Tourism and hospitality marketing: For tourism.
Marketing, content, and AI for hotels, tour operators, and DMOs.
Tourism marketing differentiation: Everyone looks the same. The cheapest one gets the booking.
OTAs skim 15 to 25% off every booking. Reviews live on Google. AI answers quote whoever ranks first. Every property page reads like the last one.
Based in Barcelona, a city that runs on tourism, we have been inside these operations. We design the marketing, content, booking, and AI infrastructure that separates a tourism brand from the surrounding noise.
Sources
OTA commissions 15–25%: Phocuswire, Booking.com and Expedia partner data, 2024.
Staff turnover 70–80%: AHLA State of the Hotel Industry 2024.
Marketing budget 4–6% of revenue: Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2024.
The work we do.
Every engagement is scoped around your situation. The range below shows what we cover.
Brand and content
Property and destination writing
- Property page rewrites with a distinct voice and specific detail
- Destination guides and local content that earn organic search traffic
- Brand voice and tone-of-voice documentation
- Photography briefs and visual direction for seasonal campaigns
Brand and visual identity
- Full brand identity: logo, colours, typography
- Website design and launch
- Social media templates and asset libraries
- Print materials: menus, in-room guides, welcome packs
Growth and discovery
SEO, AEO, and GEO
- Technical SEO audit for tourism and hospitality sites
- GEO visibility check: how your property appears in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude
- Content that ranks before the OTA listing does
- Google Business Profile strategy and optimisation
- Local and destination keyword architecture
Shoulder season and events
- Shoulder season content calendar: content that converts when occupancy is soft
- Event and group inquiry funnels
- Package creation and pricing strategy for low-demand periods
- Targeted campaigns for domestic versus international audiences
Booking and guest journey
Direct booking infrastructure
- Booking flow audit and conversion rate optimisation
- Direct booking versus OTA dependency analysis
- Landing pages for specific room types, packages, and seasonal offers
- Email capture strategy integrated into the guest journey
- Abandonment recovery sequences for incomplete bookings
Guest journey and retention
- Pre-arrival sequence: confirmation, anticipation, upsell
- Post-stay follow-up and review solicitation
- Re-engagement campaign for lapsed guests
- Loyalty programme design (simple, no platform required)
- Referral programme setup
AI and operations
Automation and workflows
- Guest communication automations: instant responses, pre-arrival flows
- Review management automations
- Reporting dashboards: live occupancy, booking source, revenue per channel
- Intake and inquiry handling without manual re-entry
- Seasonal staff onboarding: documented AI workflows they can follow without a manual
AI governance for hospitality
- One-page AI governance policy for hospitality teams
- Tool audit: kill redundant subscriptions, fill operational gaps
- Prompt libraries calibrated for your property voice
- Monthly AI briefing relevant to hospitality
Proven patterns from wine estates, boutique hotels, and destination operators in nine countries.
The guest books direct. The margin stays yours.
Three ways to start.
Most tourism operators we meet arrive in one of three situations. Pick the one that fits yours.
Destination audit
2 weeksYou suspect your direct booking rate could be higher. You do not know what is blocking it.
- Full audit: site, SEO, GEO visibility, booking flow, guest journey, AI readiness
- Direct booking versus OTA dependency analysis
- Ranked list of the 10 highest-value fixes
Outcome: A clear picture of where money is going to the OTA and what to reclaim first.
Destination sprint
1-2 weeksYou know what you need. You need it live this month.
- Landing page, campaign, booking flow, or automation. Scoped on the kickoff call.
- Designed, written, and live inside one to two weeks.
- 30 days post-launch support.
Outcome: A live page, campaign, or system. Tracked from day one.
Destination retainer
Month to monthShoulder season starts in six weeks. Hiring a growth team takes six months.
- Ongoing monthly support: content, SEO, guest retention, AI workflows, GEO maintenance
- Same two people every month
- Scales up or down, no lock-in
Outcome: A consistent growth team without the overhead or the six-month hiring timeline. Cancel any time.
Work directly with the founders.
Diagnostic call
30 minutes. You describe what is failing. We tell you what we would fix first and why. You leave with a ranked list you can use, whether we work together or not.
Scope and proposal
One page within 48 hours. Fixed scope, clear outcome. No decks, no committees, nothing that needs a second meeting to explain.
We get to work
We work in two-week cycles. By the end of the first cycle, something is live. Not a draft. Something your team can run.
We stay
We check the numbers after launch. If a booking flow is not converting, we iterate. If a sequence is underperforming, we rewrite it. We do not disappear after delivery.
Proof and people.
Bustravel Iceland → PaxFlow
Booking platform acquired by Origo and rebranded PaxFlow. +40% overseas partnerships, +25% organic sales.
World Bank / Sierra Leone
Diaspora investor webinar for Government of Sierra Leone and World Bank eco-tourism projects.
Expos & events
A health-tech client at Euretina Barcelona, 4,000 attendees. Lead capture and targeting redesigned before the event. ROI up 20%.
Collaborators worldwide
A network of specialists we trust. When a brief needs a native German copywriter, a Reykjavik photographer, or a developer in the right timezone, we bring them in by name.
Two founders. Operators at heart.
The people who diagnose the problem design the solution. Book a 30-minute call.
Bring your property, your booking numbers, your shoulder season plan. We will tell you where the money is going and what to fix first.
Before you ask.
We already work with an OTA. Why do we need you?
OTAs take 15-25% commission on every booking. Across a full season, those fees add up to a second staff salary.
We design the direct booking infrastructure that reduces that dependency: SEO, GEO, email capture, and a booking flow that converts before a guest ever lands on Booking.com.
We are a small operator. Is this relevant for us?
Most of our best work is for small operators. You move faster than chains, you can differentiate by personality rather than category, and even a 10% shift toward direct bookings changes the numbers at your scale.
We tried an agency before. They did not understand hospitality.
One of us ran revenue and ICT at a tour operator in Iceland for seven years, and founded the booking platform that was later acquired and rebranded as PaxFlow. We know what a booking system has to survive. We know what the shoulder season does to a plan. We are not guessing.
What is GEO and why does it matter for us?
Generative Engine Optimisation. Travellers increasingly start their search inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and similar tools.
If your property or destination does not appear in those answers, you are invisible before the guest reaches a booking platform. We audit GEO visibility as part of every destination audit.
How do you improve direct bookings for hotels?
Direct bookings improve when three things work together: a booking flow that does not leak (fast, mobile-optimised, clear pricing), a reason to book direct rather than on an OTA (a best-rate guarantee, exclusive extras, or a loyalty signal), and traffic that does not depend entirely on Google Ads or Booking.com.
We audit all three in the destination audit. Any sprint can target one of them specifically.
What does a hotel SEO audit cover?
A destination SEO audit covers five areas: technical health (site speed, mobile, crawlability), on-page signals (title tags, headings, schema markup for rooms and offers), local SEO (Google Business Profile, map pack visibility), GEO visibility (how your property appears in AI-generated travel answers from ChatGPT and Perplexity), and content gaps (what travellers search for that your site does not answer).
We deliver a ranked fix list. Most properties have five to ten high-impact fixes that require no budget, only time.
Who does the work?
Thomas and Desh, based in Barcelona. No account managers, no junior handoffs.
We scope every engagement, do the work, and stay after launch. Learn more on the about page.