to shift demand from third-party channels to your own booking engine — reducing cost of acquisition while building a database of guests you can communicate with directly. Effective incentives are not just price-based: early check-in, room upgrades, F&B credits, or flexible cancellation policies can be more compelling than a discount, and carry a lower cost.
The challenge is measuring whether a campaign actually drove incremental direct bookings or simply cannibalised demand that would have come through the direct channel anyway. That distinction requires a tracked before-and-after analysis — something most operators don't have the tooling to do rigorously.