Hospitality Digital Marketing & Growth Strategies: Why Ongoing Optimisation Matters

The hospitality industry has always thrived on experiences. But today those experiences often begin long before a guest checks in, books a table, or boards a plane. They start online—with a Google search, a social post, or a carefully targeted email.

For hospitality brands, digital marketing has shifted from “important” to mission‑critical. The challenge isn’t just building a good website or running a seasonal campaign. It’s how you continuously improve, adapt and optimise in order to grow—month after month, not just when there’s time for a refresh.

At Propeller, we’ve spent two decades helping hotels, restaurants and travel brands do exactly that. Here’s what we’ve learnt about using digital marketing to unlock growth in a highly competitive sector.

Think about how people travel and dine today.

• According to Statista, 72% of UK travellers now book accommodation online.
• Every booking routed through an OTA can eat up 15–30% in commission fees, squeezing margins.
• A recent research shows that hospitality brands investing in conversion rate optimisation (CRO) typically see a 10–20% lift in direct bookings.

The opportunity is huge, but so are the challenges. Guests are overwhelmed with choice. Expectations on mobile usability and speed are higher than ever. Paid search costs increase as more brands fight for the same space.

The reality? If you’re not actively optimising your digital presence, you’re almost certainly losing bookings you could have won.

Hotels and restaurants are rarely short of ideas—but turning those ideas into measurable growth requires deep digital expertise. That’s where agencies step in.

The role of a specialist is not to replace in‑house teams but to bring:

• Experience gained from testing strategies across dozens of hospitality brands.
• Access to advanced tools and analytics.
• The ability to focus on optimisation while you focus on operations.

At Propeller, we don’t see strategy as “one project and done”. We work in cycles of testing, learning, and iterating. Growth in hospitality comes less from single grand gestures and more from the cumulative effect of hundreds of small, smart changes.

One of the first questions I often ask a hotel client is: “Where are your guests dropping out of the booking journey?” Nine times out of ten, no one is quite sure.

That’s where conversion optimisation comes in. It’s not about guesswork—it’s about data and human behaviour.

We’ve seen conversion rates jump when:

• A mobile booking form is cut down from six fields to three.
• “Book now” is replaced with friendlier phrasing like “Check availability”.
• Clear reassurance is added about cancellation policy or late check‑out.

The truth is, CRO rarely involves dramatic design overhauls. It’s usually the small, friction‑removing changes that have the biggest impact.

Hospitality brands often feel they can’t compete with OTAs on Google Ads. But the data tells a different story when campaigns are structured and tested properly.

We’ve run branded PPC campaigns for hotels where OTAs had been dominating. By tightening the message, using smart bid strategies, and directing clicks to cleaner landing pages, ROI on ad spend hit £10–12 for every £1 invested—comfortably outperforming OTA commission.

Retargeting also remains underused. If a guest browses but doesn’t book, we can re‑engage them with a seasonal offer or a room upgrade incentive. It’s cost‑effective and tailored, nudging them back into your direct channel instead of an OTA.

Search behaviour in hospitality is hyper‑local. Guests aren’t just looking for “hotels”—they’re looking for “pet‑friendly hotels in Cornwall” or “rooftop restaurants Manchester”. If you don’t have content built around those searches, you simply won’t appear.

Some proven approaches:

• Launching city or neighbourhood landing pages that answer intent‑driven queries.
• Creating blogs or guides around “things to do near our hotel” to capture pre‑visit interest.
• Making sure menus, opening hours, and events are marked up correctly with schema so they appear in Google results.

It sounds simple, but regularly publishing content around real searches is often what separates the hotels that dominate local visibility from those that remain invisible online.

Think for a moment about the guest journey. They might first see you on Instagram, click through a PPC ad a week later, sign up to an email newsletter, and finally book after reading reviews. If every touchpoint feels slightly different, trust leaks away.

We advise hospitality clients to build joined‑up journeys. That could mean:

• An Instagram ad showing the same seasonal offer promoted in email.
• Pre‑arrival emails that remind guests of local events (and cross‑sell dinner reservations).
• Post‑stay follow‑ups that encourage reviews and loyalty programme sign‑ups.

It’s the digital equivalent of good service in person: consistent, clear, and personal.

It’s easy to drown in hospitality data—occupancy rates, ADR, website sessions, click‑throughs. But the most successful brands boil it down to KPIs that matter:

• Direct bookings (vs. OTA bookings).
• Conversion rate across devices.
• Average booking value.
• Guest lifetime value.

We encourage clients to pick a handful of KPIs and commit to testing against them. The “wins” usually come from small, evidence‑based adjustments repeated month after month.

Hospitality brands don’t need to behave like tech giants to grow digitally. You just need to act with purpose and consistency. The winners in 2025 and beyond will be the hotels, restaurants and travel operators who treat digital optimisation as an ongoing discipline—not a “tick‑box” after a website launch.

At Propeller, that’s exactly how we work. We’ve spent over 20 years helping ambitious hospitality brands improve conversion rates, drive more direct bookings, and deliver digital experiences that live up to their in‑person service.

If you’d like to explore how ongoing optimisation could unlock growth for your business, get in touch with us.

Or have a look at:

• Hospitality Digital Marketing Services
• Digital Strategy, SEO & Paid Media
• Case Studies

If there’s one thing to take away, it’s that growth in hospitality is built in increments. Here’s a short checklist you can apply right now:

• Review your booking engine. Where are users dropping out?
• Test your mobile booking flow end‑to‑end. Would you book easily yourself?
• Check paid search campaigns. Are OTAs outranking you on your own brand name?
• Audit your local SEO presence. Do you rank for “[restaurant/hotel] near me” searches?
• Track the right metrics and review them monthly, not annually.