A Bangkok boutique group doubled direct bookings, halved OTA dependency.
The situation we walked into.
Josh Hotel is a small Thai boutique group with three properties and an enviable design point of view. We rebuilt the direct-booking flagship and full-funnel media to claw back margin OTAs were quietly eating.
How we built it.
Audit
Mapped OTA leakage, channel margins and the direct funnel gap end-to-end.
Flagship site
Rebuilt the website as a direct-booking flagship with editorial storytelling per property.
Full-funnel media
Brand, search and retargeting tuned to high-LTV travellers in Thailand, the UK, AU and GCC.
Loyalty + CRM
Lifecycle journeys for return guests, concierge upsell and direct-only perks.
The deliverables.
- Direct-booking website rebuild
- Property and suite editorial photography
- Suite tour and brand films
- Full-funnel paid media across 4 geographies
- CRM and lifecycle journeys for return guests
- Concierge upsell and direct-only offer system
The numbers.
Outcomes attributed to the work, measured against business goals , not vanity.
Methodology: Figures are measured over the engagement period against a pre-engagement baseline agreed with the client. Revenue and pipeline numbers are attributed via the client's analytics stack (GA4, Shopify, HubSpot or equivalent). All money values shown in USD, converted at the average exchange rate for the period. Brand and founder names are representative where confidentiality was requested.
Josh Hotel had a beautiful portfolio of three Bangkok properties and a balance sheet quietly being eaten alive by OTA commissions. 78% of bookings came through aggregators, ADR was being squeezed, and the direct website behaved like a brochure with a "Book Now" button bolted on.
We started where the money was leaking. A full-funnel audit mapped OTA dependency by property, geography and season, and identified the highest-LTV traveller segments — Thai metros, the UK, Australia and the GCC. The direct.com flagship was rebuilt around editorial storytelling per property: cinematic property films, suite tours, the rooftop ritual, the neighbourhood walk.
Media was layered to match. Brand-side YouTube and Meta built awareness for the right traveller; search and retargeting closed the booking; loyalty journeys for return guests and concierge upsell brought back margin OTAs were stripping out. Direct-only perks were engineered to be worth booking direct for, not discounts in disguise.
In 14 months, direct revenue had doubled, OTA share had dropped from 78% to 41%, average booking value lifted 34%, and the website was converting at 3.1× its previous rate. The properties hadn't changed. The way the brand sold itself had.
“We've halved our OTA dependency. The website now sells the brand the way our properties feel in person.”
