Paying 22% commission to be found.

The group was fully booked and barely profitable. Almost every reservation arrived through an online travel agency, and the direct booking flow gave guests no reason to switch.

+61%

direct bookings

−27pt

OTA share of revenue

+18%

RevPAR

The challenge

What was actually wrong.

Occupancy was healthy, which disguised the problem. The overwhelming majority of bookings came through OTAs at double-digit commission, and the group's own website was slower, harder to use and offered no advantage. Guests had no reason to book direct, and the group had no direct relationship with anyone who stayed.

Hospitality · India — illustration of a shield with a check mark

The approach

What we changed.

Four decisions did most of the work. Everything else was execution.

Step 01

Repositioned around the actual experience

The old brand described amenities every competitor also had. We repositioned around what guests wrote about in reviews — which turned out to be the staff and the food, not the pool.

Step 02

Rebuilt the booking flow

Faster pages, honest pricing including taxes, a three-step flow on mobile, and a direct-booking benefit clear enough to overcome the habit of using an OTA.

Step 03

Captured the guest relationship

Pre-arrival, in-stay and post-stay messaging over email and WhatsApp, so a returning guest books directly without ever visiting a comparison site.

Step 04

Defended the brand term in search

A significant share of OTA bookings were guests who had already decided on the property and searched its name. Owning that moment moved bookings directly to the group at a fraction of the commission.

The result

What moved.

Direct bookings grew 61% across four quarters and OTA share of revenue fell by 27 percentage points. Because direct bookings carry no commission, the revenue mix change improved profitability considerably more than the topline growth suggests. RevPAR rose 18% as the repositioning supported a higher rate.

★★★★★

“We had been treating commission as a cost of doing business. It was actually a marketing budget we were spending on someone else's brand.”

Marketing Head

Hospitality group

Next step

Different business. Same set of questions.

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