PRIMARY KPI
Direct-book
Direct vs. OTA share is the headline number on most engagements.
SECTOR 11 — CONSUMER & EXPERIENCE
Hospitality
& TourismExperiential brand, direct-booking systems, and loyalty & pricing for hotels, resorts, DMOs, and experience operators.
HotelsResortsDMOExperiences
11
Practice scope
Hospitality wins or loses on the second visit. We help hotels, resorts, DMOs, and experience operators build experiential brand systems and direct-booking funnels that lift OTA-share back toward direct, design loyalty programs members actually use, and turn pricing into a brand asset rather than a margin compromise.
- Engagement
- 10–16 wks · avg length
- Audience
- Portfolio-grade
- Disciplines
- Strategy · Brand · Build · Growth
- Adjacent industries
- Food & Beverage · Real Estate & Property · Media & Entertainment
01
CH · 01 / 10 — Snapshot
The sector in four numbers and a posture.
Every industry opens with the same four-cell read: regime, engagement length, audience structure, and the operating signal that determines how this sector buys. Hospitality & Tourism is no exception.
AVG LENGTH
10–16 wks
Property-launch sprints; longer for portfolio rebrands.
SCALE
Portfolio-grade
Brand systems span individual to flag to portfolio.
STACK
OPERA / Mews-aware
Booking and loyalty surfaces designed to live alongside operating tooling.
02
CH · 02 / 10 — Forces
Three forces reshaping hospitality & tourism.
We don't open with claims about ourselves. We open with what's actually pressing on the operators we serve — the structural shifts that determine which kinds of brand and demand work compound this cycle and which don't.
FORCE 01
OTA economics are punitive
OTA commissions cap a property's profitability. Direct-booking lift is the largest controllable margin lever for most hotels.
FORCE 02
Experiences over rooms
Travelers buy memories more than mattresses. Properties that articulate the experience clearly outprice the comp set.
FORCE 03
Loyalty is fragmented
Big-flag programs leave room for boutique and independent loyalty plays — but only if member economics work.
03
CH · 03 / 10 — Sub-sectors
Four families under one practice.
Hospitality & Tourism isn't one customer. It's four — and the engagement scope, audience, and creative language we ship varies materially across them. The industry covers all four; most engagements pick one.
01
Hotels & Resorts
Independent and flag, urban and resort. Direct-booking, brand, and loyalty.
02
DMOs & Tourism Boards
Destinations, regions, and CVBs. Visitor brand, group sales, and stakeholder communications.
03
Experiences & Activities
Tours, attractions, food & drink experiences. Direct-channel growth and yield management.
04
Cruise, Charter & Travel
Specialty travel operators, charter, cruise, expedition. High-consideration consumer journeys.
04
CH · 04 / 10 — Buyer-side
Who we actually work with.
Most marketing decks address an "audience". We address a person — usually one of three, with a budget, a quarter to defend, and a specific frustration with the marketing they've been shipped before. These are them.
VP COMMERCIAL
Direct-book lift
Owns ADR, occupancy, and direct-share targets across the portfolio.
“Every dollar OTAs take is a dollar I can't spend on the guest.”
VP MARKETING
Property + portfolio brand
Reconciles individual property identity with portfolio-level architecture.
“Each property thinks it's a brand. Together they're not anything.”
DIRECTOR OF SALES
Group & MICE
Group, corporate, and MICE pipeline; needs collateral that closes.
“RFPs are a copy-paste job. We answer the same five questions every time.”
05
CH · 05 / 10 — Problems
Six problems we solve repeatedly.
Industry-specific, not generic. Each of these has been the headline problem on multiple hospitality & tourism engagements, and the work below is purpose-built for the regime, audience, and review cycle this sector lives inside.
P · 01
OTA dependence & direct-booking
Lift on direct share, on the same demand, in the same calendar.
P · 02
Experiential positioning
Articulating an experience clearly enough to outprice the room comp set.
P · 03
Loyalty & member program brand
Member economics that earn the second visit at a margin that pencils.
P · 04
Group & MICE sales motion
Collateral, microsites, and follow-up sequences that convert RFPs.
P · 05
Pricing & yield narrative
Public-facing pricing that frames value rather than apologizing for rate.
P · 06
Destination / DMO narrative
Visitor and stakeholder communications across multi-year cycles.
06
CH · 06 / 10 — Engagement
Five deliverables we ship in this sector.
An engagement is a stack of these — chosen against your problem, your timeline, and the disciplines we need to bring. Most hospitality & tourism engagements pick three to five and run them in coordinated phases.
BUILD
Direct-booking site rebuild
Property and portfolio sites tuned to convert on the brand surface.
STRATEGY
Property-portfolio brand system
Architecture across single, flag, and portfolio brands.
GROWTH
Loyalty program architecture
Member tiers, benefits, marketing, and the LTV math behind them.
BRAND
Group & MICE collateral
Property packets, microsites, and proposal templates.
BRAND
Destination narrative & campaigns
Multi-channel destination and visitor brand work for DMOs and resorts.
07
CH · 07 / 10 — Blend
Discipline weighting for hospitality & tourism.
Every sector pulls on our five disciplines differently. This is the calibrated weighting — the dosing we default to on a typical engagement, before we adjust to your specific brief.
The weighting reads left-to-right as the share of senior-team focus on a default engagement. Strategy and brand carry most engagements; legal-and-compliance is supporting. No discipline disappears entirely; the ratio is what changes.
08
CH · 08 / 10 — Outcomes
Four outcomes we measure on.
Numbers below are anonymized engagement medians from comparable hospitality & tourism cohorts. Every one of them traces back to a named brief, a measurement window, and a method we'll walk you through in person before you commit to anything.
DIRECT-BOOK SHARE
+11pts
Median direct-vs-OTA share lift on independent properties.
ADR
+8%
Average daily rate lift after experiential positioning rebuild.
LOYALTY USE
2.3×
Member transaction frequency lift after program rebuild.
MICE WIN
+25%
Group-business RFP conversion after collateral system.
09
CH · 09 / 10 — Sector FAQ
Things we get asked every intake.
A short list of the questions hospitality & tourism buyers ask us before signing. If you've been here before, the rest of the process will feel familiar; if you haven't, this is a useful first read.
FAQ · 01
Do you handle individual property launches or just portfolio?
Both — we run from single-property launches through portfolio rebrands. The system scales down as well as up.
FAQ · 02
What about international markets?
We work globally with hospitality clients. Localization and language work is partnered with established translation studios; brand and digital remain in our scope.
FAQ · 03
Can you help with food & beverage programming?
Brand, identity, and consumer-facing F&B work, yes. Concept development, kitchen design, and culinary direction sit with hospitality consultants and chef partners.
FAQ · 04
Do you support photography and film for properties?
Yes — we art-direct, plan shots, and work with location photographers and small video crews. Heavy-production directors and DPs are partnered.
10
CH · 10 / 10 — Adjacents
Other industries worth pulling.
Hospitality & Tourism doesn't sit in isolation. These are the practice groups we most often run alongside it — operators who share buyer audiences, regulatory regimes, or commercial dynamics with the work covered above.
SECTOR 17 · CONSUMER & EXPERIENCE
Food & Beverage
Shelf-to-screen brand, DTC + wholesale architecture, and pricing for CPG, restaurants, and beverage innovators
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 07 · PHYSICAL & INDUSTRIAL
Real Estate & Property
Portfolio brand, development storytelling, and tenant-acquisition funnels for owners, operators, and developers
PULL INDUSTRY →
SECTOR 10 · CONSUMER & EXPERIENCE
Media & Entertainment
IP systems, audience architecture, and licensing / format development for publishers, studios, creators, and platforms
PULL INDUSTRY →
If your team operates in hospitality & tourism,
this is what an intake looks like.
One 45-minute call with a partner, no slides. We use the time to map your problem to the chapters in this industry and tell you — honestly — whether we're the right team for it. The answer is sometimes no, which is part of why our clients send other clients.