Digital Marketing
For Independent &
Boutique Hotels
Conversions & Watch Your Brand Grow Online
mORE THAN AN AGENCY —
WE'RE YOUR MARKETING PARTNER
Our focus on client communication, our data-driven approach, and our years of industry experience sets us apart from other agencies.
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We analyze, strategize and build a solution for your property that brings customers and drives sales. From website development to multi-channel advertising, we take care of every aspect of your digital success.
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OTA Management
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We analyze, strategize and build a custom website for your property that brings customers and drives sales. We build fast, optimized and ADA compliant websites for any property, with modern UI/UX designed for high conversion rates.
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Razib Marketing specializes in independent & boutique hotels, but we have some clients outside of this industry. We also serve clients from travel, restaurant, retail, and other industries.
Growth Insights
Read Our Latest Articles
Strategies, tips, and trends to help your business scale in the digital age.
- Web Analytics
Imagine this scenario: A couple walks into your boutique hotel’s lobby. They are dragging Rimowa suitcases. They look around at your art-deco lighting and smile. They walk up to the front desk, ask about the King Suite, and nod happily at the price. You hand them the registration card to sign.
Suddenly, without a word, they drop the pen, turn around, and sprint out the front door.
You would be chasing them down the street, right? “Was it something I said? Was the pen out of ink? Did you see a ghost?”
In the physical world, this behavior is insane. In the digital world, it happens on your website about 80% of the time.
We call it “Booking Abandonment,” but let’s call it what it really is: The Silent Walk-Out.
Most hoteliers look at their basic dashboard, see a high “Bounce Rate,” and shrug. “I guess they were just browsing,” they say. But as a Web Analytics expert, I can tell you: Guests don’t just ‘browse’ with a credit card in their hand. Usually, we pushed them away.
The good news? The clues to why they left are hiding in plain sight within your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) account. You just need to know where to look.
Here are the 3 “hidden” metrics that tell the real story of your lost revenue.
1. The “Checkout Journey” Funnel (The Specific Step of Death)
Most hotel marketing dashboards show you two numbers:
- How many people visited.
- How many people booked.
This is useless. It’s like knowing 100 people entered a maze and only 2 came out, without knowing where the other 98 got lost.
The Hidden Metric: GA4 has a specific report often buried under the “Monetization” tab called the Checkout Journey. Unlike the old “Goal Flow,” this visualizes the exact cliff where your potential guest fell off.
How to Read It Like a Human: Look at the gap between “Begin Checkout” and “Add Payment Info.”
- The Scenario: You see a 60% drop here.
- The Human Translation: “I was ready to book, but then I saw the ‘Taxes & Resort Fees’ added to the total, and I felt tricked.” Or, “I wanted to pay with Apple Pay, but you only accept Visa.”
The Fix: If the drop is at the Payment step, audit your hidden fees. If the drop is at the Details step, your form is likely too long. Do you really need their home address and company name just to reserve a room? Cut the friction.
2. Scroll Depth on “Room Details” (The “interest” Lie)
We often assume that if a user spent 2 minutes on the “Luxury Suite” page, they were interested. But time is deceptive. They could have left the tab open while making coffee.
The Hidden Metric: Scroll Depth (specifically the 25%, 50%, and 90% scroll events).
How to Read It Like a Human: Compare your Scroll Depth against your “Book Now” button clicks.
- The Scenario: 5,000 people visit your “Suites” page. 80% of them scroll only 25% down the page.
- The Human Translation: Your hero image (the big photo at the top) isn’t doing its job. Or worse, your “Book Now” button is buried at the bottom of the page (the footer), and 80% of your visitors never even see it.
The Fix: Stop playing “Hide and Seek” with your revenue. If GA4 says users aren’t scrolling past the 50% mark, move your best photos, your strongest social proof (reviews), and your “Check Availability” button to the top 30% of the page.
3. Core Web Vitals vs. Session Duration (The “Patience” Test)
This is the most painful one to admit. Sometimes, the problem isn’t your price. It isn’t your photos. It’s your code.
In 2026, the human attention span is shorter than that of a goldfish. If your booking engine takes 4 seconds to load on a mobile phone, that guest is already back on Expedia.
The Hidden Metric: In GA4, we look at User Engagement overlaid with Tech > Device Category. Specifically, look for a discrepancy between Desktop and Mobile engagement.
How to Read It Like a Human:
- The Scenario: Desktop users stay for 4 minutes and convert at 3%. Mobile users stay for 12 seconds and convert at 0.1%.
- The Human Translation: Your mobile site is broken. Maybe the calendar pop-up doesn’t work on iPhone. Maybe your 4K drone video is choking their 4G data connection. You are effectively locking the front door for 50% of your guests.
The Fix: Test your site on an actual phone—not the “mobile view” on your laptop. If you tap “Book” and have time to take a deep breath before the page loads, you are losing money. Compress your images and simplify your mobile scripts.
The Bottom Line: Data is Empathy
When we look at spreadsheets, it’s easy to forget there are real people behind those numbers.
A “bounce” is a person who got frustrated. A “checkout abandonment” is a person who got confused/surprised.
At Razib Marketing, we don’t just fix “metrics.” We fix the experience. We smooth out the carpet so your guests don’t trip on their way to the front desk.
Is your website silently chasing guests away? Let’s stop the walk-outs. Book a Free Analytics Audit with us, and let’s find out exactly where your revenue is hiding.
- GA4
If you have opened your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) dashboard recently and felt a sudden rush of excitement followed by a wave of confusion, you are not alone. Across the globe, website owners are reporting the same bizarre phenomenon: thousands of “Direct” visitors suddenly appearing from Lanzhou, China and Singapore.
At first glance, it looks like a marketing miracle. But a quick peek at the engagement metrics tells a different story: 0-second session durations, 100% bounce rates, and zero conversions.
Welcome to the 2025–2026 Ghost Traffic Surge. Here is everything you need to know about why this is happening, why it isn’t a security breach, and how to fix your data.
1. What is “Ghost Traffic” Anyway?
Unlike traditional bots that crawl your site to index content, this new wave is often called “Ghost Traffic”. These bots don’t always visit your actual website; instead, they send fake data hits directly to Google’s servers using your unique Measurement ID.
Because they bypass your server, they often won’t even show up in your hosting logs, appearing only in your GA4 reports.
Why the sudden surge?
Industry experts believe this traffic is fueled by:
- AI Scrapers: As AI models race to train on real-world data, automated scrapers are constantly probing sites for structured information.
- Cloud Routing Hubs: Singapore is a major global data center hub; many automated tools route through there even if the “human” behind them is elsewhere.
- Filter Testing: Sophisticated bots are being designed specifically to bypass GA4’s standard automated filtering systems to see what they can get away with.
2. Is My Website Being Hacked?
The short answer is: No.
While a sudden spike from foreign countries can feel like a security threat, this traffic is generally harmless to your site’s infrastructure. These bots are harvesting data or testing tracking IDs, not attempting to breach your database.
However, they are extremely dangerous to your data accuracy. They “pollute” your KPIs, making your engagement rates look terrible and your geographic reports completely unreliable.
3. How to Clean Your Data (The 2-Layer Fix)
Since Google has confirmed these hits are inauthentic, they are working on a long-term fix. Until then, you need a two-layer defense.
Layer 1: The “Firewall” Defense (Cloudflare)
If you use Cloudflare, you can stop many of these bots before they even trigger a page load.
- The Rule: Create a custom WAF rule to Challenge or Block traffic where
Countryis China or Singapore. - The Exception: Always add a condition to exclude Verified Bots (like Googlebot) so your SEO rankings aren’t accidentally harmed.
Layer 2: The “Clean View” (GA4 Exploration)
Standard reports will remain “dirty” for a while, but you can see the truth in the Explore section:
- Create a new Blank Exploration.
- Create a Session Segment to Exclude traffic where
Countrycontains China or Singapore. - Apply this segment to see your true engagement, conversion, and traffic numbers.
4. Final Verdict: Don’t Panic, Just Filter
The “China/Singapore Bot Wave” is a regular scene in the 2026 digital landscape. It’s a side effect of the AI revolution and the constant battle for data.
By implementing these filters today, you can stop making business decisions based on “ghost” numbers and get back to growing your real human audience.
Sources
Google Analytics Official Community: A major thread titled “Google Analytics 4 bot traffic increase from China/Singapore” has become the central hub for reports and updates. https://support.google.com/analytics/thread/378622882
Reddit (r/GoogleAnalytics): Extensive discussions can be found under threads like “This Lanzhou-Singapore bot traffic is getting worse”. https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleAnalytics/comments/1oi4bo0/unexpected_traffic_from_singapore_and_lanzhou/?rdt=37365
- Website Development
Let’s talk about the big problem in the lobby: You are not partners with Booking.com or Expedia. They are the people who own your house.
When a guest books through an Online Travel Agency (OTA), you don’t just lose 15% to 20% of your sales in commissions. You’re losing something much more important: the relationship with the customer. The email address, the data, and the loyalty all belong to the OTA. You only get the guest for one night.
For small and independent hotels, 2026 is the year that everything changes. The “set it and forget it” website strategy is no longer effective because OTA ad costs are going up and Google’s AI search is changing how people look for travel.
We don’t just make websites at Razib Marketing; we also make Direct Booking Engines. This is your technical and strategic plan for getting your money back this year.
The Math of Independence: Why Direct is More Important Now
It’s simple to write off 15% as the “cost of doing business.” But let’s not just look at the money coming in; let’s also look at the profit margin.
If your hotel makes 20% net profit, giving 15% to an OTA doesn’t just hurt; it takes away almost 75% of the money you make on that room.
The truth about 2026:
- OTAs are making offers on your name: Find your hotel on Google. Is the first result your site, or is it Booking.com pretending to be you?
- The “Bill” is going up: Big chains and OTAs are changing the way people think about travel by offering loyalty programs that reward them for points instead of experiences.
The Fix: You can’t spend more on ads than OTAs. You have to do better than them in terms of experience. Your website needs to offer something that the OTA doesn’t: the promise of a better stay.
Speed is the New Money The “3-Second Rule”
This is where I come in as a developer. Most hotel owners care more about how their photos look than how their engines work.
Here is the harsh truth: You have already lost the booking if it takes 4 seconds for your high-resolution lobby photo to load on a smartphone.
- If a site takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 53% of mobile visits are lost.
- Google’s Core Web Vitals are now a big part of how well a site ranks. Google will literally hide you from search results if your site changes its layout or takes a long time to load.
The Razib Marketing Standard: We don’t use heavy themes that make things slower. We make the most of every asset.
- Next-Gen Image Formats: We serve WebP images that look sharp and load right away.
- Lazy Loading: We put the most important things first, so the “Book Now” button is ready to click in milliseconds.
- Code for Mobile First: We make sure that our code works on iPhones and Androids first, and then on desktops.
Tip: Use 4G instead of WiFi to open your hotel website on your phone. Try to get a room. Your guests are feeling it too if you feel even a little bit of anger.
The “Google Travel” Change: How to Win at Local SEO
Guests aren’t just typing “Hotels in Miami” in 2026. They are asking AI, “What is a romantic boutique hotel in Miami with a rooftop bar and breakfast for vegans?”
Generic websites don’t pass this test. This test does not work for OTAs. You can win this.
Your website needs Schema Markup to get this traffic. This is code that Google can’t see that tells it exactly what you have.
- Does your website clearly say to Google, “We have an EV charger”?
- Does it say to Google, “We welcome pets”?
AI search engines won’t find you if this data isn’t hard-coded into your site’s structure. When we build something at Razib Marketing, we always use Hotel-Specific Schema. This makes sure you show up in those high-intent searches.
Easy Booking: The “Amazon” Experience
Why do people like Amazon? Because it’s easy to buy. What is it about hotel websites that people don’t like? Because making a reservation is work.
I have checked out hundreds of hotel websites where the booking engine opens in a new window, looks very different from the main site, or asks for 20 pieces of information before showing a price.
The Strategy to Kill Friction:
- “Book Now” Button: The booking button should always be at the bottom of the screen on mobile, no matter how far they scroll.
- Comparison Widget for Rates: Show the OTA price on your site and make your direct price 5–10% lower. Show the value right away.
- Upgrades with One Click: With just one tap, they can add breakfast, champagne, or a late checkout. (OTAs usually can’t sell these custom add-ons, which is what makes you stand out.)
The “Member Only” Secret (That Isn’t a Secret)
What makes Marriott have so many members? Because they keep their best prices secret.
You can do this as well. OTAs won’t let you advertise a lower public rate than what you give them. But you can give lower rates to a “closed user group.”
The Plan:
- Add a simple pop-up that says, “Join our VIP list to get 10% off right away.”
- The booking engine unlocks a “Secret Rate” when they enter their email.
- You get the booking without paying a fee, and you also get their email address for future marketing.
Stop renting your guests, in conclusion.
Your hotel is one of a kind. It has a story, a personality, and a soul. A 2018 template website can’t say that.
Your website will be your best salesperson in 2026. It works all the time, never gets sick, and if you build it right, it won’t charge you a fee.
Is your website helping you, or is it helping Expedia?
Are you ready to take charge of your money?
We at Razib Marketing make high-performance websites for independent hotels. We don’t just make things look good; we also make direct bookings.
By Md Atiar Rahman Ovi| Website Support Specialist, Razib Marketing
FAQ
People Often Asks Us
Razib Marketing has specialized in digital marketing for the hospitality industry since its inception. CEO and Founder Mohammed Razib has been in the industry for over a decade. His hospitality expertise ranges from digital marketing strategy to revenue management.
Razib Marketing offers digital marketing services at an affordable price. The specific pricing of the services may vary depending on your project, so we ask you to contact us so that we can send you a quote and perform a free audit.
Please fill out and submit this contact form. A representative from Razib Marketing will follow up with the quote and necessary steps that should be followed.