The six strategies that turn holiday demand into a direct-booking engine

In this strategic episode of Hotel Moment, host Brenna Turpin, Marketing Coordinator at Revinate, brings together six powerful direct booking strategies covered throughout the year into one connected playbook specifically designed for holiday demand. Rather than treating each strategy as standalone, she demonstrates how loyalty, segmentation, OTA win back, cart abandonment, lead nurture, and upsells work together as a unified system that turns December into the most profitable direct booking season while setting properties up for strong Q1 2026 performance.

What you'll learn:

Holiday demand psychology - The holidays bring emotional, motivated guests willing to spend more who actively choose places to create memories, making this the moment when direct booking strategies either shine or miss out, because while OTAs spend aggressively in Q4, properties have something more powerful through knowing guests and having their data.
Duplication and inclusion framework - Renee Murrieta explains that 70% of travelers expect personalized communication but this can feel intimidating, solving it through creating one strong targeted campaign using data points like geolocation, family status, interests, or past stay behavior, then duplicating it for other segments while adjusting only pieces that need to change, ensuring every guest gets something relevant without reinventing the wheel while avoiding leaving large database segments untouched for months.
Scalable personalization tactics - Renee emphasizes that not every piece needs to say "I know you live in the northeast and need to get down south to Florida," but rather you can reference location once in the subject line or lead story while keeping remaining content evergreen, achieving higher engagement rates through strategic customization points rather than over-personalization that becomes unsustainable.
Transactional plus emotional loyalty - Ellis Connolly from Laasie breaks loyalty into two components, the transactional "parking fee loyalty" and the emotional piece, explaining that Laasie blends both to tie transactional and emotional loyalty together so guests feel the hotel has thought about them regarding reward content while giving them things to experience outside of just staying at the property.
Loyalty as December multiplier -True loyalty isn't just points but personalization and recognition where maintaining relationships beyond the stay becomes critical, and when paired with first-party data, personalization, and incentive-driven rewards, loyalty becomes the engine underneath all direct booking efforts, mattering more during holidays because travelers want belonging, family moments, and traditions rather than just rooms.
Segmentation for relevance increase - Segmentation isn't about narrowing audience but increasing relevance, where families planning multi-room stays, couples seeking New Year's Eve experiences, remote workers chasing sunshine, past holiday guests, local staycation visitors, and OTA bookers from last year each respond to different emotional drivers requiring geo-targeted escape messaging, family-specific experiences, romance-led getaway content, local event features, loyalty early access, and past guest reactivation.
OTA win back as margin recovery - OTA reliance spikes in Q4 because OTAs spend aggressively to capture holiday traffic, but most OTA guests don't actually prefer OTAs and lack compelling reasons to book direct, making holiday campaigns with festive storytelling, exclusive access, tradition-driven content, loyalty perks, and early booking windows change dynamics instantly, with OTA win back campaigns consistently performing at 41% open rates and $5-6 revenue per email sent.
Cart abandonment for high-intent capture - Holiday shoppers bounce frequently because budgets are tighter, families coordinate, and travelers compare rooms, dates, and packages, but most cart abandoners have extremely high intent and convert quickly with automated nudges including reminders about dates they were considering, gentle urgency about filling weekends, loyalty member pricing, and add-ons they viewed during sessions.
Speed-based lead nurturing - In hospitality, speed equals sales, and holiday leads go cold even faster when someone fills out forms for holiday parties, winter retreats, Christmas family stays, or New Year's Eve packages where response time determines booking outcome, as demonstrated by French Lick Resorts where Jason Wells from Revinate explains that reservation agents lead guest journeys by catching interests early even when guests don't book spa, restaurant, or golf initially, marking it on reservations so outbound experience design teams know exactly what to focus on during follow-up calls.
Voice-led emotional upselling - Digital upsells handle scalable revenue while voice upsells capture memory-making moments, with holiday guests wanting to feel excited through offers like "We notice you're traveling with kids, want us to arrange a hot cocoa welcome?" or "Would you like an add-on for holiday breakfast with Santa?" or "We have a New Year's Eve wine pairing, should I reserve you two seats?" proving that when agents are emotionally invested and excited, guests say yes.
System integration for Q1 momentum - The holiday season's highest intent, highest emotion period paired with these six strategies through segmentation, loyalty, OTA win back, cart abandonment, lead nurture, and upsells doesn't just optimize December but fills direct funnels with engaged, known, loyal guests who book again early in Q1, as demonstrated by Brittain Resorts and Hotels whose unified strategy generated $63 million in direct revenue while increasing repeat visits and loyalty conversions.

Throughout the episode, Brenna emphasizes that using first-party data to tell seasonal stories, segment smarter, nurture faster, upsell with emotion, and win back every possible OTA guest creates a connected system where December becomes the direct booking breakthrough that determines Q1 2026 performance.

If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, rate, and review it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Instructions on how to do this are here.

Read more about The latest hospitality trends for 2026 here

Connect with Brenna Turpin here:

Follow the podcast here:

Episode Highlights:

[02:02] Duplication and inclusion framework - Renee Murrieta explains the recipe for success: "70% of your database wants you to talk to them in a personal way. And you do have that data. So I think there's a recipe for success that involves both duplication and inclusion. Customizing a message to a specific audience, you have the data points to do that. You can get something in front of them that you think is going to resonate with them, and the results show that it does."

[03:20] Scalable personalization strategy - Renee continues: "It doesn't mean every part of it has to say, 'Hey, I know you live in the northeast and you need to get down south to Florida pretty soon because it's cold.' You can say that once. Maybe your subject line calling out something that's gonna catch their attention. But the rest of the content could be rather evergreen. That inclusion piece means you don't want to leave big sets of your database out and untouched for months on end."

[04:10] Transactional plus emotional loyalty - Ellis Connolly breaks down loyalty components: "There's two types of loyalty that we think about. There's that parking fee loyalty, which is transactional, and then there's the emotional piece to that. What Laasie does really well is we're able to really blend those two to tie both together, your transactional and your emotional loyalty, so you get full circle on making that guest feel really good."

[06:00] OTA win back performance metrics - Brenna shares compelling data: "OTA Win Back campaigns consistently perform with 41% open rates and a $5 to $6 revenue per email sent. That's not just a marketing channel, that's a margin recovery machine. When you combine OTA Win Back with segmentation and loyalty, you reclaim holiday demand instead of losing it to commissions."

[08:31] Speed-based lead nurturing - Jason Wells from Revinate describes French Lick's approach: "They're actually leading that guest journey and getting that guest excited and wanting to book and picking up on those interests. Even if they don't book the spa, the restaurant, the golf on that initial call, it is marked on that reservation and that lead form. So when your outbound experience design team's giving them a call, they know exactly what to focus on."

[09:00] Voice-led upselling for holidays - Brenna explains the emotional closer: "Holiday guests want to feel excited. 'We notice you're traveling with kids. Want us to arrange a hot cocoa welcome? Would you like an add-on for a holiday breakfast with Santa? We have a New Year's Eve wine pairing. Should I reserve you two seats?' Digital upsells handle the scalable revenue, voice upsells capture the memory-making moments."

Chapters:

00:00 - Intro
02:02 - First-party data and personalization
04:10 - Strategy one: Loyalty as emotional multiplier
05:00 - Strategy two: Segmentation for relevance
06:00 - Strategy three: OTA win back margin recovery
07:30 - Strategy four: Cart abandonment capture
08:31 - Strategy five: Speed-based lead nurturing
09:30 - Strategy six: Voice and digital upsells
10:45 - System integration for Q1 2026 momentum