Hotel Marketing Agency UK.
From people who have actually run hotels.
Has your agency ever stood behind a hotel front desk at 7 am? On the Bar at 2 am? Cleaning rooms at 1 pm.
We have stood in your shoes and understand your needs.
Six pressures squeezing UK hotels in 2026
Every GM we speak to is navigating the same battlefield. Rising costs. A saturated market. Red tape. And OTAs taking a bigger slice every year.
The answer is not to work harder on operations. The answer is to stop haemorrhaging revenue through your most expensive channels and build a marketing engine that works while you sleep.
Rising costs with nowhere to pass them on
Energy, wages, food, linen. Everything is up. But your comp set has not moved their rates either. The only answer is more revenue from lower-cost channels.
OTA commission bleeding your net revenue
Booking.com and Expedia are not your partners. They are your most expensive sales channel. At 15 to 18% commission, a £2m revenue hotel can pay up to £200,000 a year in third-party fees.
A saturated market that punishes average
More hotels, more STRs, more glamping sites, more alternatives. Being good is not enough. Your digital presence needs to work as hard as your operations team.
Red tape and compliance stealing your time
Licensing, fire safety, food hygiene, accessibility, employment law. Every hour you spend on compliance is an hour you are not spending on revenue strategy.
A middle P&L that has been hollowed out
Payroll is fixed. Overheads are what they are. The discretionary middle of your P&L has been compressed year on year. Every supplier you retain needs to show measurable return. We welcome that conversation.
Expensive agencies that promise the world and underdeliver
Big retainers. Junior account managers. Vanity metrics dressed up as results. You have been here before. You deserve an agency that talks P&L, not just page views, and charges rates that make commercial sense for an independent hotel.
We have sat on your side of the table.
Craig Webb spent 32 years in hotel operations. 17 of them as General Manager with Bespoke Hotels, the UK's largest independent hotel group.
When we talk about RevPAR, GOPPAR, channel mix, or OTA dependency, we are not Googling what those mean. We are reading your P&L the same way we read our own.
Hotel types we have operated
- Large corporate conference hotels
- Boutique luxury hotels with spas
- Leisure and destination hotels with fine dining
- Multi-outlet F&B including pubs, bistros, coffee shops
- Casual dining and restaurant operations
- Full service resort and leisure properties
What this means for your marketing
- Copy that sounds right to a hotelier and a guest
- Strategy built around net revenue, not just traffic
- Reporting in metrics a GM actually uses
- Campaigns that reflect how hotels make money
- No junior account exec who has never left the office
- Direct access to Craig on every account
Have you asked your current agency any of these?
We have taken clients directly from the agencies listed below. Here is what those clients told us was missing. Ask your agency these questions at your next review.
Have you ever actually worked in a hotel?
Not visited one. Not marketed one from the outside. Actually worked in one. There is a fundamental difference between an agency that understands hospitality vocabulary and one that understands what it feels like to review your channel report at 8am on a Monday.
Do you understand the difference between heads in beds and profitable heads in beds?
Occupancy without rate is a vanity metric. A direct booking at £120 net beats an OTA booking at £150 gross every single time. Does your agency build their strategy around that reality?
Can you read my channel report and tell me which bookings are actually costing me money?
If your agency cannot walk you through your channel mix and identify which revenue is profitable and which is not, they are managing your marketing without understanding your business model.
Are you optimising my Google Business Profile every single month?
This is the single highest-ROI local SEO activity for a hotel. Most agencies bill for SEO and leave the GBP largely untouched after the initial setup. Ask them to show you the last three months of GBP activity, posts, photos, and review responses.
Are you tracking phone call conversions, not just form fills?
Hotels convert on the phone. A lot. If your agency is only reporting online enquiries, they are missing a significant share of what their work is actually generating. And significantly understating their own ROI.
Do you know what GEO is, and are you doing it for me?
GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation, is how your hotel gets recommended by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity when a guest asks "where should I stay in the Cotswolds?" Most agencies have not started this yet. We have been implementing it for hotel clients since 2024.
Are your prices transparent, fixed, and without hidden extras?
Large specialist hotel agencies charge London day rates. Retainers that start at £2,500 a month before any ad spend. We charge honest agency rates that an independent hotel can sustain, with no hidden setup fees or minimum contract lengths.
Your guests are searching on AI now.
58% of users now use AI tools to research hotels and travel before booking. If ChatGPT does not know your hotel exists, a growing slice of your potential guests never will.
Traditional SEO gets you found on Google. GEO gets you recommended by AI.
These are not the same thing. And right now, most of your competitors are not doing GEO at all.
What GEO means for your hotel in practice
When a guest asks an AI tool a question, it cites the most structured, authoritative, clearly written sources it can find. We build your hotel's content to be that source.
- Structured content that answers the exact questions guests ask AI tools, "best spa hotel in Somerset", "dog-friendly hotels with fine dining", "boutique hotels near Bath"
- Schema markup and semantic HTML that lets AI engines parse and cite your pages accurately
- FAQ content written in natural conversational language, the format AI tools prefer to cite
- E-E-A-T signals, Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, built into every page we produce
- Author credentials and real-world experience cited on your content so AI engines rank it as a trustworthy source
- Regular content updates because AI engines prefer fresh, current information over static pages
- Monthly monitoring of whether your hotel is being cited in AI-generated answers for your target search terms
GEO is where SEO was in 2010.
The hotels that implement it now will own the AI search results for years. The ones that wait will be playing catch-up.
Webb Marketing versus specialist hotel agencies
Here is an honest comparison of what you get with a large specialist hotel agency versus Webb Marketing.
What you need
Large generalist agency
Webb Marketing
Hotel marketing services that move the needle
Every service below is built around one goal: more net revenue for your hotel from lower-cost channels.
Hotel SEO
Rank for the searches your ideal guests make. Local SEO, on-page, technical, and content. Built for long-term compounding growth.
Google Ads for Hotels
Appear above OTA listings on day one. Managed by our Google Verified team. Cost per acquisition tracked against OTA commission every month.
Meta Ads for Hotels
Reach guests on Facebook and Instagram. Retarget website visitors. Build lookalike audiences from your best customers. Run by Harry Webb.
GEO and AI Search
Get your hotel recommended by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. The newest and most underused channel in hotel marketing.
Direct Booking Website
WordPress-built, mobile-first, fast-loading. Designed to convert browsers into direct bookers and ranked to reduce OTA dependency over time.
Email Marketing
Your guest database is your most valuable asset. We write, design, and send campaigns that drive repeat bookings and direct referrals.
Analytics and Reporting
Monthly reports in language a GM actually uses. Revenue per channel, cost per booking, organic growth. Not just traffic and impressions.
Directories, Citations and Backlinks
Listed accurately across Google, Apple Maps, Bing Places, TripAdvisor, and the key hospitality directories. Consistent citations and quality backlinks build the local authority that underpins every other SEO effort.
No pitch deck. No junior account exec. Just a straight conversation about your hotel.
Book a free 30-minute call with Craig. We will look at your current channel mix, identify where you are losing net revenue, and give you an honest view of what is possible.
Book a call with CraigTell Us About Your Hotel Marketing Needs
We will respond in 24 hours.
Questions GMs ask us before they sign.
Straight answers. No waffle.
How can we realistically reduce our OTA commission costs?
The answer is a direct booking channel that genuinely competes with OTAs on visibility. That means a fast, well-designed direct booking website, Google Ads that appear above Booking.com and Expedia in search results, SEO that ranks your site organically, and an email marketing programme that converts past guests into repeat direct bookers. Done consistently over 12 months, most hotels we work with shift 15 to 25% of OTA volume to direct. At a £2m hotel running 40% through OTAs at 20% commission, that is £60,000 to £100,000 reclaimed annually.
What is GEO and why should my hotel care about it now?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation. It is the practice of structuring your hotel's website content so that AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity recommend your property when guests ask natural language questions. Traditional SEO targets Google rankings. GEO targets AI-generated answers. The reason to act now is competitive advantage. Most hotel websites are not optimised for GEO yet. The hotels that do it first will own those AI citations for years. The ones that wait will face a much harder climb.
How much should we realistically budget for Google Ads?
Most independent hotels see strong returns with a Google Ads budget of £500 to £2,000 per month, depending on location, room count, and competitive landscape. The metric that matters is cost per direct booking versus OTA commission. If your average OTA commission is £28 per booking and your Google Ads cost per booking is £11, the campaign delivers a strong return before factoring in the long-term value of owning that guest relationship directly. We track this figure monthly for every hotel we manage.
How long does hotel SEO actually take to deliver results?
Local SEO and Google Business Profile improvements can show results within 4 to 8 weeks. Organic keyword rankings typically improve measurably within 3 to 6 months. The full compounding benefit of a well-executed hotel SEO strategy builds over 12 to 18 months, at which point organic becomes a consistent, near-zero-cost booking channel. Unlike paid ads, which stop the day you stop paying, SEO compounds over time. Every month of work builds on the last.
What is the difference between hotel SEO and GEO?
Hotel SEO gets your website ranked in Google's traditional search results, the list of links that appears when a guest searches for a hotel. Hotel GEO optimises your content to be cited in AI-generated answers, the conversational responses that ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity produce when a guest asks a question. Both matter. SEO drives traffic from guests who click. GEO drives brand awareness and recommendation from AI tools that are increasingly the first stop in the guest research journey. Webb Marketing delivers both as part of the same integrated strategy.
Do you build hotel websites as well as market them?
Yes. We design and build hotel websites on WordPress, built for direct bookings, mobile performance, and page speed. Every site includes booking engine integration, structured data markup for GEO and local SEO, and a content architecture designed to rank for the search terms your guests actually use. We also offer a Website MOT, a full audit of your existing site, from £199, if you want to understand what is holding your current site back before committing to a full rebuild.
What does a typical Webb Marketing hotel retainer include?
Our hotel retainers are built around what actually moves net revenue. A typical hotel SEO retainer includes monthly on-page optimisation, Google Business Profile management, content publishing, link building, technical SEO monitoring, and a monthly report in plain language. We add GEO implementation, Google Ads management, and Meta Ads management as separate services or combined packages depending on your goals and budget. Everything is fixed pricing with no hidden extras. We can talk through what makes sense for your specific hotel on a free 30-minute call.
See exactly why your hotel isn't winning direct bookings
Add your hotel's website and up to three competitors — we'll show you exactly where you're winning, where you're losing, and the fixes that move revenue.
Running your audit…
Checking your website across six performance areas. Hang tight.
Your Hotel
Want the full detailed report with a personalised action plan?
Craig will review your results and send it within 24 hours.
Sense-check this, edit anything you'd like to personalise, then send from your own email client.
See exactly why your hotel isn't winning direct bookings
Add your hotel's website and up to three competitors — we'll show you exactly where you're winning, where you're losing, and the fixes that move revenue.
Running your audit…
Checking your website across six performance areas. Hang tight.
Your Hotel
Want the full detailed report with a personalised action plan?
We'll review your results and send it within 24 hours.
Here's a copy of the summary for your own reference.
