Hotel Marketing from Villach · for the DACH hospitality market
15 % commission to Booking.com – on every single booking.
Your hotel is fully booked. But 60–70 % of bookings come via OTAs. On every booking 15–18 % goes to Booking, Expedia or HRS. For 100 room nights per month at €120 that’s already €1,800 to €2,160 that doesn’t land with you. The question isn't whether you need online marketing – it's whether you can afford not to.
Does this sound familiar?
Three patterns we see in practically every hotel before we start working.
What is your hotel paying Booking.com this week?
What we have demonstrably delivered for hotels
+150 % bookings in 12 months. With the same ad budget.
A 4-star hotel in the Carinthian lake region, year-round operation, with a motivated in-house team but no online marketing experience. In 12 months: bookings increased by 150 %, completely new guest segments unlocked, the strongest month with ten times the enquiries compared to the previous year. Without raising the ad budget.
Bookings in 12 months
Additional ad budget
Guest segments & source markets unlocked
Enquiries in record month (vs. prior year)
Update. This hotel runs its marketing entirely on its own today – without us. That’s the point: we build systems that work without an agency. Anyone who stays, stays voluntarily – not because they have to.
What most hotel marketing agencies don’t do
Four gaps the industry knows about – and no one closes.
We looked at full-service providers in South Tyrol, Germany and Austria. Four points come up everywhere – and are deliberately avoided, because they cost margin or lock-in.
Nobody measures real bookings
Clicks, enquiries, maybe Google Ads conversions. What lands in the PMS – the actual booking with arrival date – nobody measures.
Our approach: CPB – Cost-per-Booking. What a booking really costs, from click to arrival.
Nobody ties pricing to outcomes
Industry standard is the flat retainer with long lock-in – whether something works or not.
Our approach: System guarantee. If the system isn’t in place after 90 days, the setup fee is refunded. Plus: cancellable daily from day 91.
Nobody honestly says “you can leave”
Websites in agency systems, GA4 in agency accounts, Google Ads under agency MCC. On termination, data and setups are lost.
Our approach: Everything belongs to you. You own your Google Ads account, GA4 property and Tag Manager container. We only ever hold access rights you can revoke at any time.
Nobody respects your brand
Same wellness photos, same hashtags, same templates. Hoteliers feel pressed into agency moulds.
Our approach: Your voice stays your voice. We amplify your hotel – we don’t uniform it. Led by a team that grew up in the hotel business itself.
When the website is the bottleneck
Sometimes the problem isn’t the marketing – it’s the site underneath.
We’re the internist of your marketing. WelleWest is the surgery for your website. You need both – but you don’t want a diagnosis from the surgeon, or an operation from the internist.
Sometimes the problem isn’t the marketing budget, but the website itself – too slow, weak on mobile, no clear direct-booking architecture. Even the best performance system can’t fix that: you activate traffic that fails on a site that doesn’t carry it.
For those cases we have WelleWest as a sister specialist: hotel sites on a dedicated CMS technology, static HTML with sub-one-second load times, optionally Shopify-headless for voucher and spa sales. Own brand, own team, own contract.
If Patrick concludes in the strategy call that the marketing system will only land with a new site, we bring in the WelleWest specialists – as a separate project with a separate contract. You end up with both, but each from the right specialist.
Three tiers, three paths
From setup to ongoing partnership – transparently calculated.
You enter at the level that makes sense. No one is pushed into a tier they don’t need.
Tier 1 · Setup
Hotel Growth System
90 days. Strategy workshop, hotel personas, PMS tracking, Google Hotel Ads, Meta Ads, landing pages, reporting.
- ✓ System guarantee included
- ✓ Everything in your accounts
- ✓ CPB measurement from day 1
3,000 €
per month · 3-month setup phase
Tier 2 · from day 91
Hotel Growth Partner
Ongoing optimisation, seasonal sprints, OTA share reduction.
- ✓ Cancellable daily
- ✓ Seasonal budget steering
- ✓ Monthly performance review
2,490 €
per month · no minimum term
Tier 3 · selected hotels
Hotel Scaling
Brand repositioning, sales strategy, sparring at managing-director level. For hotels that want to grow strategically.
- ✓ MD-level sparring
- ✓ Brand architecture
- ✓ Sales and pricing strategy
5,000 – 8,000 €
per month · on demand
How it works
In 90 days your growth system is in place. Guaranteed.
Week 1–2: Foundation
Strategy workshop (90 min): who is your ideal guest? Which season do we need to fill? What sets you apart from the 20 hotels in the area?
In parallel: set up tracking (measure booking enquiries, not just clicks), analyse competitors, audit existing campaigns.
Week 3–6: Build
Google Ads on direct-booking keywords (not „hotel Carinthia“, where Booking bids €8 per click), Meta Ads for audiences that match your hotel.
Landing pages that lead straight to booking. Remarketing for website visitors who didn't book.
Week 7–12: Optimisation
Seasonal budget steering: more budget in low season, less when you are full anyway. A/B tests on ads.
Testing new source markets (Germany, Netherlands, Italy – depending on potential). The system learns which guests are most profitable.
Guarantee: All items on the system checklist delivered – or full money back. And everything belongs to you.
What measurably stands after 90 days
Five points. All delivered – or money back.
The guarantee covers the system, not booking numbers. No one can honestly guarantee how many direct bookings come in 90 days – that depends on season, price and market. What we guarantee: after 90 days, the machine is in place.
Tracking with real booking measurement
GA4, Google Ads and PMS cleanly connected. CPB is measurable – not just clicks, but actual bookings with arrival date.
Acceptance: at least one test booking with arrival date from the PMS visible in GA4 – jointly verifiable in your account.
Google Hotel Ads & search setup live
Direct-booking keywords instead of Booking battles. Hotel Ads as a channel in your account, not in ours.
Acceptance: campaigns active, budget released, first clicks and impressions visible in your account.
Meta funnel for your ideal guests
Seasonal campaigns that turn travel inspiration into concrete enquiries. Not “pretty pictures” – but a measurable booking pipeline.
Acceptance: funnel with awareness stage, lead capture and booking/enquiry stage is live. At least one campaign active per stage.
Hotel landing pages that book directly
Not “the existing site is enough” – but landing pages with a clear booking CTA, IBE integration and rate-parity strategy.
Acceptance: the finished landing page is delivered to you – including copy, design, CTA logic and IBE integration. Going live is handled by your web team; if that’s delayed, our delivery still meets the deadline.
First optimisation round on real data
Not just set up – already improved once. That’s the difference between “running” and “learning”.
Acceptance: reporting with first real data is in place; at least one data-based optimisation has been implemented (e. g. ad variant, keyword adjustment, budget shift).
We work exclusively in your accounts – GA4, Google Ads, Tag Manager. You see at any time what’s running. Plus a monthly performance review focused on decisions, not on slide design.
Your contact
Patrick grew up in a Carinthian hotel.
Patrick has been around hospitality and gastronomy since childhood. His parents ran a 3-star Superior hotel at Verditz, where he learned essentially every department of the operation first-hand – from service and kitchen to reception and guest care.
Naturally, he completed his training as a hotel professional (Hotelkaufmann) at the Carinthian schools of tourism and then worked at several well-known houses in the region – among them the Warmbaderhof in Villach with its acclaimed gourmet restaurant, the Strandhotel Burgstaller in Feld am See, the Burgstallerhof and the Ertelhof.
On top of that come additional qualifications that show how deeply he’s rooted in hospitality: Alpe-Adria wine sommelier, cheese expert, dietary chef and cocktail waiter. For Patrick, hospitality isn’t an industry he read about – it’s the everyday life he knows: the November call from the accountant just like the fully booked Sunday lunch in August. The seasonal dynamics around Lake Wörthersee, Lake Millstätter, Lake Faaker and Lake Ossiacher are home turf, not theory.
Today he leads the hotel team at Nordsteg: strategy conversations, setup ownership, ongoing partnership – from the very first call.
“Hoteliers often know better than any agency what their house is. My job is to translate that into measurable marketing – not to uniform it.”
30-min strategy call with Patrick →Pitfalls – what most get wrong
6 mistakes we see in hotels again and again
Budget without seasonal logic
Most hotels trim the budget a little in the shoulder season – and think that’s it. Real seasonal logic is more: it’s not just how much you spend, but where and for whom. In early summer, your guests come from different regions than in high summer. Anyone running the same source markets with the same messages year-round leaves the biggest lever on the table. For us seasonal logic means: matching budget level, matching source market, matching message – recalibrated per season.
Who this works for – and who it doesn't
✓ Good fit
- ✓Hotel with 30+ rooms – You want to noticeably increase the direct booking share and reduce OTA dependency.
- ✓At least €2,000/month ad budget – Only at this scale do campaigns deliver solid data and can be steered seasonally.
- ✓Own website with booking engine (IBE) – The technology is in place. We drive qualified traffic to direct booking.
- ✓Willingness to adopt a rate parity strategy – Direct bookers need a reason: best rate, upgrade or welcome gift.
× Not a fit
- ×Holiday apartment with 3 units – The scale isn't enough for a professional budget to pay off.
- ׄWe’re fully booked in high season anyway – that should be enough.“ Being booked in high season is the norm in our target size. But if you have no interest in deliberately filling the off-season and shoulder periods, we’re not the right partner. We build year-round occupancy – not high-season marketing.
- ×Expectation that Google Ads will fill the hotel in 2 weeks – A system takes 90 days to build. Low season isn't a sprint.
- ׄWe don't want online enquiries, only phone“ – Even without a booking system on the website online marketing works. One of our hotel clients has no direct booking option – still we generate measurable direct enquiries via email and contact form. But the willingness to take online enquiries seriously as a channel has to be there.
Deeper into the topic
Hotel-marketing insights from practice
Concrete numbers, honest answers and cases from the day-to-day. With numbers that are measurable.
Practice case · OTA strategy
Cutting OTA share – how a 40-room hotel saves 27,000 euros per year
What Booking.com really costs a leisure hotel and which four levers cut the OTA share by 8 percentage points.
Read article →Tracking · CPB
CPB instead of clicks – what hotel marketing reports hide
Clicks and enquiries are not valid success metrics. Only CPB measured in the PMS shows whether marketing actually delivers bookings.
Read article →Decision guide · Agency choice
Choosing a hotel marketing agency – 6 criteria to avoid lock-in
Lock-in is the standard, not the exception, in the hotel marketing market. Six criteria plus warning signs from the first conversation.
Read article →Market overview · Provider types
Hotel marketing providers compared – 5 types, honestly mapped
Brandnamic, HTechnology, opensmjle & co. – five provider types with decision logic by hotel profile.
Read article →Grant logic · Austria
Hotel marketing grants in Austria – what really pays off
ÖHT, aws, KMU.DIGITAL, KWF, SFG – grants cover setup, not operations. What works, what fails?
Read article →Frequently asked questions
How many direct bookings can I realistically win?
Does this also work for guesthouses and smaller operations?
Do I have to cancel my Booking.com partnership?
How does Nordsteg measure a real booking – not just clicks?
What happens to our accounts and data when the engagement ends?
Which PMS does Nordsteg actually work with?
What sets Nordsteg apart from other hotel marketing agencies?
What is the setup fee for the Hotel Growth System?
Not ready to talk yet?
Understand how we think first – in book form.
"Umsatz ohne Zufall" is the method behind our results. Written by Nicolas Fabjan from 15 years of practice with over 400 companies. Not a theory book – but the concrete plan we apply with every single client.
Every participant of a strategy call receives the book personally signed by post.
Ready for more direct bookings and fewer OTA commissions?
In a free 30-minute call we take a look at your current booking mix and show you where the biggest lever lies.
No obligation. Honest. No sales pressure.
A thank-you for your time: Every participant receives „Umsatz ohne Zufall“ – the book by our managing director Nicolas Fabjan – personally signed, by post. No purchase, no obligation. Even if we don’t end up working together.
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