Freelance Hotel PPC & SEO
Fill more rooms
direct, not through
the OTAs.
Specialist hotel PPC services and hotel SEO services for luxury properties, with Google Hotel Ads management alongside them. Search strategies that put your rooms in front of discerning travellers at the moment they are ready to book.
I am Owain, a freelance SEO and PPC expert working solely on boosting direct bookings for luxury hotels, smaller boutique hotels or lodgings, apart hotels and Villas. For your piece of mind, you deal directly with me at all stages, not an account team.
Over 10 years in hotel digital marketing services. Digital marketing consultation and management worked on flexibly by Owain, without any complexities or layers from digital agencies.
Hotel clients
01 / Search engine optimisation
Comprehensive hotel SEO services
Visibility in an increasingly crowded digital marketplace. My hotel SEO services make sure your property appears prominently when potential guests search for luxury accommodation, on the terms that carry real booking intent.
01
Keyword research and optimisation
Thorough research into how your guests actually search, then content optimised around those high-value terms so the property ranks where it should.
02
High-quality content creation
Blog posts, articles, landing pages and social content that reads well for guests and performs for search, written by Owain rather than outsourced.
03
On-page and technical SEO
Full audits covering meta tags, site speed, mobile responsiveness and overall experience, so nothing technical holds your rankings back.
04
Link building and authority
Ethical link acquisition from reputable sites, building the credibility that lifts rankings and brings referral traffic with it.
02 / Pay per click
Hotel PPC services,
immediate results
Where hotel SEO services build long-term growth, paid search buys visibility today. Campaigns are built to maximise return and to hold your own brand terms against the OTAs bidding on your name, so the guest who was always going to choose you books direct.
01
Customised campaigns
Built around your goals, whether that is direct bookings, seasonal offers or brand awareness, with results measured against them.
02
Brand defence against the OTAs
Your own name is often the cheapest booking you will ever buy. Brand terms are held with tight ad copy and rate messaging so the click lands on your booking engine, not an intermediary.
03
Precise audience targeting
Demographics, interests, locations and feeder markets matched to your ideal guest profile, so budget goes to people likely to book.
04
Continuous optimisation
Live campaigns are monitored, analysed and adjusted on the data, not left running until the next review meeting.
03 / Metasearch
Google Hotel Ads Management
Google Hotel Ads appear in search results and on Google Maps, showing live availability, pricing and booking options inside Google’s own interface. Managed properly, it is one of the strongest levers you have for direct bookings, and it sits naturally beside the hotel PPC services and hotel SEO services above.
01
Integration with your booking engine
Live availability and pricing feed straight through, so guests can view and book rooms from the search result itself.
02
Competitive bidding strategies
Protecting your brand terms against the OTAs while bidding on the generic, competitive keywords that win incremental direct bookings.
03
Performance tracking and reporting
Impressions, clicks, conversions and revenue, reported clearly and fed back into the next round of refinements. Reporting also shows how much more of your allocation is coming from direct bookings rather than sitting wholly dependent on the OTAs, the commission costs that shift saves, and the effective ROAS of winning those bookings direct at a much cheaper cost per acquisition (CPA).
Why OCP
One expert, on your account
Over 10 years of experience in hotel digital marketing services, including time spent at a specialist niche hospitality digital agency. Partnering with Owain at OCP Digital Marketing means your hotel PPC services and hotel SEO services sit with someone who understands the nuances of the luxury hotel industry, and who answers the phone. All work is carried out on an independent, self-employed and freelance basis.
Flexibility and responsiveness
Digital marketing moves quickly. Campaigns are adjusted as trends and demand shift, and queries get answered promptly rather than queued.
Dedicated management
From first consultation through ongoing management, you work with one person who knows your property, your rates and your objectives.
Testimonials
From the hospitality brands I have worked with
Femke van der MeerHospitality, Distribution and E-CommerceI had the pleasure of working with Owain, who looked after our account for many years. Owain is a seasoned digital marketing professional with extensive experience, particularly in hospitality marketing, but also across a wide range of industries thanks to the strong network and options he has built over the years. His strategic insights and dedication consistently delivered exceptional results for our aparthotel chain.
John SotirakosChief Executive Officer, Porto Zante Villas & SpaOwain is a great partner and I love working with him. I would definitely recommend him for any digital marketing project.
Fran MilsomCo-Founder, Nestor GroupI worked closely with Owain for a good few years and had a great relationship throughout. He helped set up our performance marketing from the ground up and generated great performance for Nestor. He knows what he’s doing and is a good guy to boot!
Amanda NavaDirector of Marketing, TC Restaurant GroupI worked with Owain over the course of a year on paid media and SEO. While being based in the states and Owain in the UK, you’d think communication would be challenging, but he was always accommodating, prompt in response, and a pleasure to work with. His attention to detail and analytical perspective brought great value to our brand and marketing programs.
Adam NicePartner, The Suffolk Cottage CollectionOwain is great to work with and very knowledgeable. Thank you very much for all your help!
Other property types
Not a hotel?
Apart hotel PPC and SEO services
Serviced apartments and apart hotels, with search built around length of stay so the weekly and monthly bookings arrive on your own site.
Private villas, villa collections and agriturismos, including the weddings, retreats and experiences hosted alongside the stay.
Questions
Luxury hotel marketing, answered
How much does it cost to protect my brand from the OTAs?
The goal isn’t to battle the OTAs, but to take the share of direct bookings off them. You shouldn’t rely wholly on, or be dependent upon, OTA bookings; they should sponge up late availability or last minute rooms to fill occupancy.
You need to focus on driving direct bookings at a much cheaper cost to your hotel, and on promoting your hotel to garner subscribers you can market to for repeat business moving forward. If a guest finds you via an OTA, you have to work harder to drive brand affinity and loyalty.
Why does Owain focus on luxury hotels?
Yes, it is more of a niche audience, however Owain has years of experience here, working with 4 and 5 star luxury properties across the world, from £300 per night up to €2,600 per night, as with Porto Zante, an uber luxury estate.
Should my hotel bid on its own brand name?
Yes. OTAs bid on hotel names, so without a brand campaign a guest searching for you by name can be sent to a third party. Brand and generic Google Ads campaigns keep your official site at the top. At Abbey House Hotel they averaged an 11% cost per acquisition, against OTA commissions of 20% and more, and at The Jewel in New York the cost per acquisition came down from around 30% to 15%.
What are Google Hotel Ads and meta search?
Google Hotel Ads show real-time availability and pricing inside Google Search and Maps, with your official site listed alongside the OTAs. Guests can compare rates and book with you directly.
Can you work with our booking engine?
Yes. Working with your booking engine provider, conversion tracking can be set up properly so bookings are attributed to the campaigns that drove them. At The Athenaeum this also meant adding native currency for each country, to make the booking flow more seamless for overseas guests.
Is ad spend separate to the hourly management?
Yes, ad spend is paid separately to the hourly management, but the rate is extremely competitive against hotel marketing agencies, and no commission is charged on bookings from Google Ads (PPC).
Do you work with hotels outside the UK?
Yes. Clients have included hotels in London, Surrey, Cumbria, Greece and New York, alongside villas in Tuscany, with most of the work handled remotely.
How is the work charged?
An hourly rate, from £80 per hour, rather than a percentage of ad spend, so the cost of the management is separate from the size of your budget. An initial audit is free of charge.
Enquire
Tell me about your property
Send a few lines about where you are now and what you want to change, and I will come back to you personally.
Book a callPhone +44 (0) 7411 177327