Stop renting your own customers

Because the commission comes straight out of margin in a business that doesn’t have much to spare. Every booking through an aggregator costs a percentage and, more importantly, hands over the guest relationship — no email address, no way to market the next stay, and terms the platform can reprice whenever it likes. A direct booking at the same rate is worth substantially more, which is why it’s worth spending real money to win one.

Not on generic category terms, and you should stop trying — aggregators outspend you on “hotels in [city]” and “restaurants near me.” What you can win comprehensively is your own name and your immediate area. Anyone searching for your venue specifically should find you before a platform reselling you, and that’s achievable with a complete Google Business Profile, direct booking links and paid defence of your brand term.

Usually yes — because if you don’t, an aggregator will, and you’ll pay them commission for a guest who was already looking for you. Brand terms are cheap because you have the best quality score on your own name. It feels like paying for traffic you’d have had anyway, and in this vertical that’s exactly the point: you’re stopping someone else intercepting it.

More than almost any copy you’ll write. Hospitality is chosen visually, quickly, on a phone, usually while deciding between three options. Current, well-lit photographs of the actual room, the actual food and the actual space outperform professional shots that flatter the venue into unrecognisability — because the review saying it didn’t look like the pictures does lasting damage.

Publicly, briefly, without arguing, and fast. Prospective guests read the negative reviews and, more tellingly, they read your replies to judge what kind of place this is. A defensive response does more damage than the original complaint. Note too that soliciting reviews only from happy guests is prohibited under the FTC consumer reviews rule effective October 2024 — the ask has to go to everyone.

A complete and current Google Business Profile — correct hours, a readable menu, recent photographs. It sounds trivial and it decides an enormous share of local choices. The most common avoidable loss in the category is being closed when Google says you’re open, or having a menu that’s a PDF nobody can read on a phone.

It’s one of the few channels you actually own, which makes it disproportionately valuable here. A guest list you can contact directly is precisely the asset aggregators are working to stop you building. Collecting the email at the point of direct booking, then giving people a reason to open it, is how a venue stops renting its own customers.

For anywhere that photographs well, yes — discovery in this category is now substantially visual and social. The mistake is treating it as a broadcast channel for promotions. What travels is the room, the plate, the view and the atmosphere, filmed as they actually look. Discount posts perform badly and attract the guests least likely to return.

By being specific about what you are, which a chain can’t be. Chains market consistency, and consistency is a weak proposition against character when someone’s choosing where to spend an evening or a weekend. Independent venues that describe exactly what kind of experience they offer, and to whom, consistently outperform those competing on the same generic quality language a chain uses.