Moving Past ROAS As Marketing KPI

For years, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) has been treated as the gold standard for evaluating hotel marketing performance. But as traveler behavior evolves and the planning journey becomes longer and more complex, it’s clear that ROAS no longer tells the full story. A more strategic, full-funnel approach is needed. One that aligns marketing, revenue management, and sales around shared goals and long-term growth.  

The Customer Journey Is Long and ROAS Only Measures the Final Moment 

Travelers spend up to 45 days planning a trip, consuming roughly 277 pages or 303 minutes of content. They move through several stages — inspiration, research, planning and booking — yet most hotel marketing focuses almost exclusively on the booking phase, which represents just one day of the entire journey. 

This imbalance skews performance expectations and pushes marketers toward low-funnel tactics that look efficient but limit long-term growth. 

Each Channel Plays a Different Role 

MetaSearch, in particular, should be viewed as a channel-shift tool, rather than a demand generator. Helpful for shifting bookings from OTAs to direct, but not for creating new reservations. 

Full-Funnel Marketing Matters More Than Ever 

Hotels investing in top, middle, and bottom funnel strategies see 8% to 10% higher brand.com contribution and reduced OTA dependency, even if their ROAS appears lower on paper. Full-funnel marketing also improves: 

Ads shown only at the booking stage have an ad recall rate of just 7%, whereas early-funnel ads have far greater influence on final decisions. 

The Rise of AI in Travel Planning 

A new layer of complexity and opportunity is emerging as travelers increasingly use AI tools like ChatGPT to plan trips. This shift introduces the need for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): optimizing hotel presence and content for AI-powered search and planning experiences. Younger travelers, in particular, rely on LLMs to curate itineraries, compare destinations, and gather recommendations. 

Why Revenue Management and Marketing Must Be Aligned 

Revenue management focuses on the booking window, but marketers must influence the planning window, which spans weeks before a guest is ready to transact. When these teams operate in silos: 

With better alignment, hotels can influence both when guests book and where they book. 

Beyond ROAS: The KPIs That Really Matter 

The industry is moving toward more holistic metrics that reflect long-term performance, including: 

While Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) remains the ideal KPI, it’s still difficult to measure consistently across the industry. Market share and brand.com contribution provide more practical and transparent alternatives for now. 

Reputation and Personalization Still Rule 

Regardless of spend, poor online reviews can destroy conversion during the research phase. Strong reputation management remains one of the highest-leverage marketing investments. 

Similarly, understanding customer personas (families vs. business travelers, leisure vs. group) enables targeted messaging and channel selection that produce stronger results across the entire funnel. 

A Strategic, Integrated Future 

Sustainable hotel marketing success requires a full-funnel, strategically aligned, and data-driven approach. ROAS may offer insight into the efficiency of bottom-funnel tactics, but it cannot guide long-term growth, generate new demand, or build brand equity on its own. 

Hotels that invest across the entire customer journey, embrace new technologies like AI, and align their commercial teams will gain the market share, direct revenue, and competitive advantage needed to thrive in the evolving travel landscape. 

HFTP members can view my webinar on this topic in the HFTP Virtual Education archive.  

Stephanie Sparks Smith, CHDM is CEO and Digital Matriarch at Cogwheel Marketing™️ and partner and consultant at Cayuga Hospitality Consultants. Her agency focuses on helping hotel owners and management companies drive incremental exposure and revenue to their websites and online channels through hotel digital marketing and advertising. The expertise of Cogwheel Marketing is knowing the intricacies of the branded hotel systems and understanding where brand marketing stops and hotel level marketing begins. Cogwheel Analytics™️️, developed by Cogwheel Marketing, is a hotel digital marketing reporting and BI tool that aggregates data from multiple sources to allow companies to identify trends and opportunities in their online presence. 

This article originally appeared on HFTP.