Reclaiming the staycation

The Challenge

St Austell were reliant on online-travel-agents (OTAs) to drive room bookings to their pub accommodation in the South West. Whilst this was effective at increasing bookings, it comes at a price: high commission fees and a missed opportunity to build direct relationships with customers.

The Solution

To reduce the dependency on OTAs, we introduced an SEO strategy, along with paid search and paid social advertising to ensure that the venue sites were present as holidaymakers research, plan and book a trip. 

For organic search, rather than targeting generic terms such as ‘hotels in Cornwall’ that are incredibly competitive, we optimised towards localised terms based on the attributes of each venue, such as ‘sea view rooms in St Ives’ and ‘dog-friendly hotels in Padstow’. 

Based on the target audience being retired couples who like to get outdoors, we created new content around things to do in the local area for each venue, to win new featured snippets.  This gave the venues an edge over OTAs as they were much more visible during the search phase of the journey.