If you own an independent holiday cottage or retreat, there is one deceptively difficult question you should be able to answer:
Where are my bookings actually coming from?
You may be investing in your own website, SEO, Instagram, holiday directories, email marketing, PR and perhaps OTAs such as Airbnb or Booking.com.
But which ones are actually working?
Many holiday let owners still measure this by asking guests:
“How did you find us?”
It is a useful question, and one we ask ourselves. But it doesn’t necessarily give you the complete answer.
Today’s guest might discover your retreat through a specialist holiday directory, visit your website, follow you on Instagram and then return three weeks later by searching your property name on Google.
When you eventually ask how they found you, they may simply answer:
“Google.”
Google may have completed the journey.
It doesn’t necessarily mean Google started it.
Understanding that difference is becoming increasingly important when measuring the return from your holiday let marketing.
Why is it so difficult to track where holiday let bookings come from?
The traditional idea that someone sees an advert, clicks on it and immediately books is increasingly unrealistic.
A typical booking journey might look more like:
Google search → specialist holiday directory → your website → Instagram → Google → your website → booking
Or perhaps:
AI search → editorial article written by a holiday directory → your website → return visit → booking
Several different marketing channels can therefore contribute to one booking.
This is known as a multi-touch customer journey.
It is particularly relevant to higher-value holiday bookings, where guests may research several properties and return multiple times before committing.
That’s why the channel receiving the final click isn’t necessarily the channel responsible for introducing the guest to your retreat.
Why “How did you find us?” doesn’t tell the whole story
We ask this question ourselves at Well Furlong Retreats, and the answers are fascinating.
Guests regularly tell us they found us through Google, Instagram or, increasingly, AI.
But Well Furlong Cottage isn’t advertised across lots of different holiday directories. That gives us a useful insight into the wider journey behind some of those bookings.
Imagine somebody searches Google for:
“holiday cottage with a swimming pool”
They discover the Boutique Luxury Retreats swimming pool collection.
From there they discover Well Furlong Cottage and click through to our own website.
They have a look around but don’t book.
A week later, they remember the property name, search “Well Furlong Cottage” on Google and come directly back to us to make the booking.
When asked how they found us, “Google” is a completely understandable answer.
But Google wasn’t necessarily responsible for the original discovery.
That’s the distinction owners need to understand between discovery, consideration and conversion.
Start with GA4
Google Analytics 4 – or GA4 – is one of the most useful tools available to an independent holiday let owner trying to understand their marketing.
At its simplest, GA4 helps you see how many people visit your website and where those visitors came from.
Your traffic might include:
Organic Search – people reaching you through search engines.
Referral – people clicking through from another website, such as a holiday directory, press article, blog or tourism website.
Organic Social – visitors arriving from social platforms.
Direct – traffic where GA4 hasn’t identified another referring source, which can include people typing your website address, using a bookmark and some returning visitors.
Understanding this is the starting point for working out which elements of your marketing are actually sending potential guests to your website.
How to check your Referral traffic
If you use Google Analytics (GA4), you can see which other websites are sending visitors to your own website.
- Log in to Google Analytics and select your property.
- Go to Reports.
- Select Acquisition → Traffic acquisition.
- Find the table underneath the graph.
- Change the main table dimension to Session source / medium.
- Look for sources where the medium is referral.
You should then see the websites that have sent visitors directly to you. For example, if visitors have clicked through from a holiday directory, blog, press article or tourism website, that website should appear as a referral source.
Tip: Change the date range in the top-right corner to look at the last 3, 6 or 12 months. This gives you a much clearer picture than looking at a single month.
Look beyond channels and find the actual referral sources
This is particularly important when you pay to advertise your holiday cottage or retreat with another website.
Don’t just look at the broad “Referral” category.
Look at the individual websites sending those referrals.
Which directories are actually delivering visitors?
Which editorial features generate traffic?
Which collaborations send people to your site?
And how does that compare with the amount you’re paying for that exposure?
At Boutique Luxury Retreats, for example, we can see how many people view an owner’s individual listing and how many then click through from that listing to the owner’s own website.
We currently generate around 17,000 click-throughs to owners’ websites each month across the directory.
What we cannot automatically see is what happens after that visitor leaves Boutique Luxury Retreats.
The visitor is now on the owner’s website.
This is where the owner’s own analytics become so important.
If you’d like to understand more about how a curated directory fits alongside your other marketing channels, read our guide to choosing the best holiday directory for your retreat.
Take it further: track actual bookings in GA4
Website traffic tells you part of the story.
Booking conversion tracking takes you considerably further.
Depending on the booking system you use, it may be possible to configure your website so that GA4 records when somebody successfully completes an online booking.
One method is to use a dedicated booking confirmation or thank-you page.
Once the guest completes their booking, they arrive on that page. Your analytics setup can then record that successful booking as an event or key event.
Some booking systems offer more sophisticated integrations.
SuperControl, for example, supports Google Analytics integration and can be configured with a custom booking confirmation page and Google Tag Manager to help track completed bookings.
If your booking system allows this, I strongly recommend setting it up.
If you’re not sure, ask your booking-system provider or website developer:
“Can we track completed bookings as GA4 events or key events, and can we see the acquisition source associated with those bookings?”
That is a much better question than simply asking whether Google Analytics has been installed on your website.
Why conversion tracking matters
Once booking tracking is properly configured, you can move beyond:
“We had 2,000 visitors this month.”
You can start asking:
How many bookings did those visitors generate?
Which sources brought visitors who went on to book?
Which marketing channels are sending valuable potential guests?
What revenue are those bookings generating?
This gives you a much stronger basis for deciding where to invest your marketing budget.
What GA4 can – and cannot – tell you
It is important not to treat Google Analytics as infallible.
Even a well-configured GA4 account cannot necessarily recreate every stage of every guest’s journey.
Cookie consent can affect tracking. People switch between phones, tablets and laptops. A couple may research a property on one device and their partner subsequently books it on another. Visitors return through different channels. Some browsers and privacy settings restrict tracking.
So GA4 should not replace everything else.
Instead, use several pieces of evidence together:
GA4 traffic + referral data + booking conversions + booking revenue + guest feedback.
Together, they give you a much more informed picture than any one source on its own.
5 GA4 numbers every holiday retreat owner should check each month
You don’t need to become a Google Analytics expert.
But if you’re spending money marketing your retreat, I think there are five things worth understanding.
1. Users and sessions
How many people are actually visiting your website?
Look at the trend over several months rather than becoming distracted by an unusually good or bad week.
Is your overall audience growing?
And are your marketing activities increasing the number of relevant people reaching your website?
2. Traffic acquisition and referrals
Where are those visitors coming from?
Look at organic search, referral, social and direct traffic.
Then look more closely at the individual sources.
Which directories and other websites are actually sending people to you?
If you’re paying for a listing, this is one of the first figures I would check.
3. Engagement
What happens after those visitors arrive?
Are they exploring your website?
Are they viewing accommodation pages, availability, prices and booking information?
Are they staying long enough to properly consider your retreat?
A smaller number of highly relevant potential guests can be considerably more valuable than thousands of poorly targeted visitors.
4. Completed bookings
If you have booking conversion tracking configured, how many successful bookings are being recorded?
Follow this consistently month by month.
Over time, it will help you understand how effectively your own website is converting visitors into paying guests.
5. The sources associated with those bookings
Finally, look at the acquisition information surrounding those conversions.
Which channels and sources appear in the journeys of guests who ultimately book?
Don’t become fixated on one number or simply the last click.
Instead, use it to build a picture of which parts of your marketing are introducing and delivering valuable potential guests.
Traffic and conversion are two different things
This is probably the most important distinction in this article.
A marketing platform’s job is to put your retreat in front of relevant potential guests and encourage them to visit your website.
Once somebody arrives, a host of other factors influence whether they book.
These include:
- Photography and video
- Website quality
- Pricing
- Availability
- Minimum stays
- Reviews
- Booking-system usability
- Cancellation terms
- Trust
- How easy it is to find the information they need
If a marketing source is consistently delivering relevant visitors but those visitors aren’t converting, don’t immediately assume the source of the traffic isn’t working.
Look at what happens after the click.
Your marketing may be successfully delivering the potential guest while something later in the booking journey is losing them.
For more on the wider mix of channels that can bring guests to your website, read How to Market a Luxury Holiday Home in the UK.
Be careful about giving Google all the credit
An owner might look at their bookings and conclude:
“Most of my bookings come from Google.”
But what did those guests actually search?
If somebody searched for your exact property name, they already knew it.
Something introduced them to that name.
That’s very different from your own website appearing when somebody who has never heard of you searches:
luxury cottages with swimming pools UK
large holiday houses for groups
romantic cabins with hot tubs
or
dog-friendly luxury cottages
Competing independently for broad, non-branded Google searches can require significant SEO investment, content and website authority.
One role of an established specialist directory is to provide another route into those searches.
The directory is discovered.
The guest discovers your retreat.
They visit your own website.
And they can then book directly with you.
The fact that they later return through Google doesn’t remove the value of that original discovery.
Different marketing channels do different jobs
Your own website should sit at the heart of your direct-booking strategy.
Around it, however, you might have:
- Google and SEO
- Specialist holiday directories
- AI search
- Instagram and other social channels
- Email marketing
- PR and editorial coverage
- Previous guests and recommendations
- Selected OTAs
They aren’t all trying to achieve exactly the same thing.
An OTA such as Airbnb or Booking.com puts your property in front of its own enormous audience and provides the booking infrastructure.
A specialist directory can reach a more defined audience and then send that guest to your own website to research and book.
Your social media may build familiarity over time.
Your email list can bring previous guests back.
Google may capture somebody once they know your name.
This is why I prefer to think of holiday let marketing as a basket rather than a single route to bookings.
If you’re working towards a greater proportion of direct business, our article on direct bookings for your short-term rental business explains why building your own booking channel matters.
How should you measure holiday let marketing ROI?
Every marketing expense should ultimately have a commercial purpose.
If you’re spending £1,000 a year on a particular marketing channel, decide what return would make that investment worthwhile for your business.
For some owners, a target such as £5 of booking revenue for every £1 spent might be a useful internal benchmark.
For others it will be different.
Your average booking value, margins, occupancy levels and whether those new guests subsequently return directly will all influence what constitutes a worthwhile return.
But don’t measure that return purely by counting how many guests remembered to name a particular source.
Instead consider the complete journey:
Cost → relevant traffic → engagement → bookings → revenue
If a channel is delivering significant volumes of relevant potential guests, you need to understand what happens to those people before deciding whether that investment is working.
A simple monthly marketing check
Once a month, give yourself half an hour to look at the numbers.
Ask yourself:
How many people visited my website?
Where did they come from?
Which paid marketing sources actually delivered traffic?
What did those visitors do once they arrived?
How many bookings were completed?
Which sources contributed to those bookings?
How much did I spend and what return am I seeing?
Do this consistently and you will build a far better picture of your business than you will from asking guests one question at checkout.
Measure the whole journey
Successful holiday let marketing isn’t about finding one magic platform that fills your calendar.
It’s about creating several routes through which the right guests can discover you – and then understanding how well those routes are working.
Use GA4.
Set up booking conversion tracking wherever possible.
Understand your referral traffic.
Continue asking guests how they found you.
Then look at all of that information together.
Most importantly, distinguish between the channel that introduced your retreat and the channel that happened to receive the final click.
They aren’t always the same.
And once you understand that, you can make much better decisions about where to invest your marketing budget.
Need help understanding your BLR traffic?
If you’re unsure how much traffic your listing is generating, or how Boutique Luxury Retreats fits within your wider marketing picture, please get in touch.
We monitor listing views and click-throughs from Boutique Luxury Retreats to owners’ own websites and are very happy to help you understand the information available to you.
Need more help with GA4?
We also know that GA4 can feel complicated. Having the data is one thing; knowing where to find the useful information, what it means and what you should actually do with it is another.
If you would like a clearer understanding of your website traffic, referral sources and where your potential guests are coming from, we can help you look more closely at your own GA4 data and make sense of what it is telling you.
This is an additional service, available both to existing Boutique Luxury Retreats owners and to independent holiday retreat owners who are not currently listed with us.
If you would like to find out more about the service and the cost involved, please get in touch with us.
You can also find out more about advertising your holiday home with Boutique Luxury Retreats and how our fixed-fee directory is designed to drive guests directly to owners’ own websites.
Continue reading
How to Choose the Best Holiday Directory for Your Retreat – what to look for when deciding which directories deserve a place in your marketing mix.
How to Market a Luxury Holiday Home in the UK – our wider guide to OTAs, direct bookings, SEO, AI visibility, social media and curated platforms.
Direct Bookings for Your Short-Term Rental Business – why building your own direct-booking channel gives independent owners greater control.
Written by Pollyanne Hooley, the owner of Well Furlong Retreats and Founder of Boutique Luxury Retreats, a curated luxury holiday retreat listings platform focused on independently owned stays across the UK.
