Hospitality · Case study

A resort that stopped renting its demand from the OTAs

A 38-key coastal property at 44% annual occupancy, 81% of it booked through OTAs at commissions that erased the season's profit.

Client: Coastal Stay Resorts
Location: Sindhudurg, Maharashtra
Duration: 11 months
Engagement: Growth Diagnostic + Growth Marketing retainer

Discuss a similar project

Headline result

6% → 44%

Direct bookings

Of total room-nights

The situation

What we walked into

Business & Growth Strategy Branding & Marketing Technology & Automation

Coastal Stay had a genuinely attractive property and a good monsoon-season story that nobody was telling. Bookings came almost entirely through two aggregators.

The owners had responded to weak occupancy with deeper OTA discounting, which improved volume and reduced profit for two consecutive years.

There was no property website worth the name, no booking engine, and no record of past guests beyond the aggregators' masked contact data.

What we did

The engagement, phase by phase

Including the phase the client least enjoyed, which in most of our case studies is the second one.

Phase 1 · Weeks 1–3
Diagnostic on channel economics
Net revenue per occupied room by channel, after commission, payment charges and discount. Direct bookings were worth 31% more per room-night than the OTA average — and were 6% of the book.
Phase 2 · Weeks 3–8
Position the monsoon, not the beach
Repositioned around monsoon and shoulder-season experiences — the periods with the worst occupancy and the least competition — instead of competing on a beach proposition every property in the district also sells.
Phase 3 · Months 2–6
Own the booking path
A property website with a commission-free booking engine, metasearch presence, a guest data platform, and WhatsApp-based pre-arrival and post-stay flows. OTA presence was kept for discovery, with rate parity managed deliberately rather than by default.
Phase 4 · Months 5–11
Build the repeat engine
A returning-guest programme, corporate offsite and small-wedding packages for weekdays, and an F&B and experience programme that lifted spend per guest. Weekday occupancy was the specific target.

Measured outcome

The numbers, with their baselines

These are the metrics written into the engagement letter before work started.

44% → 63%

Annual occupancy

With no rate reduction

+58%

RevPAR

Year on year

-₹41 lakh

OTA commission paid

Annualised

19% → 52%

Monsoon occupancy

June to September

27%

Repeat guests

Of direct bookings

31% → 44%

F&B revenue share

Of total revenue

Engagement visual

BeforeAfter

We were discounting harder every season and wondering why the money never arrived. The fix was not a better rate on the aggregator, it was owning the guest — and monsoon, which we had always treated as the off season.

Rohan Sawant · Proprietor, Coastal Stay Resorts

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