Google ROAS
north of 12x
Search and PMax, travel accounts. Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026
Prepared for Crystalbrook Collection
Prepared for Crystalbrook Collection
What we found inside Crystalbrook's book-direct engine.
Your whole model rests on one sentence: "Book direct and save 10%." That sentence is fighting a category that outspends independent hotels roughly twelve to one, and most of that money is aimed squarely at the moment a guest decides where to click.
Seven properties, one clear personality per location, and a content library most tourism boards would envy. The demand is already yours. The question is who captures it at the point of purchase.
$25Mtotal category spend on Hotels / Resorts advertising, as at Dec 2025
The thing that caught our eye
The people selling your rooms outspend the people who own them.
Across the Australian travel category, Hotels and Resorts spent about $25M on advertising (Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025). OTAs and booking platforms spent roughly $126M, and tour operators and agencies another $183M. That is the money bidding on "Crystalbrook Byron" and "Cairns luxury hotel" before your own site ever loads.
Here is our read: your 10% direct discount is not a loyalty gimmick, it is a margin weapon. Every booking you pull off an OTA saves a commission that is bigger than the discount you gave away. But you only get to make that trade if you win the click first.
We've solved thisAcross our travel accounts we have driven ROAS north of 12x by defending brand demand before OTAs intercept it.
Where the category money actually goes
You compete in the smallest room in the house.
This is the category by segment. Hotels and Resorts is the thin slice. The heavyweight spenders (OTAs, tour operators, airlines) are all channels that sit between a guest's intent and your front desk.
Independent hotels are the least-funded voice in a category built on intermediaries · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
We can pull your branded search share and show you exactly how much of "Crystalbrook" traffic an OTA is currently charging you for.
Just hit replyA timing quirk worth money
The category shouts in January. It goes quiet in December.
Advertising in the travel category peaks in January and bottoms out in December. But summer stays are decided in the weeks before Christmas. The category is spending hardest after the decision has been made.
The cheapest impressions land in the window your competitors abandon · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
What you only learn from the inside
Things we know that aren't on any dashboard.
Metasearch, not organic
The real book-direct battle happens on Google Hotel Ads and Trivago, where your rate sits line-by-line next to the OTA. Losing there is invisible in your own analytics.
The parity handcuff
You cannot advertise the Crowd rate publicly without breaching OTA parity. So the discount has to be earned behind the login, which means the whole funnel is a fight to trigger the sign-in, not the sale.
Two demand curves, one calendar
Cairns fills on reef and wet-season logic. Byron and Newcastle run on the domestic weekender. A single portfolio media calendar averages them out and misweights spend against both.
Refundable rates convert harder
Free-cancellation rates convert well above locked ones, especially at 21-plus days out. Timing that message to lead-time, rather than showing it to everyone, protects both conversion and yield.
Rocco and Fiume are lead sources
People book the rooftop bar or the day spa without ever booking a room. That first-party diner and spa data is the warmest room-stay audience you own, and it usually sits unused in a separate system.
The Journal is a demand asset
Dozens of local guides pull in exactly the traveller who has not chosen a hotel yet. Retargeting that reader to the property in their city is a cheaper first touch than bidding for them cold.
One honest comparison
What "good" looks like on paid, in your category.
These are our own delivered numbers across Australian and New Zealand travel and tourism accounts over the last twelve months. Deliberately rounded, real, and the kind of figure a competitor cannot find on Google.
Cost per booking
under $20
Best accounts land well under this. Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026
Meta CPM
single digits
Combined average across accounts. Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026
Three things we'd look at first
Where we'd start, specifically.
01
Reclaim your own name
Audit every property brand term on search and metasearch, and quantify how much "Crystalbrook" demand an OTA is currently taxing. This is usually the fastest margin win because the intent already exists.
Track recordROAS north of 12x on brand-defence campaigns across our travel accounts.
02
Split the portfolio by demand curve
Run Cairns on its reef-season logic and the eastern seaboard properties on the weekender curve. Separate budgets, separate creative, so spend follows real intent per city instead of a blended average.
Track recordSingle-digit CPMs when creative is matched to the moment, not the brand template.
03
Turn diners and spa guests into stays
Connect the restaurant, bar and Eléme booking data into your room-stay audiences. That warm first-party pool is cheaper to convert than any cold prospecting, and most hotel groups never join it up.
Track recordCost per booking under $20 when first-party audiences do the heavy lifting.
This is a snapshot, not the plan
A real plan is built on better data than a quick scan.
We can see the category from the outside. With your booking, OTA-mix and property-level data, this sharpens fast.
Nielsen Ad IntelCategory & competitor ad-spend tracking
Roy MorganAudience & consumer profiling
Google Premier PartnerTop tier of Google agencies
Meta Business PartnerVerified platform access
This briefing is what we can see from the outside. Imagine what we'd build with the data on the inside.
Proof, not promises
Check out our success stories.
We've done this for travel & tourism brands right across Australia. See the campaigns, and the results, for yourself.
Check out our success storiesWhat this is actually worth
Here's the size of the prize.
$150k to $250k
margin recaptured, per $10M of OTA-booked room revenue moved direct
The working, stated plainly: OTA commission typically runs 15% to 18%. Your direct discount is 10%. Shift even a third of a $10M OTA-sourced revenue slice to direct and you keep roughly 5 to 7 net points of margin on the moved volume. The bigger your current OTA mix, the bigger the prize, and that split is the first thing we would size against your booking data.
The Sunny Team · Sunny Advertising