Case Study [07]
Marketing & Growth · Social Media Marketing
SMM + live chat that turned website visits into bookings
Social content, paid promotion and 24/7 live chat working together to capture demand at the moment of intent.
- Client
- Hospitality group
- Industry
- Hotels & Travel
- Duration
- 8 months
- Year
- 2023
- Social Media Marketing
- Paid Social
- Live Chat
By the numbers
Direct bookings up 64%, with a median first chat response of 11 seconds.
direct bookings
median first response time
chat-to-booking rate
01 — The Challenge
What was getting in the way.
Beautiful properties and a huge social following — with bookings still going through third parties.
The group had audience envy: tens of thousands of followers, high-engagement content, and properties that photographed beautifully. But the booking path leaked — guests browsed, left, and reserved through an OTA that took commission for the privilege.
Enquiries that did arrive sat unanswered for hours. By the time the team replied, the guest had booked elsewhere.
02 — The Approach
How we tackled it, step by step.
- 01
Content that carries a price
A content-led SMM programme built around rooms, seasons and reasons to travel — each post linked to a direct path, not a mood.
- 02
Paid where intent lives
Paid social focused on retargeting warm visitors and lookalikes of direct bookers, measured against bookings rather than likes.
- 03
Answer in seconds
Live chat installed site-wide with trained agents, smart routing by property, and answers to the questions that actually block a booking.
- 04
Shepherd to direct
Every high-intent conversation was moved towards direct booking with availability, offers and a human on the other end.
03 — The Results
What changed after launch.
- 01Direct bookings rose 64%, reducing commission dependency
- 02Median first response of 11 seconds on chat, 24/7
- 0329% of chat conversations converted to a booking
- 04Paid social cost per booking down 31% against a booking-optimised objective
- 05Social following grew 2.4× while carrying a direct-booking link in every post
Chat changed the maths. Guests get an answer at midnight, book direct, and we keep the commission we used to give away.
Hospitality group
Tools & stack
- Meta Business Suite
- ManyChat
- GA4
- HubSpot
- Looker Studio
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