The Boutique Hotel Playbook: Secrets & Strategies Revealed
May 26, 2026 · 36 min · 13 segments
If you're serious about building a hotel brand that guests remember, rave about, and return to, it starts with an honest look at your current positioning. 👉 Click here to complete a short…
Dennis SchneiderGuest
Yanique DaCostaHost
So I feel like one of the things that's gonna be really pertinent to talk about is people always talk about how Meta Ads don't work, and they don't work for their industry.
And then when I talk about, like, boutique hotel owners, when I talk to them, they're like, "Yeah, I run Meta Ads and I don't get anything." What are they actually doing wrong that maybe the big chain hotels have already figured out?
Well, generally speaking, I would say what most people generally get wrong with ads is just the creatives and the testing'Cause that's where all the success is.
Like, people constantly ask me, like, "What's the hack to get the right targeting?" Or, "What is the, the next hack to get the right whatever settings?" Or, "Where can I basically optimize and optimize?" Niche settings in the ads manager, they don't, doesn't fu- doesn't matter.
Like [laughs] as, as long as your creative is great, your ads are going to work no matter what other settings or check boxes you've clicked or didn't click.
Um, obviously there's some things that need to be right, which is like the tracking needs to be set up correctly, and the Meta pixel needs to work correctly, and the events have to be sent.
The algorithm actually knows what you're optimizing for and what results are for you.
Uh, so that's the, that's kind of the foundation is that the data you're sending to Meta is correct and all that is working.
'Cause otherwise, how is the platform supposed to know that what it's doing is working, or that the people it's getting your ads in front of are actually people who react to it and convert, right? So that's the, the foundation is just having that data dialed correctly.
If you just put on, like if you just do two images and throwing up into an ad set, it's not gonna work.
You need to test, and you need to consistently test, and that's what some hotel groups that I've seen in the past as well have done.
Um, I've, I've been in, in ads accounts from like Hilton, for example, uh, in the European market, and I've seen where one test, two creatives.
Um, and that's one of the things that sets their ads apart and that helps 'cause you test and you find [laughs] what's working, right? And you never know what's working.
So I feel like one of the things that's gonna be really pertinent to talk about is people always talk about how Meta Ads don't work, and they don't work for their industry.
And then when I talk about, like, boutique hotel owners, when I talk to them, they're like, "Yeah, I run Meta Ads and I don't get anything." What are they actually doing wrong that maybe the big chain hotels have already figured out?
Well, generally speaking, I would say what most people generally get wrong with ads is just the creatives and the testing'Cause that's where all the success is.
Like, people constantly ask me, like, "What's the hack to get the right targeting?" Or, "What is the, the next hack to get the right whatever settings?" Or, "Where can I basically optimize and optimize?" Niche settings in the ads manager, they don't, doesn't fu- doesn't matter.
Like [laughs] as, as long as your creative is great, your ads are going to work no matter what other settings or check boxes you've clicked or didn't click.
Um, obviously there's some things that need to be right, which is like the tracking needs to be set up correctly, and the Meta pixel needs to work correctly, and the events have to be sent.
The algorithm actually knows what you're optimizing for and what results are for you.
Uh, so that's the, that's kind of the foundation is that the data you're sending to Meta is correct and all that is working.
'Cause otherwise, how is the platform supposed to know that what it's doing is working, or that the people it's getting your ads in front of are actually people who react to it and convert, right? So that's the, the foundation is just having that data dialed correctly.
If you just put on, like if you just do two images and throwing up into an ad set, it's not gonna work.
You need to test, and you need to consistently test, and that's what some hotel groups that I've seen in the past as well have done.
Um, I've, I've been in, in ads accounts from like Hilton, for example, uh, in the European market, and I've seen where one test, two creatives.
Um, and that's one of the things that sets their ads apart and that helps 'cause you test and you find [laughs] what's working, right? And you never know what's working.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
