Most hotels hand their revenue to OTAs without a fight
You built a brilliant property, but your marketing is an afterthought. Booking.com fills your rooms, takes a quarter of the revenue, and owns the guest relationship. Here is what we hear from hotel owners and revenue managers every week:
OTA commissions eating your margins
Booking.com, Expedia, and Hotels.com take 15 to 25 percent of every reservation. On a 50-room hotel averaging £120 per night, that could be over £200,000 a year in commission alone.
Guests Google you, then book via OTAs
Your guests search your hotel by name, find your website, then go back to Booking.com to complete the reservation. You are paying commission on guests who already chose you.
Seasonal demand with no strategy
January occupancy drops to 40 percent while August is overbooked. Without a marketing plan for shoulder seasons, you are leaving revenue on the table for half the year.
Wedding and events revenue untapped
Your function rooms and event spaces sit empty midweek. You know there is demand for weddings, conferences, and private dining, but you have no system to generate leads.
Byter Academy's Hotel Marketing course gives you a clear, step-by-step system to reduce OTA dependency and drive direct bookings. No fluff. Just the strategies that actually grow hotel revenue.
Curriculum
What you'll learn
Five modules covering everything from your first marketing plan to running profitable direct booking campaigns. 26 lessons, 13+ hours of content.
Hotel Marketing Blueprint
7 lessonsBuild a marketing foundation for your hotel. Cover brand positioning, guest personas, competitor analysis, and your 90-day direct booking plan.
Hospitality Social Media
5 lessonsMaster Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook for hotels. Learn content planning, property photography, Reels strategy, and UGC campaigns from guests.
Hospitality Advertising
5 lessonsRun profitable Meta Ads, Google Ads, and Google Hotel Ads for your property. Learn targeting, budget allocation, and how to track bookings from ad spend.
Advanced Hospitality Strategy
5 lessonsGo deeper with seasonal and event-based marketing, hotel revenue marketing, tech stack integrations, and reputation management.
Hospitality Workshop Projects
4 lessonsPut everything into practice. Build a complete hotel marketing plan, launch a direct booking campaign, analyse the results, and get AI-powered feedback.
Plus: hotel-relevant lessons from other tracks
Shopping and Performance Max for Google Hotel Ads
PA402-06
Conversion Rate Optimisation for Booking Pages
SW504-03
Email Marketing for Guest Retention
EC601+
Featured Module
The Direct Booking Playbook
The strategies independent hotels use to shift bookings away from OTAs and onto their own website.
Google Hotel Ads
Show your rates directly in Google Search and Maps. Compete with OTAs where guests are actually looking, and only pay when someone books.
Metasearch Marketing
List your direct rates on Trivago, TripAdvisor, and Google Hotels. Understand bidding strategies and how to maintain rate parity.
Website Booking CRO
Optimise your booking engine, reduce abandonment, and convert more website visitors into confirmed direct reservations.
Guest Journey Marketing
Six stages. Six opportunities to win revenue.
Most hotels only market at the booking stage. This course teaches you to engage guests at every touchpoint, from initial inspiration through to post-stay loyalty.
1. Dreaming
Inspire potential guests before they even have dates in mind.
Key tactics:
Instagram Reels, Pinterest boards, destination blog content, influencer stays
2. Planning
Appear when guests are researching destinations and comparing options.
Key tactics:
SEO, Google Business Profile, comparison content, TripAdvisor management
3. Booking
Convert lookers into direct bookers with a frictionless experience.
Key tactics:
Website CRO, best-rate guarantee, booking engine optimisation, urgency triggers
4. Pre-stay
Build excitement and increase revenue before guests arrive.
Key tactics:
Email sequences, room upgrades, spa upsells, restaurant pre-booking, local guides
5. In-stay
Deliver shareable moments and capture content from happy guests.
Key tactics:
Social media prompts, UGC campaigns, hashtag strategy, on-property signage
6. Post-stay
Turn one-time guests into repeat visitors and brand advocates.
Key tactics:
Review requests, loyalty programme, re-engagement emails, seasonal offers
Revenue + Marketing
Marketing that moves your revenue metrics
This course connects marketing directly to the numbers your revenue manager cares about. No vanity metrics, just measurable impact.
RevPAR
Revenue Per Available Room
Learn how targeted marketing campaigns during shoulder seasons directly increase your RevPAR by filling rooms that would otherwise sit empty.
ADR
Average Daily Rate
Understand how brand positioning, direct booking incentives, and perceived value let you charge higher rates without losing occupancy.
Direct %
Direct Booking Ratio
Track and grow the percentage of bookings that come through your own website. Every point you shift from OTAs to direct saves thousands.
Proof It Works
Real results from a real hotel
4.2x
ROAS on paid ads
Boutique Hotel: Paid Advertising for Direct Bookings
How a 40-room independent hotel in Central London used Google Hotel Ads and Meta retargeting to shift 22% of bookings from OTAs to direct, saving over £85,000 in commission annually.
Read case study →
Free Tools
Calculate your hotel marketing ROI
Free tools to help you work out what to spend, measure your return on ad spend, and compare direct booking costs against OTA commissions.
We were handing Booking.com over £150,000 a year in commission and had no idea how to change that. After working through the hotel marketing course, we set up Google Hotel Ads, rebuilt our booking page, and launched a proper email strategy. Direct bookings went from 18 percent to 41 percent in five months. The course paid for itself in the first week.
James R.
Revenue Manager, boutique hotel in Kensington
Ready to drive direct bookings?
Start with the free foundation lessons or unlock the full hotel marketing curriculum with Pro.
Free
£0
Start with the foundation lessons. No card required, no time limit.
- ✓ 22 foundation lessons
- ✓ Interactive exercises
- ✓ Progress tracking
- ✓ Marketing calculators
Pro
£23/month
Unlock all hotel marketing lessons, plus the entire Byter Academy curriculum.
- ✓ All 26 hospitality lessons
- ✓ 5 modules of structured content
- ✓ AI-powered capstone feedback
- ✓ Downloadable templates
- ✓ Module certificates
- ✓ 460+ lessons across all courses
More resources for hotel marketers
Direct Booking Strategy
How to reduce OTA dependency with a worked example for a 50-room hotel.
Guest Journey Content Strategy
Map content to the six stages of the hotel guest journey.
Google Hotel Ads Guide
The complete guide to Google Hotel Ads for independent hotels.
Marketing Glossary
New to marketing jargon? Look up any term in our plain-English glossary.
Free Calculators
ROI calculator, ad budget planner, and CPA calculator. All free.
Restaurant Marketing
Running a restaurant too? See our dedicated restaurant marketing course.