For years, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) has been treated as the gold standard for evaluating hotel marketing performance. But as traveler behavior evolves and the planning journey becomes longer and more complex, it’s clear that ROAS no longer tells the full story.
NB: This is an article from Cogwheel, one of our Expert Partners
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A more strategic, full-funnel approach is needed. One that aligns marketing, revenue management, and sales around shared goals and long-term growth.
The Customer Journey is Long and ROAS Only Measures the Final Moment
Travelers spend up to 45 days planning a trip, consuming roughly 277 pages or 303 minutes of content. They move through several stages – inspiration, research, planning and booking – yet most hotel marketing focuses almost exclusively on the booking phase, which represents just one day of the entire journey.
This imbalance skews performance expectations and pushes marketers toward low-funnel tactics that look efficient but limit long-term growth.
Each Channel Plays a Different Role
- Social media drives early-stage inspiration and research.
- OTAs and meta search dominate the booking phase, but they capture demand rather than create it.
- Brand.com and direct channels build long-term market share and reduce acquisition costs.
MetaSearch, in particular, should be viewed as a channel-shift tool, rather than a demand generator. Helpful for shifting bookings from OTAs to direct, but not for creating new reservations.
Full-Funnel Marketing Matters More Than Ever
Hotels investing in top, middle, and bottom funnel strategies see 8% to 10% higher brand.com contribution and reduced OTA dependency, even if their ROAS appears lower on paper. Full-funnel marketing also improves:
- Brand recall
- Conversion rates
- Customer lifetime value (LTV)
- Market share
Ads shown only at the booking stage have an ad recall rate of just 7%, whereas early-funnel ads have far greater influence on final decisions.
The Rise of AI in Travel Planning
A new layer of complexity and opportunity is emerging as travelers increasingly use AI tools like ChatGPT to plan trips. This shift introduces the need for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): optimizing hotel presence and content for AI-powered search and planning experiences. Younger travelers, in particular, rely on LLMs to curate itineraries, compare destinations, and gather recommendations.
