Hotel marketing strategy for small hotels

GuestJourney editorial team, edited by Alon Shkuri

Published 1 November 2026 · Updated 2 November 2026 · 12 min read

Gigi stands on a rainy window ledge next to a blank sign, camera in hand

A hotel marketing strategy for a small hotel with one owner fits on one page: be right on Google, make booking with you easy, answer your reviews, keep past guests close, and let locals show your place. We estimate about two hours a week once the basics stand. The rest, including most paid advertising, can wait, and that part is our opinion.

Two hours, and a list that keeps moving

The breakfast room is laid for tomorrow. Anna sits in the back office of Hotel Kadeloft with a list she has been moving from week to week. An agency rang about ads. A friend says TikTok.

A hotel of twenty rooms has no marketing department. It has Anna, on a Tuesday, after the last check-in, with about two hours a week if nothing breaks. So there is one question on that list worth her time: which two hours?

Hotel Kadeloft and Anna are made up, so the sums in this guide are about something. The two hours are our estimate, not a measurement.

What the two hours are for

Twenty rooms at 60% occupancy is 4,380 room nights a year, about 365 a month. Anna does not have to become famous. She needs enough guests on the right nights, with fewer of them arriving with a commission attached.

She already has a marketing budget, as it happens. At 15% on the 40% of revenue that comes through Booking.com, Kadeloft pays €28,908 a year, which is €16.50 for every night sold there (the sum is here). For Jonas, who found Kadeloft on Booking.com and had never heard of it, that is a fair price. For Laura, who stayed in the spring and wants to come back, it is money Anna did not need to spend.

So every job below is judged by one question: does it help someone who is already looking at you to book with you, or to come back? Jonas stays on Booking.com. These two hours are about Laura.

Here is what that is worth. One percentage point of revenue moving from Booking.com to direct saves Kadeloft €723 in commission a year (1% of €481,800, times 15%). After an assumed 3% for its own booking engine and card fees, about €578 is left. We do not know how many points your two hours will move, so further down you will measure it yourself.

Five jobs, in this order

Five jobs in order. The times are our estimate, not a measurement
Job	Time per week	Read more
1. Google profile: an update, and your details right	20 minutes	What a hotel can post
2. Answer your reviews	20 minutes	How to respond
3. Website: what changed this week	15 minutes	What the first screen needs
4. Past guests: one good email each season	15 minutes, on average	Below
5. Local: a creator, a partner, the tourist board	30 minutes	Below

That adds up to 100 minutes. We call it two hours because something always comes up.

Before the weekly routine there is a one-time job, a day or two by our guess: a Book button on your first screen, a working booking engine, and your own link on Google. Without those, the rest leaks away. Of the 20 small hotel sites we opened, 16 had a readable Book button on the first screen and 14 had one no cookie banner lay across. Two offered a way to call or email there. That is what we saw on those twenty, not a market figure.

A month at Kadeloft

Spread over four weeks it looks like this. Reviews are not on it, because they get their twenty minutes every week, on a fixed day.

Week 1Google profileAnna checks the phone number, the website link and the photos, then posts one update: the terrace is open again. No offer, because hotels can't post those.
Week 2WebsiteShe opens the site on her phone, taps Book and goes all the way to the last step. Then she changes what has changed: a closed week, a new breakfast time.
Week 3Past guestsIn a season month, one email with what's on and a link to the booking page. In other months she tidies the list: new addresses in, people who said no out.
Week 4Neighbours, and the numberOne call: the bike shop, the tourist office or a local creator. Then she writes down one number, the share of room revenue that came direct.

A month of marketing at Hotel Kadeloft, made up.

What each channel can and cannot do

An agency tells you what a channel can do. Here is the other column too. "Our searches" are 12 guest searches we ran on Google on one day in November 2026.

What each channel can and cannot do for a hotel of about twenty rooms. Our judgment
Channel	What it can do	What it cannot do
Google profile	Be there when someone searches for a hotel in your town. A block of hotels appeared in all 12 of our searches.	Carry offers. Buy you a better place: Google says there is no way to request or pay for one.
Your own website	Take the booking without commission.	Find guests by itself. In 11 of our 12 searches, an OTA, Tripadvisor or a comparison site was among the ordinary results. More on that.
Booking.com and other OTAs	Bring people like Jonas, who have never heard of you. The price at Kadeloft: €16.50 a night.	Hand you the guest for next time. Booking.com's terms for the EEA bar unsolicited messages to the guest details it gives you. Check your other OTA contracts.
Reviews	Show the next guest how you deal with a problem. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking.	Be bought. Offering anything in return is strictly prohibited.
Email to past guests	Reach Laura when she is thinking about the spring, for the cost of writing one mail.	Bring anyone new. Reach a guest whose address you never had.
Instagram and Facebook	Show what the place is like to someone already curious.	Show you that it fills rooms. We know of no figure for that at a hotel this size.
Local creators	Put you in front of people nearby, for a night in a quiet week.	Promise bookings. Go without a label: see below.
Google booking links and Hotel Ads	Free booking links show your site with a room rate on Google, and hotel partners pay no fee. Hotel Ads add paid links.	Run without your rates reaching Google. How it works.
Tourist board and neighbours	Send you the odd guest, for little more than a visit and a stack of cards.	Bring volume. In the HOTREC study below, tourism organisations and trade associations come to 0.9% of overnights.

Reviews: ask everyone, then leave it

Ask. In person at check-out it costs nothing, and a QR code on the breakfast table or the bill makes it one step. Google itself suggests you ask customers to visit a link or scan a QR code. Guests have to be signed in to a Google account, so not all of them will get round to it.

The rules are short, and Google's policy for Maps spells them out. You may not offer a discount or anything else in return. You may not selectively solicit positive reviews, so ask everyone, not only the guests you expect to be happy. You may not pressure a guest to write one on the premises, ask for specific content, or tell your staff to collect a certain number.

So Anna says one sentence when she hands over the bill, points at the card, and talks about the weather.

Past guests: one good email each season

Laura wants to come back. If she googles Kadeloft she sees Booking.com next to the hotel's own site, and she may tap whichever comes first. An email in February with a link to the booking page takes her past that fork. A night she books there is €16.50 of commission Anna keeps, less what her own booking engine and card fees cost.

Keep it small: one email a season, with what is on and a link to your booking page. An offer Google won't let you post can go in here, if your OTA contracts leave you that room.

The rules, close to the text, because we are not lawyers. In the Netherlands the ACM says you send advertising by email to people who chose it beforehand, not through a pre-ticked box, and that you can prove that choice for up to five years after sending. The exception: existing customers may get messages about products or services related to earlier purchases. Unsubscribing has to be quick and free, in every message.

In the UK, regulation 22 of PECR has a similar exception: details obtained during a sale, your own similar products and services only, and a simple way to refuse both when you collect the address and in each message. Elsewhere, check the rules in your country. In practice: ask at check-in or when they book, note the answer, and put an unsubscribe link in every mail.

A guest who booked through an OTA is harder. Booking.com's terms for the EEA bar unsolicited messages to the guest details it gives you, other OTAs have their own contracts, and we would not lean on those exceptions for a sale the OTA made. So give them a reason at the desk: a card with your website, and a question whether you may send them the spring mail.

Social media: a small job with one good idea in it

Your own account matters less than you may fear, in our view. The one figure we have: HOTREC's European study asked hotels where their overnights were booked in 2023:

0.6%through social media channels

28.6%by phone or email to the hotel (15.4% and 13.2%)

12.3%in real time on the hotel's own website

HOTREC, European Hotel Distribution Study 2024: weighted values for 2023, without chain data, all hotel sizes. It shows where a booking landed, not what persuaded the guest. A photo that made someone pick up the phone counts as the phone.

So a post is rarely where the booking lands, in that study. What you can see is the price: by our estimate a daily schedule takes hours, and we know of no figure for what it brings at this size. Photos are the useful by-product.

Gigi photographs a croissant on the breakfast table

The one good idea is about other people's accounts. Serge Berezhnoy makes the case for local creators instead of big names, in the GoDirect episode Intent Over Attention:

the best way, in my opinion, the most economically effective way for the hotel is not going to some kind of expensive guys but really find some kind of normal regular creator from your local city, region, you know, sphere.

Serge Berezhnoy, founder of InsightArc, on The Future of Hospitality. GuestJourney sponsors this podcast.

On big influencers he is blunt: "a lot of impressions, but results in direct sales about zero". He talks about inviting a regular creator for a room or a party, or paying about $100 a video, against $5,000 for a big name. He gives no measured results for this, so we treat it as one person's advice. We do think it is worth one try: a room for a night in a quiet week, in return for honest video, costs you little.

One thing to settle first, because a free night comes with rules. UK guidance for content creators says any form of incentive or reward is payment, that the content must be clearly identifiable as an ad, that tagging a brand is not enough, and that everyone involved must take responsibility for the label. In the Netherlands, the advertising code says viewers must be able to see or hear that it is advertising, and that the maker has to say they get something for it, such as a free product. We read a free night the same way, so put it in your message to the creator: the video says it is an ad.

Measure it by what reaches your booking page, not by views. Give the creator a link of their own, and ask at check-in how people found you.

One number a month

Write down one number per month: the share of your room revenue that came direct. Add what you paid in commission, using the commission calculator as a check. That page in a notebook is the whole dashboard.

Your Google profile gives you a few more for free. Its performance page counts calls, website clicks and requests for directions, and shows the search terms people used, if your profile is verified.

Then ask at the desk. A tally on a sheet for one month, how did you find us, tells you which of these jobs reached anyone. Give the whole thing a season: we would not judge it on less. This is what getting more direct bookings looks like in practice, and it is slow.

What to stop doing

In our view, these can come off the list today:

Paid ads on your hotel's name, for now. Start with the free route on Google, and only pay once you can see what a booking brings in.
Influencers with large audiences. See Serge Berezhnoy above. If an agency proposes one, ask for the expected cost per booking, not per view.
A daily social media schedule. Anna tried one in January and stopped in March. We would take a weekly routine you keep over a daily one you drop.
A blog for its own sake. See hotel SEO: for a small hotel the Google profile comes first.
Discounts on your Google profile. Not allowed for hotels.

Crossed out: the agency and TikTok. Still on the list: the bike shop.