How to choose a hospitality marketing agency: find out which bookings it can actually change

Two invented owners show how the choice can go either way. Amira runs a fourteen-room inn and pays a booking site commission on stays she would rather win direct. She hires an agency on a twelve-month retainer to run hotel ads and rebuild her booking page, because she wants guest emails she owns. Tom runs a sixty-seat restaurant with two chefs short and no spare hours. He hires nobody, keeps his listing on a delivery app and posts to Instagram himself, because a fixed monthly fee sits badly beside weeks he cannot forecast.

Both choices are sound. Amira buys control of the guest relationship and accepts a fixed cost and slower reach. Tom buys reach with no fixed cost and accepts that the platform holds more of the customer relationship. What each can ask of an agency depends on where the money goes next.

Follow a pound by the route it takes

A pound of marketing budget does not pass through every section below in turn. It takes one of several routes back to you as a guest, and each route has its own cost: the agency's fee on top of whatever you spend, clicks paid to Google, a booking-site commission on each stay, or an app fee on each order. On some routes an agency controls the outcome; on others it can only report accurately, and the report is what you pay for.

The fees and rules below were read from the named pages on 5 October 2026; platforms change their terms, so check your own agreement before relying on any figure.

The agency's fee, whichever route the pound takes

The agency's fee sits on top of everything else. Ask which of three shapes it takes, a flat monthly retainer, a share of ad spend or a payment per booking; a flat fee is the easiest of the three to audit, because it does not move with spend or bookings. If the fee is per booking, ask which bookings count. One that arrives through Booking.com, through Google's free booking links or through a delivery app, or from a guest already in your booking system, may owe nothing to the agency's work.

Our hospitality page says that hospitality is a newer area for us and that we have no published hospitality client yet. If you need someone with a long hotel track record, that is a fair reason to choose another agency.

The contract around the fee

Contract length, notice and exit terms decide what a bad first quarter costs you. Ask for the initial term, the notice period and what happens on the last day, and see the exit clause in the agency's standard contract before the meeting ends. Push for an initial term you chose, rolling monthly cover after it, notice in writing, and no automatic renewal without a reminder. On exit, require in writing that accounts, creative files and guest data return to you within a set number of days, with no fee for the handover.

Hospitality adds one test. Look in your booking system at the gap between the day a guest books and the day they arrive or sit down. Set the first review date beyond that gap, or the agency will be judged on guests its work has not reached yet.

The advertising route: ad accounts, the booking link and the guest list

Part of the budget buys advertising, and ownership is the main question here. Ask who opened each ad account and whose name, card and administrator sit on it, whether the agency adds a margin to media, and who owns the creative files, the photography and the audience lists built from your guests. If any of it sits in the agency's name, you rent it.

For a hotel, three checks are specific. First, Google runs hotel campaigns that compete for ads alongside hotel search results on Search and Maps, and Google's help page says integration partners can also manage those campaigns. So ask who holds the Hotel Center account, and whether your rates feed can move to another provider without a gap.

Second, ask whether your free listing is live before anyone spends on clicks. In March 2021 Google made it free for hotels and travel companies to appear in hotel booking links. A paid campaign should add to that listing, not replace it. Google said in 2021 that any hotel or travel company is eligible to appear in free booking links through its Hotel Center account, so a hotel can get that listing live before paying an agency, and a restaurant with a stable team may do better answering reviews and keeping its own booking page current than hiring an agency.

Third, ask what the campaign pays for. Under the hotel bid strategies on Google's help page, you pay by clicks, not by booking. Google says conversion tracking with the full booking amount is required for Smart Bidding, and advises at least two weeks before evaluating a first Smart Bidding test. So ask to see the tracking on your booking page, and do not read the first week's report as a verdict.

The booking-site route: the commission

Put your Booking.com contract beside last month's statement before any meeting, and note the commission percentage on each. A guest who books through a booking site arrives by a route whose price you do not set. Booking.com says its commission is a set percentage of the total booking amount, charged on each reservation received through its platform, covering the room rate plus any fees you charge. The same page says non-refundable and partially refundable bookings are charged whether or not the guest stayed, unless you choose to waive the cancellation fee. The exact percentage depends on your country, property type and the agreement you signed, so no agency can quote it for you.

Those two percentages are the numbers to put in front of an agency. Booking.com's help page says a higher statement figure may mean you are in a marketing programme such as Preferred Partner or Visibility Booster. Its Preferred Partner page says the status is reserved for 30% of partners in an area. Ask any agency that recommends a programme to set the extra commission beside the extra bookings first.

Parity is a check an agency can miss if you are in, or joining, the Preferred Partner Programme. In the programme's eligibility section, Booking.com says that in wide-parity or narrow-parity countries you must provide competitive prices on its platform, compared with all other websites or with your own. It says this does not apply in no-parity countries, including all of the European Economic Area, and that you can check your country's parity status in your General Delivery Terms. Read yours before the agency prices a direct rate.

A booking-site booking is not a wasted pound, in our assessment: the site may reach a guest you could never have found. The narrower question is what share of this month's bookings came through the platform while your own ads and search were also running, and whether that share is moving. Ask for it net of commission.

The app route: delivery and ordering apps

For restaurants and bars, the comparable route runs through ordering apps. Uber Eats' UK merchant page lists 30% on Uber Delivery (33% for Uber One members), 13% on Self-Delivery, where you use your own delivery staff, and 13% on Pick-up, excluding VAT. The fee follows the route, not the dish. Ask the agency to report orders by route: courier delivery, your own delivery, collection, and your own ordering page if you have one. Where an advert sends a guest to a collection or booking page you run yourself, the app's fee does not arise.

The US page lists Lite, Plus and Premium tiers with marketplace fees of 20%, 25% and 30% after introductory rates, and the Plus and Premium tiers list increased discoverability in the app. If an agency suggests moving up a tier, ask it to set the extra fee against the extra orders, in your figures, for one month.

The price the guest sees, on any route

Start with a worked example. The Competition and Markets Authority's guidance has a resort advertising seven nights for two at £150 a night plus a £25 per person per night resort fee, and says the advert should show £1,400. In the UK, section 230 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 treats leaving the total price out of an invitation to purchase as omitting material information, unless it is already apparent from the context. The section has been in force since 6 April 2025. The same guidance counts a restaurant menu, including a QR-code menu, as an invitation to purchase. It lists mandatory cover or service charges at a restaurant among mandatory charges, along with resort fees at hotels, and says that for many products a price will be realistic, meaningful and attainable if the headline price includes all mandatory charges. Guidance is not law, but it shows how the regulator reads the statute.

In the US, the fees rule issued by the Federal Trade Commission defines its covered goods as live-event tickets and short-term lodging, including a hotel, motel or inn. It took effect on 12 May 2025. A hotel's advertised price must show the total price. A restaurant's charges are outside this federal rule, so US restaurant owners should look to their own state. California's Honest Pricing Law has been in force since 1 July 2024. Its attorney general says it exempts mandatory fees charged by restaurants and bars so long as the fee is clearly and conspicuously displayed wherever prices are shown.

Before any advert runs, ask who checks that a mandatory cover or service charge, or a resort fee, sits inside the price where the rules above require it, and ask to see three past adverts where that check was made.

The question to end every meeting with

Close each meeting with one question: "Which of last month's bookings would have reached us without you, and how would we see it in our booking system?"

Read the reply in three parts. A reply worth trusting names the data it would use: the booking source recorded in your own system, set against the Booking.com and delivery-app statements. It offers a test you can watch, such as your direct share of bookings before and after the work, and says what that test cannot show. A rising direct share is a sign worth investigating, not proof that those guests would otherwise have stayed away, because the season or your prices can move it too. And it admits that some bookings were never its doing. A weak reply quotes an ad platform's own conversion count as proof, or promises an answer once you have signed. Ask for the reply in writing, with the method, and compare it across the shortlist.

If the choice in front of you is one move on one route, such as taking orders off a delivery app or starting hotel ads, that single move is worth a conversation: tell us about your business.