Ever wonder why direct bookings are harder to come by?

According to Max Starkov’s LinkedIn post, you need to be looking at your marketing budget for the answers.

Across industries, companies invest around 7.7% of revenue into marketing, while hospitality typically caps it under 2.5%. Meanwhile, Expedia, for example, spends over half its revenue (54%) just on sales and marketing.

Guess how much their total budget was? $6.9 billion. It doesn’t take a genius to see the link here!If hotels invested closer to 4-6% in their marketing, with the right tools (like CRM, chatbots, guest messaging) we could see a real boost in direct bookings.

Imagine what even a modest bump could do for your bookings and reduce OTA fees, which, by the way, cost us $75 billion per year, according to Max.

If you're ready for more direct revenue, it may be time to rethink how much your budget is fueling your goals.