How Much Profit Does Hotel Marketing Actually Bring

It may seem that a hotel’s location, concept, and thoughtful design should be enough to attract guests on their own. So why invest in marketing as well? Experience in managing a hotel network shows otherwise: without systematic marketing, occupancy, demand, and revenue remain beyond the property’s control. We spoke with Oleksandra, a marketer who oversees a cluster of hotels at Ribas Hotels Group, about how this plays out in practice.

How fast advertising creates demand

The clearest example of how quickly digital advertising can “kick-start” demand for a new property is the June launch of Agate Resort by Ribas. Within the first two weeks of the ad campaign, occupancy for the following month jumped from 2% to 56%. For a hotel that has just entered the market and has no guest base of its own yet, that’s a critical difference: without advertising, a new property simply stays invisible to its potential audience.

Oleksandra names digital marketing campaigns as the main tool for managing demand: they allow the team to evaluate spend efficiency in real time and forecast occupancy for the coming periods. That said, in her words, digital advertising works truly effectively only alongside a well-formed, cohesive hotel brand: “Performance marketing delivers a fast result, while the brand component sustains that result over the long term.” That’s why, alongside ad campaigns, the team also builds the brand through SMM, brand activities, and collaborations with influencers and media.

What happens when the budget is cut

New hotels, which haven’t yet built a base of repeat guests and are still in an active growth phase, turn out to be the most vulnerable to marketing budget cuts. In a property’s first year of operation, a sharp drop in ad spend leads to a proportional drop in demand: without a steady flow of new leads, the hotel loses visibility faster than it managed to build it.

Different strategies for a new hotel vs. an established one

This difference is well illustrated by two hotels in the network. Mandra Petrichor is in its first year of operation, so the current focus is on brand-building: the team runs regular marketing activities and collaborations to introduce the hotel to its audience and test hypotheses about the target audience and positioning. And the results are already visible in the numbers: in July alone, Mandra Petrichor welcomed over 790 guests, received 180 new bookings, and processed 655 guest inquiries — roughly the equivalent of 19 Ukrainian Railways passenger trains’ worth of people. On some days, the team had to prepare 16 out of 20 houses for check-in simultaneously. The complex’s second and third phases are currently under active construction and open for investment — an opportunity to enter a project that has already validated demand with real numbers from its first phase.

Mandra Morion, by contrast, has been operating for two years and has an established base of repeat guests and B2B partners. So the focus here shifts from “introduction” to retaining loyalty and driving sales: the main tools become online advertising, social media, and influencer partnerships.

Meta or Google: how to choose a channel

There’s no single channel that works equally well for every hotel — it all depends on the property’s format. Meta performs best for cottage complexes and hotels in tourist locations, where the guest is drawn more by emotion and atmosphere than by a specific benefit. Google Ads, on the other hand, drives the highest booking conversion for city hotels, where the guest has already decided to travel to a particular city — for business or tourism — and chooses based on rational criteria. In other words, Meta communication is built on emotion and feeling, while Google relies on the property’s advantages and rational arguments for choosing it.

How results are measured

Marketing in the hotel business is impossible without numbers. The key metrics the team uses to evaluate spend efficiency are ROAS (return on ad spend), cost per lead, lead-to-booking conversion rate, and cost per room-night booked. Together, these metrics give a complete picture — from how much it costs to generate interest to how efficiently that interest converts into revenue.

According to Oleksandra, the first results of a campaign are visible within the first week of launch, adjusted for seasonality. And even when leads don’t convert into bookings right away, that’s valuable information too: it shows what’s turning guests away or which need the hotel’s offer isn’t currently addressing. In other words, fast diagnostics happen either way — whether the signal is positive or negative.

Marketing against seasonality

The cost of acquiring a guest depends heavily on the specific location and season. In the Carpathians, for example, seasonality is especially pronounced: in the low season, guest acquisition cost can triple compared to peak season. But instead of directly scaling up the ad budget, the offer itself can be adjusted. At WOL.GREEN Polyana by Ribas, for instance, during periods of lower demand the team offers long-stay accommodation and package deals that include spa treatments, wellness programs, gastronomic experiences, and regional excursions. This keeps occupancy up without a proportional rise in advertising spend.

Cost or investment

When marketing is seen as a cost rather than an investment, Oleksandra suggests looking at the actual numbers from ad campaign performance reports. For instance, ROAS on the company’s ad campaigns reaches 1000% — meaning every hryvnia invested returns 10 hryvnias in revenue. That alone settles the question of “cost or investment.” And if marketing spend were cut entirely, the hotel would risk losing up to 90% of its direct bookings — precisely the channel that delivers the highest margin compared to OTAs.

Marketing in the hotel business isn’t a cost that can be cut without consequences — it’s a tool that directly shapes a hotel’s occupancy, revenue, and long-term stability in the market.