Via an OTA
-15 to 20%
Commission gone, plus you never see the guest's data or get to remarket them.
Prepared for Lancemore Hotel Group
Prepared for Lancemore Hotel Group
What we found inside Lancemore's acquisition engine.
Eight boutique properties, four decades of family ownership, and a category where the people spending the most on media aren't hotels at all. They're the platforms reselling your rooms.
Natalie, you already put "Book Direct" in the top nav. This briefing is about the maths that makes that button worth defending harder than anything else you do.
$25Mspent by hotels & resorts
in the category last year
in the category last year
The thing that caught our eye
Hotels are the smallest advertiser in their own category.
In a $677M travel and tourism market, hotels and resorts spent just $25M on media. OTAs and booking platforms spent $126M. Tour operators and agencies spent $183M. Those two groups aren't building brands, they're buying the demand for rooms like yours and charging a commission to hand it back.
So the real contest for a Lancemore guest isn't another boutique hotel. It's whether that guest finds you through a channel you own, or through one that takes 15 to 20 percent of the booking on the way in.
We've solved thisAcross our travel accounts we've driven north of 12x ROAS on direct-booking search and social.
Who you're actually bidding against
The spend around your rooms.
Lancemore isn't in a spending war with other boutique hotels. It's surrounded by platforms with national media budgets, all monetising the same intent to travel. Here's the shape of the field.
The platforms outspending every hotel are the ones charging you commission · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
Where the category money goes
Follow the $677M.
The category isn't short of money. It's concentrated in intermediaries. Tour operators and OTAs together account for over $300M, more than twelve times what every hotel and resort in the country spent combined.
Intermediaries dominate spend; the properties they sell barely register · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
If we pulled your channel mix apart, we'd start by finding out what share of Lancemore's room revenue currently pays an OTA commission. That one number reframes the whole plan.
Let's talkA timing quirk worth money
The category advertises into its own peak.
Category spend peaks in January and bottoms out in December, so everyone floods the same auction when demand is already highest and goes quiet exactly when they should be seeding the next trip. Your "Slow Season" and "Unhurried Escapes" products are built for the trough. That's an arbitrage, not an afterthought.
CPMs inflate when everyone buys together; the quiet months are cheaper to own · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
What you only learn from the inside
Things we know that aren't on any dashboard.
Bid on your own name
OTAs bid on "Lancemore Milawa" and the like, then sell you the click back at commission. Defending your own brand terms is the cheapest margin you'll ever recover.
The 90-day dreaming window
Regional and food-and-wine trips get researched months out. The account that shows up during the dream, not just the search, wins the direct booking before an OTA ever enters the picture.
Weddings and conferences pay for the year
A single wedding or corporate booking dwarfs a room night in value, but they convert on enquiry forms, not carts. Most hotel media treats them as an afterthought. They should be a dedicated funnel.
Direct rate parity is a lever, not a rule
The moment a guest sees the same price on your site and an OTA, they pick the OTA out of habit. A member-only rate or perk in the ad, not just at checkout, breaks that habit.
Palm Cove behaves differently to Red Hill
Tropical QLD buys on season and flights; the Victorian regional properties buy on weekenders from Melbourne. One national campaign averages both into mediocrity. They need separate geo and creative logic.
Spa and dining are acquisition, not upsell
L.M. Spa and hatted dining are the cheapest reasons for a local to try you. Sell the experience first, and the room night follows at a far lower cost than selling the room cold.
One honest comparison
What a direct booking is worth versus an OTA one.
Same room, same guest, same night. The difference is entirely in who owns the relationship and who keeps the margin. This is the trade we'd help you shift.
Via direct search
12x+
ROAS we've delivered on travel accounts, and the guest is yours to keep.
Cost per direct booking
Under $20
Our travel accounts sit here on Google. Cheaper than one OTA commission on a two-night stay.
Three things we'd look at first
Where we'd start, specifically.
01
Reclaim your branded search
Audit every Lancemore property name and confirm you, not an OTA, own the top result. This is the fastest margin recovery available and usually pays for itself inside a month.
Track recordCost per purchase under $20 across our travel search accounts.
02
Build the slow-season funnel
Turn "Unhurried Escapes" into a paid demand engine that runs hardest in the cheap months when the category goes quiet. Own the dreaming window at single-digit CPMs.
Track recordSingle-digit CPMs on Meta across travel accounts.
03
Split weddings and conferences out
Give the high-value enquiry lines their own campaigns, creative and measurement. One wedding lead is worth hundreds of room-night clicks, so it deserves its own budget, not the scraps of a room campaign.
Track recordLead-gen funnels built for high-consideration travel purchases.
This is a snapshot, not the plan
A real plan is built on better data than a quick scan.
Everything here we read from the outside. The interesting work starts with your booking and OTA data.
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.
$1M+
Margin sitting in your OTA mix, recoverable through direct bookings
The lever is commission. Every room night an OTA sells costs you 15 to 20 percent, and you never own the guest afterward. Assume Lancemore turns over meaningful room revenue across eight properties, and that even a modest slice currently flows through OTAs. Shifting a portion of that to direct, at the 12x+ ROAS we deliver on travel search, puts the recoverable margin comfortably north of seven figures a year. This is the first number we'd chase, because it pays for the media that wins it.
We'll tighten this against your actual booking and channel split. The figure moves; the opportunity doesn't.
One-per-category: we only brief one boutique group at a time
The next step
Let's find your OTA number.
Give us thirty minutes and your channel split, and we'll show you exactly how much margin is walking out the door through platforms that advertise more than you do.
Just hit replyor just reply to the email this came in, I read every one.
This isn't a pitch in disguise. If direct booking is already your strongest channel, we'll tell you and hand back the time.
- ✓
Your branded search audit
Whether you or an OTA owns the top result on your own property names.
- ✓
The slow-season play
How to own the cheap months the rest of the category ignores.
- ✓
The direct-booking maths
What a point of OTA revenue shifted to direct is actually worth to Lancemore.