By Stefano Sciamanna, Senior Revenue Manager at Lybra Tech
Running campaigns, opening social profiles and working on reputation is useless if there is no logic connecting each action to the real objective: increasing profits, not just bookings.
One of the most widespread errors in the Italian hotel sector is treating marketing as an activity separate from Revenue Management. On one side the revenue manager works on pricing and distribution. On the other the marketing agency manages campaigns, social and Google Ads. The two worlds often do not speak to each other and campaign results fall short of expectations.
If campaigns run without a coherent pricing strategy and pricing changes without marketing knowing, neither truly knows whether results are the product of strategy or coincidence.
Marketing and Revenue Management cannot be managed separately. A good revenue manager must be able to plan marketing activities within a broader strategy, where pricing and distribution move with a well-defined logic and marketing has the precise task of amplifying that logic, not going off on its own.
The most costly error: campaigns without real ROI
Marketing campaigns for Italian hotels almost always suffer from the same problem: they are too generic. “Hotel in Rome,” “4-star hotel historic center,” “Summer special offer.” Messages that clash directly with OTA advertising budgets and no hotel can afford to win on that terrain.
Effective campaigns speak to uniqueness: an exclusive service, an unrepeatable view, an experience the competitor cannot offer. The more specific the communication, the lower the acquisition cost and the higher the conversion.
The silent error: many hoteliers evaluate campaigns by looking only at the volume of direct bookings generated. But the figure that counts is net profit. I have analyzed apparently positive campaigns in which the net profit of direct bookings, deducting campaign costs and discounts applied for disintermediation, was lower than the net profit from OTAs. This happens more often than one might think, also because some agencies work on commission on direct volumes and have no interest in optimizing the hotel’s margins, only their own.
Disintermediation at all costs is a trap. The objective is not to sell directly at any price, it is to increase profits. Sometimes an OTA booking is more convenient for the hotel than a direct booking obtained through a poorly calibrated campaign.
The 15% rule
The marketing budget is not defined arbitrarily. It is built starting from a simple principle: the total cost of marketing activities, campaigns, booking infrastructure, website, booking engine, CRM, added to discounts applied for direct bookings, must remain below 15% of direct revenues generated.
Exceeding that threshold means the economic advantage over OTAs vanishes. And if direct is no longer more advantageous than intermediated, the disintermediation strategy makes no sense.
Google first: the foundation no one can ignore
Whatever the hotel type, the starting point of digital marketing is always the same: a well-maintained Google My Business profile and an active Google Hotel Ads listing. They are free, they are fundamental, and too many hotels neglect them or manage them poorly.
Above this foundation, the first paid campaign to activate is always brand protection on Google: it prevents competitors or OTAs from intercepting traffic from those searching directly for the hotel name. The cost is contained, the return is almost always positive.
Subsequent campaigns, Performance Max, targeted Search and paid Google Hotel ADS, must be evaluated carefully and built on specific messages, never generic. They work well when ADR is sufficiently high to guarantee margin after covering campaign costs. On properties with low rates, the risk is that acquisition cost completely erodes the advantage of direct.
Social activities, instead, must be evaluated case by case based on target and product. They can deliver excellent results or prove to be a low-return investment, depending heavily on the type of hotel and the ability to produce content consistent with positioning.
Reputation: the most powerful pricing lever that exists
Online reputation is not a communication issue. It is a Revenue Management lever.
Those who book, even those who do so directly, read reviews on Booking and Google before confirming. The score they find directly influences how much they are willing to pay. The relationship is simple: very high scores above 9.0 can push rates significantly. Scores between 8.0 and 9.0 allow market pricing and rate increases in high season. Scores below 8.0 greatly reduce the property’s competitiveness and the only lever that remains is low pricing.
Real case
A few years ago I worked with a property from opening. We started with a score above 9.0 and revenue results were excellent, rates could remain high in both high and low season because the market supported them.
Over the years, the hotelier stopped investing in the property. The score dropped progressively to 7.8 and within a few years revenue nearly halved.
The decline was not caused by a pricing or distribution error, but was caused by the deterioration of reputation, which compressed rates and reduced demand. Reputation is not a variable that can be underestimated but is the parameter on which the entire hotel sales strategy turns.
Sometimes a well-managed negative review is worth more than a positive one. It shows that behind the hotel there is someone willing to listen and resolve.Negative reviews must be managed with clarity and without aggression. They are the most read, and a professional response transforms a problem into a communication opportunity: it demonstrates that the hotel has a service culture, not just a list of promises.
Today’s Revenue Manager does not only manage rates and channels
They must be able to orchestrate pricing, distribution, reputation and marketing within a single strategy. Each of these elements alone is insufficient. Together, and with the right logic, they become a system capable of generating sustainable results over time.
