Cyber season is one of the highest intent booking periods of the year. GCommerce clients who ran Cyber campaigns in 2025 averaged a 115% increase in revenue year over year.
But more shoppers mean more competition, higher ad costs, and a noisier landscape, so strategy is what separates the hotels capturing that demand from those paying more to reach less of it.
Join the GCommerce marketing team for a look at what worked in 2025 and a proven playbook for 2026.
You'll learn:
Cyber creatives that drove the strongest results for 2025
Campaign strategies that build on your property’s existing data instead of starting over
How to use your website, email, and paid channels together to drive more revenue
Landing page and AI search tactics that increase your property’s visibility year-round
A sample 2026 timeline, from teaser ads through the final push
If you've started dipping into video advertising for your property, you've probably run into two terms that sound like they mean the same thing but don't: programmatic in-stream video and TrueView YouTube ads. Both put your hotel in front of travelers while they're watching video content. Both can build awareness during your slower need periods or drive urgency ahead of a big local event. But they work very differently under the hood, and picking the wrong one for your overall goal can mean wasted budget.
So let's break down what each one actually is, where it shines, and how to think about which fits your hotel right now.
What is in-stream programmatic video advertising?
Programmatic display advertising means your ad is bought and placed automatically, in real time, across a wide network of publishers, apps, and streaming platforms, not just one site. Instead of negotiating a placement with a single travel blog or news outlet, you're bidding into an auction that can put your ad in front of the right traveler wherever they happen to be: a local news site, a weather app, a Connected TV (CTV) streaming service, even a niche travel forum.
Within the programmatic family, multiple ad types exist, ranging from your typical display banner ad to native styles and in-stream video content. Unlike YouTube ads, you don’t need to maintain an active YouTube channel. You just need a polished video to upload.
This is typically bought on a CPM basis (cost per thousand impressions), meaning you pay for exposure rather than for a specific action like a completed view, making it great for awareness goals.
Where in-stream programmatic video ads work well for hotels:
You want to be everywhere your guest is, not just on YouTube. If your ideal guest is bingeing a streaming series on their smart TV the same week they're planning a getaway, programmatic video can reach them there; something YouTube-only advertising can't touch.
You're coordinating a bigger campaign. Programmatic platforms let you set frequency caps across channels, so you're not showing the same guest your ad ten times on display and five more times on CTV in one week. That kind of centralized control matters if you're running display, video, and CTV together for a seasonal push.
You have access to premium inventory. Programmatic buying can unlock private marketplace deals with higher-quality publishers, which often means better ad environments than open-web placements.
Where it gets tricky:
Requires higher monetary investment. Programmatic buying tends to require more budget due to larger reach and higher platform fees for rich media types.
You're paying for impressions, not engagement. A view doesn't guarantee anyone actually watched your video or cared about your message.
What are TrueView YouTube ads?
TrueView is Google's skippable video ad format, running primarily on YouTube itself and on Google Video Partners (other sites and apps that carry YouTube-style video ads). The defining feature: it's bought on a CPV basis (cost per view). This means you only pay when someone watches 30 seconds of your ad, watches the whole thing if it's shorter, or clicks your call to action. If they skip within the first five seconds, it costs you nothing.
Where TrueView Youtube ads work well for hotels:
You want a lower-risk way to test video. Because you're not charged for skipped views, TrueView is a more forgiving place to experiment with video creative before committing larger budgets elsewhere.
You want to meet travelers already in a "watching and researching" mindset. YouTube is where a lot of trip planning happens — destination videos, hotel walkthroughs, "things to do in [city]" content. Your ad showing up next to that kind of content reaches genuinely high-intent viewers.
Your goal is more aligned with conversions. Because YouTube viewers are already more engaged, it’s easier to encourage them further down the funnel and across the finish line with a direct booking.
Where it gets tricky:
It's a smaller pond. TrueView reach is largely limited to YouTube and Google's partner network. If your guest spends most of their screen time on CTV apps or non-Google sites, you won't reach them here.
Frequency control is harder to centralize. If you're running TrueView alongside other video efforts, it's tougher to coordinate exactly how often the same person sees your brand across all of them.
You need a YouTube channel. TrueView ads run through YouTube, so if your hotel doesn't have a channel set up yet, that's a small but real hurdle to clear before you can launch.
TrueView or in-stream video ads: which should your hotel be using?
Here's the honest answer: it depends on your objective, your budget, and where your guests actually spend their time.
Start with your objective. If your goal is broad brand awareness or driving traffic — getting your property in front of as many potential guests as possible across the widest range of placements — in-stream programmatic video has the edge. Its reach is larger, and its targeting capabilities let you get more specific about who sees your ad and where. This also tends to be the better fit if you're working with a larger budget, since programmatic buying rewards scale.
If budget is tighter and you already have a YouTube channel for your property, TrueView is worth a close look. Because you only pay for viewers who watch 30 seconds or more (or the whole ad, if it's shorter), you're never paying for someone who skips before your message lands, making it a more efficient way to stretch a limited budget and reach users already in the trip-planning phase.
Objective is brand awareness or traffic, budget is larger → in-stream programmatic video
Budget is limited, YouTube channel exists, and goal is engaging travelers further along in their decision → TrueView
You have room in your budget and want both broad reach and high-intent engagement → run both, and let each one do what it does best
Some hotels use both. TrueView to capture engaged, high-intent researchers on YouTube, and programmatic video to extend broader awareness across CTV and the open web. The right mix comes down to your need periods, your market, and what you're actually trying to move: awareness, direct bookings, or both.
Not sure which approach fits your property's upcoming season? That's exactly the kind of question worth talking through with the marketing experts at GCommerce before you commit budget either way.
Frequently asked questions about TrueView YouTube ads?
What is the main difference between in-stream programmatic video and TrueView YouTube ads?
In-stream programmatic video is bought across a wide network of sites, apps, and CTV platforms on a cost-per-impression basis, while TrueView ads run specifically on YouTube and Google Video Partners on a cost-per-view basis, meaning you only pay when someone watches 30 seconds or more.
Is TrueView cheaper than programmatic video advertising?
TrueView can be more budget-efficient because you’re not charged when a viewer skips your ad early. Programmatic video is typically better suited to hotels with larger budgets, since it rewards scale and broader reach across more placements.
Do I need a YouTube channel to run TrueView ads?
Yes. TrueView ads run through YouTube, so your hotel needs an active YouTube channel before you can launch a campaign.
Which is better for driving direct bookings, TrueView or programmatic video?
TrueView tends to perform better for mid- to bottom-of-funnel goals like driving bookings, since YouTube viewers are generally more engaged and further along in their research. Programmatic video is better suited to top-of-funnel brand awareness and traffic goals.
Can a hotel use both TrueView and programmatic video ads at the same time?
Yes. Many hotels combine both. TrueView to reach high-intent researchers on YouTube, and programmatic video to extend broader awareness across CTV and the open web as budget allows.
What your hotel’s cookie banner settings could cost you
A decade ago, the most common legal threat presented to hotels and resorts based on their website was ADA compliance; the new target is cookie compliance, and the absence of a consent management platform on your website, or how it’s configured, could cost your hotel.
We’re here to break down what a consent management platform is, what it controls, and how your approach to settings could impact your property. We’ve seen how strict, explicit opt-in consent settings can impact a client (and we’ll even show you the numbers). You’ll walk away armed with the information to make the best decision for your property - making sure to consult your legal counsel to ensure the best path forward for compliance and marketing impact.
What is a CMP vs a cookie banner?
A consent management platform, or CMP, is the software running behind the scenes on your property's website. It detects where a visitor is browsing from, applies the right consent rule for that geographic region, and controls which cookies and tracking scripts are allowed to fire based on the visitor's choice.
The cookie banner is the part of the CMP that visitors actually see: the pop-up or bar that appears on first visit, asking them to accept, decline, or customize cookies. Its wording, button options, and design are configurable, but the choices it collects are enforced by the CMP underneath.
In short, the CMP is the engine, and the banner is the dashboard visitors use to set their own preferences. The CMP and cookie banner work together to direct how any cookies/tracking scripts are allowed to function on the website.
The most common CMPs our hotels and resorts work with are CookieYes and OneTrust.
What are cookies, when it comes to your hotel’s website tracking?
A cookie is a small text file a website stores in a visitor's browser to remember information between page views or visits.
For a hotel or resort, cookies do the quiet work behind a booking journey that allow us to understand how the user behaves on the site, retarget ads to them on our ad channels and more. Cookies are what let us:
Keep a cart or reservation in progress as a guest moves through the booking engine
Remember language, currency, or a saved search (dates, room type, rate plan)
Recognize a returning visitor and credit that return to the right marketing channel
Serve a retargeting ad to that user across marketing campaigns on channels like Facebook and Google Ads
Measure whether a paid search click, hotel metasearch listing, or email actually led to a booking, even when the booking happens days later on a different visit
Without cookies, each of those visits looks like a brand-new, disconnected stranger, which is exactly what happens when a visitor declines them. Fewer cookies allowed means fewer visits a property can stitch together, which shows up directly in retargeting reach and attribution.
3. The main types of cookies on a hotel site
There’s a variety of cookie types that are aimed at different functions. Here is a breakdown of the different types and their purpose for your hotel:
Tailors what a visitor sees based on past behavior or profile
Consent required in most jurisdictions; sometimes grouped with marketing depending on the CMP
4. The difference between explicit opt-in vs. opt-out consent approaches
Every consent banner is built on a couple of the most common approaches, and the settings approach determines what happens the moment a visitor lands on the site, before they've clicked anything at all. Your consent management platform controls if and when your hotel’s marketing tags fire on your website.
Explicit opt-in consent setting
Under an opt-in model, non-essential cookies stay off by default. Nothing beyond strictly necessary cookies fires until the visitor actively agrees, usually by clicking "accept" or selecting specific categories. If the visitor closes the banner, ignores it, or never responds, the default state is no tracking. This is the stricter of the two models, and it puts the burden of action on the visitor rather than the site. This has the most dramatic impact on your hotel’s marketing, since it requires users to take action by clicking “opt-in” before our marketing cookies will fire and track the user.
Opt-out consent setting
Under an opt-out model, cookies, including your advertising and marketing analytics cookies, fire by default the moment the page loads. The visitor is given a way to decline or limit tracking, but if they take no action, the default state is tracking on. This model preserves more data collection out of the gate, since it doesn't depend on the visitor taking any action. This is the common approach for visitors in the US geographic region.
5. How consent laws differ by visitor location
Consent requirements aren't consistent worldwide (or even across states in the US, for that matter), and a hotel with demand across the country and internationally can't assume the same rules apply to every visitor to your hotel’s website. Only using one of the above approaches means you’re putting your property at risk with either costly privacy law issues or costly impact to your marketing.
EU/UK (GDPR, PECR)
The EU's GDPR and the UK's PECR require explicit opt-in consent for non-essential cookies. Advertising, analytics, and personalization cookies must stay off until the visitor actively agrees, and consent has to be granular; a visitor can accept analytics cookies while declining advertising cookies, rather than facing a single all-or-nothing choice. This is the strictest of the major frameworks, and the one most consent banners are built around by default. Visitors must actively click “opt in” on your hotel website’s cookie banner in order for your marketing tags to function and track the visitor’s actions across your site, including up to a booking.
United States
There's no single federal cookie law in the US. Instead, a growing list of states have passed their own versions of these laws, including California's CCPA/CPRA, Colorado's CPA, Virginia's VCDPA, and others. US cookie laws generally follow an explicit opt-out model. Cookies can fire by default, but visitors must be given a clear way to opt out, often through a "do not sell or share my personal information" link or a similar mechanism. Requirements vary somewhat by state, but the underlying model across nearly all of them is opt-out rather than opt-in. You can probably guess: this means more visitors’ actions can be tracked (and remarketed to) since there is no action needed to allow marketing tags to function and track. The visitor must take action by clicking “opt-out” to disable the cookie tracking.
What this means for your hotel
A single global cookie banner setting approach is not advised - it will either be too strict or not strict enough. A banner built to opt-in standards will over-comply for US visitors and unnecessarily suppress tracking that US law would allow; a banner built to opt-out standards will under-comply for EU and UK and create risky regulatory exposure. This is why most CMPs geolocate each visitor and switch the banner's behavior by region to show an opt-in experience to EU/UK traffic and an opt-out experience with a "do not sell/share" link to US traffic.
6. The risk and impact of each consent management approach
Choosing a consent model isn't just a legal decision; it's a trade-off with real business consequences on both sides, and it’s important to decide what’s best for your hotel by factoring in both sides.
Opt-in: strongest compliance posture, real revenue cost
An opt-in model gives a property the strongest compliance posture available. It's the safest choice in any jurisdiction, since it never sets a non-essential cookie without explicit agreement. But that same strictness has a direct cost: fewer visitors actively agree than would otherwise be tracked passively, which shrinks the addressable retargeting audience and leaves gaps in attribution. Bookings that happen days after an initial visit become harder to trace back to the marketing that drove them, even when the marketing worked.
An opt-out model preserves far more tracking and, with it, more retargeting reach and cleaner attribution; cookies fire by default, so nothing depends on the visitor taking action. The cost shows up on the legal side instead. Applied in a jurisdiction that requires opt-in consent, this approach creates real regulatory exposure: fines, enforcement actions, and reputational risk if a regulator or a visitor challenges it.
How to understand the impact of each consent approach: Model it instead of guessing
The legal risk is well documented; regulators publish fine schedules and enforcement actions. To understand the revenue risk, we recommend using a model, leaning on the same paid media data you’re already tracking:
Paid media revenue × retargeting share × consent-driven audience loss = revenue at risk
Look at how much revenue paid media drives, how much of that depends on retargeting specifically, and how much of the retargeting audience a given consent setting causes a property to lose. Multiplying those together turns "opt-in feels safer" or "opt-out protects revenue" into an actual dollar figure a property can weigh against its compliance posture. Below we showcase a real-life case study of a property that decided to move forward with explicit opt-in in a geographic region that doesn’t require it.
Hotel marketing case study:
What happens when a hotel moves to an explicit opt-in consent setting
The consent setting approach your property chooses should be a business decision made alongside your legal counsel to ensure compliance. This case study showcases what happens when a US-based property tightens consent settings to strict opt-in, without a legal requirement to do so.
Hotel marketing performance impact YOY after moving from opt-out setting to explicit opt-in setting for US visitors:
Website revenue down 81%
Bookings down 73%
Conversion rate down 89%
Users roughly flat, down 26%
If your property is considering tightening consent beyond the legal minimum, you should expect a visible hit to reported performance. We recommend testing the impact via our calculator tool below so you can drop in your own revenue and paid media numbers to understand potential impact.
What would opt-in cost you?
Enter your property's monthly revenue to see the retargeting revenue at risk under an explicit opt-in consent setting versus opt-out. Try our consent risk calculator below.
How the hotel marketing consent settings calculator works:
Enter your property's approximate monthly revenue. That's the only number you need to get started.
Compare the two cards under "Real revenue at risk." These show the retargeting revenue you'd stand to lose each month under an explicit opt-in setting versus an opt-out setting.
Check the gap below the cards. It translates the difference into a single monthly figure: what going opt-in could cost you that opt-out would otherwise preserve.
Look at "Reporting visibility gap" underneath. This is a separate number: revenue that still comes in, but stops showing up in your dashboards once a visitor declines tracking. It's why a consent change can look like a much bigger revenue drop in your reports than it actually is.
Open "Adjust the assumptions behind this estimate" if you want to use your own numbers instead of the defaults, paid media's share of revenue, retargeting share, and how much audience each setting typically loses to a consent decline.
The two sections aren't meant to be added together. The first is revenue that's genuinely at risk. The second is revenue that's still happening but harder to see, worth knowing about before assuming a dashboard dip means the same thing as a real one.
What to do next?
Every hotel website should have a CMP, and the approach you decide upon should factor in your legal council as well as the impact to marketing and revenue. Need more guidance on the impact of your marketing based on your CMP settings and approach? Reach out to our team for more information.
FAQs about Consent Management Platforms for hotels and resorts
Does every hotel website need a consent management platform?
If your property’s website uses any non-essential cookies, including analytics, retargeting pixels, personalization tools, and draws visitors from a location that regulates cookie consent (which, given how many properties draw international or multi-state demand, is nearly every hotel), then yes. Without a CMP, there’s no mechanism to detect visitor location, apply the right consent rule, or block cookies from firing before consent is given, which leaves your property exposed to compliance risk.
Do I have to choose between explicit opt-in and opt-out for my whole website?
No, and you most likely shouldn’t. A single global setting either over-complies for US visitors (suppressing tracking the law would otherwise allow) or under-complies for EU/UK visitors (creating real regulatory exposure). Most CMPs, including CookieYes and OneTrust, can geolocate each visitor and switch the banner’s behavior by region automatically, so the same website can show an opt-in experience to EU/UK traffic and an opt-out experience to US traffic.
If I switch to explicit opt-in, will I lose all my retargeting data?
Not all of it, but expect a real reduction. Under opt-in, only visitors who actively agree get tracked (click the opt-in button on the cookie banner), so the addressable retargeting audience shrinks, and some bookings that happen days after an initial visit become harder to attribute to the marketing that drove them.
Does a stricter, more compliant consent setting protect my property from all legal risk?
It reduces risk, but a CMP and a well-configured banner aren’t a substitute for legal guidance. Consent requirements vary by state and country, continue to evolve, and how they apply to a specific property’s data practices is a legal question. The settings covered here are a marketing and revenue framework for weighing the trade-off, and the decision should be made alongside your legal counsel.
How do I know if my current consent setting is right for my property?
Start by checking whether your CMP is applying different rules by visitor region rather than one static banner.
[Ebook] 13 automated email types your hotel should be using
Hotels have long held rate and discounted at the last minute, but Flip.to’s Spacetime data shows guests plan stays for months before they book. Ed St. Onge, President of Flip.to, recommends a modest discount (around 8%) 90 to 120 days out, then raising rates as arrival nears. The result is premium ADRs on the earliest and latest bookings, direct demand captured before the OTAs take over, and more time for revenue and marketing teams to act on real demand signals.
What the full interview here to discover if earlier discounts could help extend your hotel's booking window.
GCommerce + Flip.To
Whitney Ryan, Partnerships Manager at Metadesk, recently sat down with Ed St. Onge, President of Flip.to, to unpack a hot take on hotel pricing that runs against almost everything revenue managers were taught: discount early, not late.
Meet Ed St. Onge and Flip.to
Whitney: Tell us a bit about yourself and Flip.to.
Ed: I've been building tech for this industry my entire adult life. In the early 2000s, I built the industry's first channel manager, EasyYield, which was later acquired by TravelClick. After that, I wanted to keep solving problems for hotels, this time on the marketing side. Martech was overdue for an upgrade, and that's where Flip.to came from.
For the 15 years we've been around, we've been best known for building complex, personalized journeys that drop into different parts of a hotel's marketing to make it more efficient. Our newest product, Spacetime, is our answer to Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics, built specifically for the hotel industry. It's also the data behind a lot of what we'll talk about today.
Rethinking the hotel booking window
Whitney: Conventional wisdom says hotels should hold their rates and only discount at the last minute to fill empty rooms. Why are you telling hoteliers to do the opposite?
Ed: Everything I'm going to say is based on what the data now shows us about consumer behavior. The old advice to wait until the last minute to drop rate was built on our understanding of the booking window. And the booking window does look very last minute for most hotels. But back up and look at the planning window, meaning when people actually start searching for dates, and you'll find that even someone with a 7- or 14-day booking window was on your site, on and off, for months before they booked.
Once we saw that, we noticed something else. For a lot of hotels, shrinking booking windows were a self-fulfilling prophecy. They had trained their travelers that there's no value in booking early. You'll still get early bookers who need to lock in your hotel, and you should get them at a premium. But flexible travelers who are willing to take a risk to save money have learned to wait until the last minute.
The other problem is that most of that last-minute timing falls after the peak of your marketing influence. It actually feeds the OTAs, whose demand naturally builds later than your direct channel demand. That was an aha moment for us, so we asked a few hotels where we were seeing this pattern to run an experiment and try it a different way.
What early hotel discounting looks like in practice
Whitney: Can you walk us through what discounting early actually looks like for a hotel?
Ed: Say you're looking at a specific set of dates with a target BAR, and you know that if you don't hit your occupancy goal, you're willing to discount 20%.
Rather than waiting until the last minute and dropping the full 20%, what we've found really effective is moving 90 to 120 days before arrival and dropping only part of the way, say 8%. Then over the next couple of months, you dial it in. Maybe you drop a little more, maybe you don't. Maybe you get what you need and start raising rates right away.
Every destination has its own seasonality, so 90 to 120 days is an average. But the hotels that made that window their sweet spot for their most aggressive discounting, and then built rate as the dates got closer, saw results. The goal is for your furthest-out and closest-in bookings to carry your most premium ADRs, with a plateau in the middle for guests who will book earlier when they see what feels like a good deal.
Whitney: 8% sounds modest. Does something that small really move the needle?
Ed: It absolutely can. Starting at 8% gives you room to go further if you need to, without holding a deep rate for a long time. What matters is showing movement in price. Consumers are savvy. They're on your site long before they buy, and they're paying attention to how you price yourself.
They also have an easier time comparing your prices through Google metasearch, and increasingly they can see how those prices change over time. So when you move at a time the rest of the market isn't moving, they see an opportunity to lock something in. Later, they see your rates rising as the dates approach, and that sticks with them too. You're not just hitting the sweet spot with a modest step. You're training your guests.
There's another problem with deep last-minute discounts: you miss the people who can't decide that fast. If you drop your rate 20% two weeks out, how many people can actually act on it? Offer it earlier and more people have time to plan, put in for PTO and make it happen. A modest discount further out reaches a much wider audience. The longer you wait, the smaller the pool of people who can travel on short notice.
A real-world example: A San Francisco Hotel in September
Whitney: You're sharing an example of a San Francisco hotel and how it approached September. What made you pick this one?
Ed: We've worked with this hotel for a while, and they shifted to this strategy a little over a year ago. Their September shows what's possible. It also shows that things don't always go exactly to plan, and can still land where they need to.
In Spacetime, there's an insight that shows how demand built for any stay month and how well that demand converted. For each month leading up, we can see how many users were on the site looking at September stays, how many transactions came from that audience and at what ADR. Here's how September built:
Booking month
What happened with September stays
January
8 transactions at an ADR of almost $700
February
9 transactions at a $417 ADR
March
9 transactions at a $413 ADR
April
Pushed a little harder: 26 transactions at a $421 ADR
May
Dialed back slightly while converting September demand at 4%
June and July
Held that 4% conversion while starting to raise rates
August
Conversion dipped, but far more people were looking: 181 transactions at a $509 ADR
September (in month)
Most bookings were for dates after the holiday, still at a $514 ADR. Conversion dropped to 2%, which was fine because the hotel had already filled up
This is a really good picture of finding that zone. People who want to plan far in advance see an ADR you're very happy to get. Around the midpoint, you experiment with how to unlock and hold a high conversion rate on demand. Then in the months leading up to arrival, you raise rates.
Protecting property rate integrity
Whitney: Some hotels hear the word "discount" and get nervous. Does discounting risk cheapening the brand?
Ed: There are a couple of ways you can hurt your brand. The first is always-on discounts. If I see a 20% discount every time I visit your site, for any dates, that's not a discount. That's your price. Consumers understand that, and it hurts your brand. It also takes away a lever you could use to change behavior.
The second is last-minute discounting, which tells people you need them. Instead of a slow, steady value conversation about why you're a great place to stay, it reads as desperate. It's coupons, and it plants a seed of doubt.
Adjusting price over time is a normal course of business, even for the most premium brands. Consumers know that if they buy at the right time, they'll get a good price, and if they buy at the wrong time, they'll pay what's optimal for the brand. None of that feels cheap. Discounting starts from "we have to achieve this ADR, and anything below it is a discount." Dynamic pricing starts from where the market is and what price best achieves your goals. That's not really discounting at all.
Forecasting with real hotel demand signals
Whitney: Let's talk about planning. How does discounting early help a hotel with forecasting?
Ed: It starts with paying attention to where demand is on your site at any given time. Most hotels don't know what people are searching for on their site today. They have guesses, usually based on booking window. When you have the data, you start seeing signals over time.
One thing we built into Spacetime is the ability to pick any date range of site activity. For this same hotel, I can look at what people searched for over the last month: how much demand there was for stays this month, for October, for November, and how well each converted. You'll see something most people understand in theory but not in numbers. In the last 30 days, this hotel had more than 1,000 people planning trips past March, converting at really high rates and really good ADRs.
So this shouldn't be a patchwork effort where you pick one period to conquer. It should be regular practice. Where is demand today? How are we optimizing to it? What's the natural timing of our travelers? How do we line up both our revenue strategy and our marketing strategy to that?
If you see only 800 people on the site interested in December over the last 30 days, but they converted at 3.8% at a healthy ADR, the conversation should be how to get more of that, and how to get it in September, not November. It's a shift in how marketing and revenue management work together. Your booking window says one thing, but the planning window is where you can really optimize your marketing and your revenue.
Inside Spacetime Analytics for Hotels
Whitney: Is there anything else in Spacetime you want to share?
Ed: One of our goals with Spacetime was something we call democratizing the data. That doesn't just mean giving everyone access, which is easy. It means building insights that work for specific roles inside the hotel, so more of your team actually looks at your analytics.
The first insight I showed is what we call the goals insight. Beyond showing how you got here, it forecasts what the website needs to drive for any stay month for the hotel to hit its budget. That's been especially useful for agencies and marketers, because it's a meaningful KPI tied to the health of the hotel. Instead of focusing on ROAS or site conversion, you focus on real business goals, like "we need $1 million driven by the website for February stays," and you can watch the pacing.
Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics are built on the retail ecommerce model, where users make transactions and transactions are revenue. In travel, a transaction is a reservation for future dates, and you need to understand how you're selling and driving demand to those dates. We've worked hard to build the hotel business model into analytics, and to present it so people without PhDs in data analysis can read it. At a glance, I can see where a property stands against every future month goal, how it's pacing and how it did in previous months. Then I can dig in and figure out what to do about it.
This solves a real problem. When we asked our agency partners, GCommerce included, how we could make things better between them and their hotels, one of the first answers was: we never know the need dates, and we spend so much time on calls asking about them. This insight is our answer. Give everyone visibility into pace and goal.
And this is marketing analytics. It looks very different from most GA4 or Adobe dashboards. These are data narratives that help you get to action.
Where direct bookings and hotel metasearch fit
Whitney: Where do direct bookings and hotel metasearch fit into all of this?
Ed: With metasearch, there's a lot more at play. You have rate parity challenges, and your budget can burn if your rate strategy isn't set correctly. In Spacetime, we've made it obvious when metasearch conversion is moving and when a lot of demand is coming from metasearch. That's generally well-baked demand that should convert highly, so when you see it move, there's a good chance someone is undercutting you. We've built a lot of insights around that, all to improve the direct channel.
Something surprised us when we built the goals insight. Hotels constantly talk about how important it is to grow the direct channel, yet most of the hotels we've shown it to had never assigned a specific performance target to it. How can you focus on moving something without a goal to measure against? How can you make marketing spend decisions without a goal for what that spend needs to do? And that goal can't be ROAS, because you can't pay your staff in ROAS. You have to sell specific dates to cash flow the hotel.
All of this is about giving everyone the data they need to shift strategy and make real progress on direct bookings, including understanding the role metasearch plays. For a lot of hotels, it's a heavy driver of conversion and a key way to push back against the OTAs.
The mindset shiftf or hotel revenue teams
Whitney: This sounds like a mindset shift for hotel revenue teams. How would you describe it?
Ed: It won't be a complete shift for teams using advanced revenue management systems, which are always reading demand signals and adjusting. But it is a shift for teams going off their gut. And if you're relying on your gut, remember that you might not be listening to it every day, because you're busy.
The big shift is to set the foundation early so you have time to make decisions. If you let things play out and wait until the last minute to discount, you're just hoping people see it. Start early and you have levers beyond discounting. You can pair a modest price break with audience generation, promote the timing and promote the rate plan. Instead of letting your market dynamics happen to you, you define them. You might even decide a target matters enough to spend a little more to hit it, knowing you can overachieve it.
So yes, it's a mindset shift for some, but it makes your job easier in the long run and gives you control instead of leaving you to react.
The one thing for hoteliers to remember
Whitney: For hoteliers ready to try this, what's the one thing to remember?
Ed: Get more of your team involved in understanding what's happening with your marketing. That's been the single biggest impact driver we've seen for hotels that have adopted Spacetime. And I don't just mean your agency or your marketing people, or even your revenue managers. Have your GM spend some time asking questions about marketing. The more eyes you have on it, the more likely you'll catch an opportunity while there's still time to act on it.
The takeaway for hoteliers
The biggest lesson from this conversation: early discounting isn't about giving away margin. It's about buying more information and putting your tools to work before you need them.
Want to see how Spacetime can help you put this into practice, or talk through direct booking strategy, digital marketing or metasearch? Connect with the teams at GCommerce and Flip.to.
Frequently asked questions about discounting early for hotels and resorts
What does it mean to discount early instead of late?
Instead of saving your deepest rate cut for the final weeks before arrival, you make a smaller cut 90 to 120 days out and then adjust over the following months. For example, if you’d be willing to drop 20% to hit occupancy, start with about 8% early. You can go further if needed or start raising rates once demand builds.
Will discounting early hurt my hotel’s brand or rate integrity?
Not when it’s done strategically. The real brand risks are always-on discounts, which become your actual price, and last-minute discounts, which signal desperation. Adjusting price over time is normal for premium brands. Early, temporary moves teach guests that booking at the right time is rewarded.
How do I know when guests are planning stays at my hotel?
Look at your planning window, not just your booking window. Website analytics built for hotels, such as Flip.to’s Spacetime, show how many people are searching each future stay month, how well that demand converts, and at what ADR. Reviewing those signals regularly helps revenue and marketing teams agree on when to adjust rates and where to focus spend.
UNBOUND 2026 Takeaways: AI Search Tips for Hotel Marketers
AI search is now roughly 56% the size of worldwide search by monthly query volume, and 73% of B2B buyers use AI during vendor research.
Blogs are the most cited page type in AI answers, at 62% of citations across 14 million searches, and cited content is about 25% more recent than what ranks in traditional Google results.
Backlinks showed little correlation with AI citations. Structure, freshness, and consensus across LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube matter more.
About 40% of AI citations change every month, so AI visibility should be tracked as a trend, not scored to two decimals.
64% of AI email summaries misrepresented the sender’s original message, and only live text gets read.
Companies with 40 or more landing pages generate 12x the leads of those with one to five.
The cost of a production-level video has collapsed. One person built a full commercial in six hours.
What is UNBOUND?
UNBOUND, formerly INBOUND, is HubSpot’s annual marketing and sales conference. GCommerce attends every year.
Here are our top ten takeaways from UNBOUND 2026.
1. Should AI choose your targets or write your copy?
Source: Harrison Rose; Co-Founder and CEO of GoodFit
Short answer: Let AI choose the targets, and keep the message human. The sessions argued that AI’s highest-value work is deciding where to focus, not drafting the email.
Lead qualification has moved from rooms full of human LDRs to classification models, where one strategist oversees many models scoring accounts continuously. The signals went well past basic firmographics and included country, year founded, industry, employee count, hiring activity, tech stack, ad spend, funding, social ad volume, and paid traffic share. A won-versus-lost plot by employee count showed wins clustered tightly in one company-size band while losses scattered everywhere else.
Today humans make the targeting decisions and AI writes the copy. Next, AI decides who we sell to, and humans own what we say.
What to do at your hotel
Pull two years of booking and CRM data and plot won versus lost by feeder market, booking window, channel, and trip purpose to find your own cluster.
Move spend toward the segments that actually fill rooms rather than the ones that generate the most inquiries.
Protect voice and guest storytelling as human work, since that is what will differentiate you once targeting is automated.
2. What actually makes AI answer engines cite your content?
Source: Aja Frost; Head of Growth Marketing at Mercury
Short answer: Structure, specificity, and freshness. A study of more than one million AI responses across 14 million searches found that formatting choices correlate more strongly with citations than domain authority does.
The strongest structural signals were question-based headings, FAQ schema plus visible on-page FAQs, 20 or more external links, a descriptive H1, statistics unique to your business, block quotes, and a TL;DR section. The engines do not behave identically. Google AI Overviews correlated most strongly with these factors, Gemini and AI Mode showed moderate lift, and ChatGPT showed little or even negative correlation, so no single playbook wins everywhere.
The blog is not dead. Blog posts were the most cited page type at 62% of citations. What has changed is length and intent: the average ChatGPT conversation runs about 350 words against roughly five words in a Google search, so content needs to answer specific situations rather than broad terms.
What to do at your hotel
Rewrite page headings as the questions guests actually ask, then answer each one in the first two sentences below the heading.
Add FAQ schema and a visible FAQ block to room, rates, and policy pages, plus a TL;DR at the top of long posts.
Publish statistics only you have, such as average booking window, repeat guest rate, or seasonal occupancy patterns.
3. Does link building still drive AI visibility?
Source: Amanda Kopen; Manager of Emerging Channels At HubSpot
Short answer: No. Backlinks showed little correlation with AI citations, and frequently cited pages often had no link authority at all.
Answer engines are looking for the best snippet to answer a question, not the most authoritative domain, and they look for consensus across sources. LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube were named as the platforms that matter most, and user-generated content carries real weight. Freshness is the other lever: cited content is about 25% more recent than what ranks in Google, and recently updated pages send a strong signal.
What to do at your hotel
Put a visible “last updated” date on every page that carries factual information about the property.
Set a quarterly refresh cadence for rates, amenities, policies, and seasonal guides rather than writing once and walking away.
Treat review responses, Reddit threads about your destination, and YouTube property tours as AI visibility work, not just reputation work.
4. How do you know if your AEO work is working?
Source: Amanda Kopen; Manager of Emerging Channels At HubSpot
Short answer: You measure trends over months. Real measurement needs a stable object, repeatable observability, and a known denominator, and AI search offers none of the three.
The same prompt returns different answers over time because models change, context shifts as the model adapts to the user, and the user’s own phrasing moves. Roughly 40% of citations change every month and about 70% change within six months. That volatility creates two traps worth naming for clients: the false precision fallacy, where a score looks exact because it has decimals, and score chasing, where the number moves without the brand being affected at all.
Your website is still the center of AEO. Everything else orbits it.
What to do at your hotel
Report AI visibility as a direction over a quarter, not a week-over-week number.
Track which questions you appear for, not just how often, so you can see whether you own high-intent queries.
Keep investing in the website itself, since every other AEO tactic depends on what it says.
5. Which AEO experiments actually won?
Source: Amanda Kopen; Manager of Emerging Channels at HubSpot
Short answer: Glossary and FAQ pages, reclaimed 404s, and JavaScript-free pages won. The llms.txt file did not.
HubSpot ran an experimentation lab and published the results. The backdrop is what they called the great decoupling: impressions are climbing while clicks fall, with a 61% decrease in click-through rate, at the same time that 73% of B2B buyers use AI in vendor research. A glossary of CRO, marketing, and sales terms outperformed other HubSpot content by 15%, which they attributed to semantic clarity rather than keyword density. LLMs frequently hallucinate URLs with slightly wrong slugs, so a dynamic 404 page that routes those visitors to relevant content recovers traffic that would otherwise bounce. Pages published without JavaScript improved the accuracy of what AI said about pricing. Meanwhile llms.txt, intended as a roadmap for crawlers, drew zero visits.
What to do at your hotel
Build a glossary or FAQ hub covering the terms guests search, from resort fee and early check-in to shoulder season.
Make the 404 page route lost visitors to your best-answering content instead of a dead end.
Render rates, policies, and availability information as plain HTML so AI reads it accurately.
6. What order should your website messaging follow?
Source: Kate DiLeo; CEO at The Brand Trifecta
Short answer: Differentiators first, tagline last. Messaging converts when it moves a buyer from “What do you mean?” to “You get me!” to “Tell me how it works.”
The Brand Trifecta of tagline, value proposition, and differentiators leads the home page, supported by a positioning statement, with audience pages, offering pages, and supporting content coming after. The conversion moment happens right after the differentiators, which is why storytelling and feature detail belong further down. Before writing anything, do the front-end work: analyze competitors and customers, mine sales and onboarding call transcripts for the words buyers actually use, and build a tone of voice system with a celebrity anchor, at least ten descriptors, and rules for grammar, sentence structure, and cadence.
Keep differentiators to three to five themes rather than a feature list, using a “we do this, so that you get this” structure, and place them just below the fold. Euler cut five differentiators to three and rewrote each opening line as a pain statement. Name your category in the positioning statement using a formula such as “[Brand] is the [category] for [audience] that [outcome] through [distinctive advantage],” and resist cutting the category to save words. Make the value proposition a pain statement plus a call to action, written in second person above the fold. Keep the tagline to five or six words that provoke a question, as Euler did with “Scalable Partner Operations. Predictable Partner Revenue.”
What to do at your hotel
Pull three differentiators from the language guests use in reviews, not from the amenity list.
Build separate trifectas for leisure, groups, and weddings, all written in one voice.
Use AI for drafts and options, then make the final calls yourself.
7. Are your ads landing on pages that match them?
Source: Michelle Lim; Chief Executive Officer at Flint
Short answer: Probably not, and that gap is the cheapest conversion win available. Companies with 40 or more landing pages generate 12x the leads of those with one to five.
Top spenders ship 15 to 19 or more new ad creatives a week, and only about one in twenty wins. Yet nearly all of that traffic lands on a handful of generic pages, which breaks the promise the ad just made.
Pull your five best-performing ads. Build five pages that match them. That is the week.
What to do at your hotel
Build one landing page per offer, package, or audience for paid social and metasearch, not a single catch-all.
Carry the ad’s exact headline and image through to the page so the message matches.
Retire pages tied to expired offers instead of letting them collect traffic.
8. How affordable is high-end video now?
Source: Alejandro Matamala Ortiz; Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer at Runway and Matt Slamowitz; Editor and Director
Short answer: Cheap enough to change the plan. One person built a full production-level commercial in six hours using generative video tools, work that used to carry a six-figure budget.
With the barrier that low, the recommendation was to develop multiple creative directions per brand moment and see what sticks, rather than spending the entire budget perfecting a single concept. That pairs directly with the ad-to-landing-page point above, since more creative only pays off if each direction has a page behind it.
What to do at your hotel
Produce three to five creative directions per campaign instead of one hero video.
Test them against each other in paid social before committing budget to the winner.
Keep real property footage in the mix, since guests can tell the difference.
9. Who do AI email summaries actually serve?
Source: Jay Schewdelson; Founder, president, and CEO at Guru Media Hub/Outcome Media
Short answer: Not you, unless you write for them. Copilot, Gmail, and others now summarize incoming email, and 64% of those summaries misrepresented the sender’s original message.
Only live text is read. If you can highlight it, it counts. Text baked into an image does not, and alt text does not either. With Copilot adoption growing quickly, a larger share of every send is being read through a summary rather than directly.
What to do at your hotel
Put the action, the property or offer, and the deadline in the first 200 live-text characters.
Use bullets, which summarize more reliably than dense paragraphs.
Stop putting the offer inside the hero graphic, which is where most hotel emails hide it.
10. How do you build guests into fans?
Source: David Meerman Scott; Marketing Strategist/Advisor
Short answer: Through generosity and real proof, not polish. Fandom comes from an emotional relationship, and the examples on stage all involved giving something away.
The Grateful Dead let fans record concerts, and that generosity built one of the most durable fandoms in music. The other advice was blunt: eliminate gobbledygook and internal language, with “innovative” named the most overused marketing word of the past year, and use real photographs rather than AI-generated or stock imagery when representing your business. Showcase your most passionate customers and build a group of like-minded people around the brand.
The same session pairs with the internal alignment discussion elsewhere at the conference: map the customer journey as a playground rather than a funnel, since people wander, enter and exit repeatedly, and use your content in ways you did not plan for. Then audit which incentives are quietly pushing your teams to work against each other.
What to do at your hotel
Give away something genuinely useful, such as a local guide built from staff knowledge.
Use real property and staff photography, and retire the stock imagery.
Check where agency, property sales, and front desk goals conflict, especially around direct booking versus OTA volume.
Frequently asked questions about GCommerce + UNBOUND
What is AEO?
Answer engine optimization is the practice of structuring content so that AI answer engines such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity cite it when answering a question. It overlaps with SEO but rewards structure, specificity, and freshness more than domain authority.
Is SEO dead?
No. The underlying work of publishing clear, useful pages still matters, and the website remains the center of AEO. What has changed is that clicks are falling while impressions rise, so being cited matters alongside ranking.
Do backlinks help with AI citations?
The research presented at UNBOUND found little correlation between backlinks and AI citations. Frequently cited pages often had no meaningful link authority.
Why do AI email summaries get things wrong?
Summaries are generated only from live text, and 64% of them misrepresented the original message in the research shared on stage. Content inside images, including alt text, is invisible to the summarizer.
Which platforms matter most for AI visibility?
LinkedIn, Reddit, and YouTube were named as the most important off-site sources, and answer engines favor user-generated content when looking for consensus.
