Marketing managers in travel and hospitality describe their world as part alchemy, part accounting. You need to win heart-and-wallet moments: get a browsing traveler to book, then coax them to return or recommend you. Yet even with more tools than ever, many teams underperform. Why? The short answer: conflicting incentives, murky measurement, and a set of common "easy" fixes that actually erode margin or brand value. The longer answer is worth unpacking, because the right approach depends on how you evaluate trade-offs.
3 Critical Factors When Choosing Booking and Loyalty Strategies
Before comparing tactics, what actually matters when you decide between discounts, loyalty programs, personalization platforms, channel partnerships, or subscriptions? Ask these three questions:
- What are the financial constraints and ROI timelines? Are you optimizing for immediate bookings this quarter or lifetime value over years? Short-term discounts can spike occupancy but can train customers to only buy when prices drop. How mature is your data and operations? Can you integrate guest profiles, preferences, and behavioral signals across systems? If your CRM is an Excel spreadsheet, promised personalization will sputter. What control do you need over distribution and guest experience? Do you rely heavily on third-party channels where margins and guest relationships are limited, or do you need direct channels to preserve brand and post-stay revenue?
These factors help you sort options by what they deliver and what they cost. They also reveal why many marketers end up chasing the wrong metric, like room nights or referral traffic, instead of the profitable slice of guest behavior that creates sustainable value.
Discounts and OTAs: Pros, Cons, and Hidden Costs
For decades, the default playbook has been discounting and distribution through online travel agencies (OTAs). It’s familiar and fast. That makes it attractive when leadership demands immediate occupancy boosts. But does familiarity mean it’s effective?
What this approach delivers
- Quick increases in bookings during soft demand windows. Access to a broad audience without heavy marketing investment. Simple attribution: book via the OTA, pay the commission.
Where it breaks down
- High cost per booking because commissions cut into revenue. In contrast, direct bookings give you better margins and control over guest data. Weak guest loyalty. Guests who book on OTAs often shop across brands; the vendor owns the relationship. Price lowering becomes a habit. If guests expect frequent deals, it’s hard to sell full price later. Limited data. OTAs provide a transaction but often opaque behavioral signals, making personalization and re-engagement difficult.
So why do managers cling to this model? Because it looks safer. It’s predictable, measurable, and visibly moves the occupancy needle. The cynic would say it’s an easy report to show the CFO. But safe often means unsustainable.
Personalization and Direct-Booking Tools: How They Differ from Traditional Tactics
Personalization platforms, dynamic pricing, and investments in direct booking experience promise higher margins and stronger loyalty. They aim to convert customers when they’re most engaged and to turn one-time visitors into repeat guests. But these Stake vs Eddie promo tools are not plug-and-play.
What this approach delivers
- Improved conversion rates on your own channels by tailoring offers and messaging. Ownership of guest data - enabling targeted re-engagement and higher lifetime value. Potential to sell ancillary services like late checkout, F&B, tours - increasing revenue per booking.
Where it breaks down
- Requires data discipline. You need a single guest view, clean segmentation, and rules for personalization. In practice, teams struggle with fragmented PMS, multiple CRMs, and legal limits on data use. Technology and content gaps. Personalized journeys depend on creative content and integrations that many properties lack the budget to build. Expectations management. Personalization can disappoint if it’s inconsistent or intrusive; bad recommendations alienate guests.
In contrast to discounts and OTAs, personalization favors long-term value over immediate spikes. But it also demands organizational maturity. Without that, the investments simply shift spend from commissions to tech subscriptions with no net gain.
Subscription and Experience-Based Loyalty: Are They a Fit for Your Brand?
Subscription models and experience-centric loyalty (for example, pay an annual fee for perks or curate exclusive local experiences for members) have gained traction. They promise predictable revenue and a stronger emotional bond. Are they right for travel and hospitality brands?
Benefits to consider
- Predictable revenue streams during off-peak months. An engaged community more likely to book repeatedly or recommend the brand. Opportunity to upsell unique experiences that competitors can’t easily copy.
Downsides and practical hurdles
- High expectations. Subscribers expect regular value; if perks are weak, churn will spike. Operational complexity. Designing and delivering member-only experiences requires partnerships and local operations coordination. Segment fit. Not every property has the brand cachet or guest frequency to justify subscriptions. Urban boutique hotels or resort groups with repeat seasonality do better than one-off motels.
On the other hand, when it works, subscription models create a committed customer base and smooth revenue seasonality. But launching one without a clear value architecture is a fast route to disappointment and negative reviews.
Partnerships, Co-Marketing, and Local Alliances: The Often-Overlooked Middle Path
If discounts feel cheap and personalization feels complex, what about partnerships? Collaborations with airlines, local experience providers, or even adjacent brands can offer volume and freshness without the margin erosion of OTAs.
Where partnerships shine
- Access to a prequalified audience, often with shared interests. Shared marketing costs, lowering acquisition CPA. Ability to bundle experiences that increase perceived value without lowering room rates.
Challenges
- Revenue-share negotiations can become complicated. In contrast to OTAs, you often need creative deal structures. Brand alignment risk. A poor partner can harm your reputation. Measurement complexity. Attributing bookings to joint campaigns requires disciplined tracking.
Similarly, co-marketing can turbocharge visibility, but it requires a realistic view of who owns the guest relationship and how fulfillment will be handled. If you ignore those mechanics, "partnership" becomes just another cost center.
Choosing the Right Mix for Your Property or Brand
So how does a marketing manager decide? There’s no single bullet that fixes bookings and loyalty. Instead, build a strategy around your answers to the three critical factors earlier. Here’s a practical decision path:
Assess your baseline: What percentage of bookings are direct vs OTA? What is your average revenue per booking and repeat rate? Prioritize quick wins and foundations: If direct bookings are low and data is scattered, invest first in a clean CRM, simple direct-booking improvements (clear value proposition and mobile checkout), and a basic retention email flow. Match tactics to maturity: If data and operations are solid, add personalization and dynamic offers. If you have a distinct brand and frequent guests, test a subscription or membership pilot with a small cohort. Use partnerships to experiment: Launch co-marketing with local experience providers to test new packages before committing to bigger operational changes. Measure the right KPIs: Focus on revenue per available room (RevPAR), direct booking rate, customer acquisition cost (CAC), and customer lifetime value (CLV), not just occupancy.In contrast to a single-minded chase for bookings, this approach balances short-term survival with long-term value creation. Which steps can you take this quarter? Which require executive buy-in over a year? Asking those questions keeps strategy grounded.
Approach Speed to impact Control over guest data Margin impact Operational difficulty OTAs and Discounting Fast Low Negative Low Direct Personalization Medium High Positive High Subscriptions / Memberships Slow High Positive (if managed) High Partnerships / Co-Marketing Medium Medium Neutral MediumCommon Mistakes That Keep You Stuck
What are the recurring errors I see when marketing teams fail to move the needle?
- Chasing vanity metrics. Bookings look good on a dashboard, but if margins and repeat rates fall, the business is weaker. Siloed teams. Marketing, revenue management, and operations must coordinate on pricing, guest experience, and data flows. Relying on technology as a cure-all. Tools amplify weaknesses as much as strengths if the underlying processes are flawed. Ignoring guest psychology. Loyalty isn’t created by points alone. It’s the sum of expectations met, small surprises, and consistent service.
On the other hand, when teams align goals and measure the right outcomes, even modest investments in direct channels and partnership experiments produce outsized returns.
Summary: A Practical Roadmap to Reduce Friction and Grow Value
Why do marketing managers in travel and hospitality struggle? Because the easy options erode margins and the strategic options require capabilities many brands have not yet built. The right choice depends on three things: your financial horizon, your data maturity, and how much control you need over distribution and experience.
Start with a clear baseline: how many guests book directly, what they spend beyond the room, and how often they return. From there, take staged steps: shore up direct channels and data, run low-risk partnership pilots, then scale personalization and membership models when infrastructure and content are ready.
Ask these final questions to test readiness:
- Do we have a single view of guests across touchpoints? Can we measure incremental revenue from marketing actions, not just bookings? Are we prepared to trade fast volume for longer-term profitability?
If the answer is no to any of these, focus first on organizational fixes rather than chasing the next marketing "trend." If yes, design experiments that prove value at small scale before rolling out broadly. In contrast to chasing shortcuts, this disciplined path preserves brand, improves margins, and builds loyalty that lasts beyond the next discount season.
What's one thing you can test this month?
Try a simple A/B test: offer a small, non-rate perk for direct bookings (free breakfast or late checkout) and measure not just bookings but ancillary spend and repeat rate over six months. It’s cheap, operationally feasible, and reveals more about guest economics than a one-week flash sale ever will.
