There’s a tendency in the hotel business to default to higher volume when things aren’t going well.
Need more revenue? Drop rate. Push promotions. Open the floodgates on every channel and hope it fills in.
It works—sometimes. Other times, it just creates more problems. Attracting the wrong type of guests. Increasing costs from labor and guest supplies, and typically reducing profits.
When presented with a similar challenge for a boutique hotel TCRM revenue manages in San Francisco, we took a different, almost opposite, approach.
The Situation Most Hotels Recognize
Going into the year, the property had a familiar set of challenges:
- Heavy reliance on OTAs
- Discounting had become the norm, not the exception
- International promotions were driving volume, but not much else
- The direct channel existed, but it wasn’t doing as much heavy lifting as we wanted
None of this is unusual. In fact, it’s how a lot of hotels end up operating over time—small decisions stacking up until pricing power quietly disappears.
Step One: Fix the Pricing (Before Anything Else)
The biggest shift here wasn’t a new channel or a new campaign. It was pricing discipline.
Discounting wasn’t eliminated, but it was no longer the starting point. Rates were reset to reflect the product’s value, and, more importantly, they remained consistent.
That repositioned the hotel. Not overnight, but enough to move it away from the “deal-driven” category and back toward something closer to “worth paying for.”
And that matters, because everything else—marketing, distribution, conversion—works better when the price makes sense.
Then: Make Direct Actually Compete
A lot of hotels say they want more direct bookings, but don’t really give the channel what it needs to compete. Here, that changed.
TCRM activated the hotel’s official site on Google Hotel Ads and introduced a straightforward “Book Direct and Save” offer. Nothing overly complex—just a clear reason to book direct, paired with better visibility at the moment of search.
Not surprisingly, it worked.
Direct bookings increased by 50%, and the mix started to shift in a meaningful way.
Visibility Was Treated Like It Actually Matters
One of the more important shifts here was how TCRM approached metasearch. We recognized its importance in the conversion process.
TCRM turned to its preferred metasearch partner, improved visibility, and focused on showing up in the right places with the right pricing. Not just to generate clicks, but to actually convert searchers to bookers. That distinction matters.
Because visibility without pricing discipline just amplifies bad strategy. But when both are aligned, it becomes a real growth lever.
Expanding Distribution—Without Repeating Old Mistakes
At the same time, TCRM saw an opportunity to capture more international demand through a consolidated distribution platform.
On its own, that’s not groundbreaking. Hotels do this all the time. The difference here is that it was done after pricing was fixed.
So instead of new channels dragging rates down by publishing net OTA rates, they actually contributed to stronger overall performance by selling the right rates. And with clean integration into the PMS, it didn’t create operational issues behind the scenes.
Why This Worked
There’s nothing overly complicated about any individual tactic here. What made it work was the sequence.
- Pricing was addressed first
- Then visibility improved
- Then, demand and markets were expanded
Not the other way around. Discounting wasn’t used to create demand—it was used selectively, once the foundation was already in place.
And performance wasn’t judged by how many rooms were sold, but by how much those rooms were worth.
The Outcome
Once everything lined up, the results soon followed:
- Revenue up 33.6%
- ADR up 25.6%
- NOI up 52%
- RGI up 13.7%
Just as important, the hotel reduced its OTA dependency and built a healthier channel mix going forward.
The Part That’s Easy to Miss
The takeaway here isn’t that metasearch works, or that direct bookings matter, or that distribution should be expanded. Everyone already knows those things. The difference is in how it’s executed.
This wasn’t about doing more. It was about doing things in the right order—and being disciplined enough to stick with the strategy.
Final Thought
Success didn’t come from selling more rooms. It came from selling the right rooms, at the right price, through the right channels.
That’s easy to say. It’s much harder to actually do.
About TCRM
TCRM works with hotel owners and operators to bring clarity and discipline to revenue strategy—aligning pricing, distribution, and demand generation in a way that drives measurable results. Our approach is hands-on, practical, and rooted in real commercial strategy, not theory.
If your property is relying on discounting, over-indexing on OTAs, or struggling to convert demand through your direct channels, it may be time to take a closer look at your strategy.
Let’s have a conversation: [email protected]