Beyond OTAs: Marketing Methods to Grow Direct Hotel Bookings [2026]

“Let’s go to Atami for Golden Week this year. Where to stay… I’ll find somewhere on Jalan, I suppose.”
The hotel you stay in on holiday or on a business trip.
How do people narrow down where to stay and get as far as completing a booking?

This article is for general managers and marketers working in the hotel industry.

1. How hotels make money

First, the revenue structure of the hotel industry that this article assumes.

★What an OTA is★
Short for online travel agent: Jalan, Rakuten Travel, Expedia, Booking.com and the like.

As you can see, the hotel industry spends an unusually high share on advertising to secure a booking.

Prices are unified through a channel manager,
the work of uploading room plans to Jalan, an OTA, is outsourced,
and when a booking comes in, a commission is paid to Jalan.

That is the structure.
And because Rakuten Travel and Jalan are overwhelmingly strong in hotel bookings in Japan, many hotels have given up on gathering guests themselves.

Structurally, a commission is charged on performance whenever a booking comes through an OTA.
So a booking that does not go through an OTA, that does not go through Jalan, simply means a powerful 20% lift in operating profit.

However much you experiment, you will never get 100% of bookings through your own site.
But turning just 30% of all bookings into direct bookings lifts your margin, and putting that into staff pay or into refurbishing ageing facilities is, we think, healthier hotel management.

So what process does a guest actually go through to complete a booking?
Consider the guest’s customer journey.

2. The guest’s customer journey

Guests become aware of a hotel, compare options and book along the flow above.
The ways to increase direct bookings fall into the parts below.

This article has explained

①Attacking marketing to win new guests
②Defensive marketing to bring existing customers back

We will cover these two in turn.

3. Attacking marketing to win new customers (Google booking and Instagram)

1.Instagram
Once guests have settled on an area, they search for hotels on Instagram and on OTAs.
On Instagram they search hashtags such as Atami trip or Atami hotel and decide from photos of the exterior, the rooms and the food.

The above is our own hypothesis, taken from an influencer post about Hoshino Resorts.
Adding hashtags and making the post look good encourages users to save the image.
Instagram’s algorithm rewards posts that are saved often, so awareness of Hoshino Resorts around Atami travel rises as a result.

2. Google booking
Once they have settled on a hotel, they google its name to see which route books cheapest.
If your own rate shows at the top of Google booking as the cheapest, you can push them towards a direct booking.

4. Defensive marketing (Google My Business and LINE)

1.Google My Business
Some guests check photos and reviews before booking.
Post attractive photos of the exterior, the rooms and the food so that prospective guests do not slip away and abandon the booking. Putting up a poster in the lobby asking for reviews is also worth doing.

2.LINE
This is introduced to get existing customers coming back more often.
To build up regulars who stay weekly or monthly, and to raise how often they come, set up a LINE official account and stay connected with your guests.
Sending offers such as a 10% off campaign or free unlimited dessert can bring them back.

5. In closing

We hope that explains why direct bookings matter and how to increase them.
Because OTAs are so powerful in the hotel industry, digital marketing has not caught on.
That is lost opportunity, which means any property can get some result simply by setting these things up.

At the same time, most do not have the budget to hire a digital marketing firm like ours.
So for hotel companies, we offer training at 10,000 yen a session.
If you are interested, do let us know.