CASE STUDY
Overview
Gulf Hills is a historic, revitalized boutique hotel on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. This 66-room hotel sought to increase direct bookings, occupancy, and customer retention.
In just a few months of working together they saw 55% YoY increase in room revenue and a 147% improvement in conversion rates for direct bookings.
By optimizing their direct booking strategy, improving brand positioning, and leveraging full-funnel campaigns, we helped reduce OTA reliance, increase off-peak occupancy by 31%, and achieve a 7-11x ROAS across digital channels.
Challenges
Direct booking conversion rate < 1% despite strong website traffic
High dependency on OTAs cutting into profit margins
Low off-peak occupancy and weak guest retention efforts
Unclear ideal customer profile making it difficult to tailor marketing efforts effectively
Lack of clear data and tracking
Strategy Overview
Channel Mix
Website Optimization ● Marketing Strategy ● Marketing Analytics ● Email Marketing ● Social Media ● Paid Media ● Metasearch
Brand Repositioning: Refined the hotel’s value proposition and used qualitative and quantitative data to identify highest-value guest segments.
Direct Booking Strategy: Optimized the website for clearer calls to action, exclusive perks, and improved tracking to monitor conversion rates.
Full-Funnel Campaigns: Leveraged Meta & Google Ads, metasearch, influencer partnerships, UGC, and email marketing to drive awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Improved Tracking & Analytics: Improving the website’s tracking allowed us to gain visibility into channel performance and build out performance dashboards.
Guest Retention Strategy: To increase customer lifetime value, we focused on re-engaging past guests by targeting visitors who had stayed with the hotel previously through emails and retargeting ads.
Brand Social & Content Playbook
Results
55%
increase in room revenue YoY
147%
growth in direct booking conversion rate
31%
increase in YoY occupancy rate
76%
through direct channels, reducing OTA reliance
7-11x
ROAS
From the very start, Jaimie took a comprehensive, high-level approach to understanding our business and identifying the key areas where we could improve. She didn’t just stop at pinpointing our biggest needs — she drilled down into the specifics, creating detailed, tailored strategies that have had a direct impact on our growth.
What truly sets Jaimie apart is her ability to combine big-picture thinking with hands-on execution. Jaimie not only provided us with clear insights but also helped us map out exactly how to achieve our goals, step by step. Her strategic vision and commitment to our success have been invaluable.
— Roxy Condrey, Co-Founder, Rain Travel