How to Choose a Resort Marketing Agency: Questions to Ask

A resort marketing agency is a specialist marketing partner that drives occupancy and revenue for hotels and resorts — through brand, website, paid media, email and direct-booking systems — rather than a generalist agency that happens to take hospitality clients. Choosing the right one is one of the most consequential decisions a property makes, because the agency effectively controls how much of your demand you own versus how much you rent from the booking platforms. These are the questions to ask before you sign.

What Does a Resort Marketing Agency Actually Do?

At minimum it handles your brand and positioning, your website and booking experience, paid search and social, metasearch and Google Hotel Ads, email to past guests, and the reporting that ties all of it back to bookings. The best agencies treat these as one connected system aimed at a single goal: more direct, higher-margin reservations. Ask a prospective agency to show you how their services fit together, not just hand you a menu of tactics.

Will You Reduce Our Dependence on OTAs?

Online travel agencies are powerful for reach, but they take a commission on every booking and they own the guest relationship. Across the independent properties we work with, roughly 63% of bookings still come through OTAs — which means most of the demand is being rented, not owned. A resort marketing agency worth hiring will have a concrete plan to shift more of that volume to your direct channel over time, and will talk about the billboard effect, rate parity and guest lifetime value, not just ad spend.

How Do You Measure Success — and What Return Have You Produced?

Clicks and impressions are not the point; bookings and return on ad spend are. Ask what they report on and how often. On direct-booking campaigns for the properties we manage, The Lab has delivered an 11.66x return on ad spend — the kind of number that only appears when the website, the targeting and the measurement are built as one system. If an agency cannot connect its work to revenue, it is selling activity, not results.

Do You Know the Caribbean Travel Market?

A resort in Aruba or Curaçao is marketing to travellers who are often booking from the Netherlands, the United States or elsewhere in the region, months ahead, across a long consideration window. That changes everything — the seasons, the languages, the competitive set, the airlift. An agency that understands Dutch Caribbean tourism will plan around high, shoulder and low season and around where your actual guests come from, instead of applying a generic hotel template built for a mainland city.

Who Will Actually Work on Our Account?

Resorts are often sold by a senior team and then handed to juniors. Ask who runs your account day to day, how many other properties they manage, and whether they have hospitality experience specifically. A boutique agency often gives a resort more senior attention than a large network where you are a small line item on a big roster.

Can You Prove You Are a Real Partner, Not Just a Vendor?

Look for credentials and track record. The Lab has been a Caribbean marketing agency since 2012, is a Google Premier Partner — the only one in the ABC islands — and has worked with more than 120 regional clients, including Marriott, Hilton and the Aruba Tourism Authority. Credentials like these are a signal that the ad platforms and the market both take the agency seriously.

What Happens in the First 90 Days?

A good answer is specific: an audit of where your bookings come from and what they cost, quick fixes to the booking path, and a prioritised plan rather than a scramble to spend budget. Our Direct Guest Growth Model is built around exactly that sequence — understand the leaks first, then grow the direct channel. You can go deeper in our guides to increasing direct bookings and Google Ads and PPC for hotels.

Choosing With Confidence

The right resort marketing agency will answer every question above without hedging, and will be as interested in your margins as in your bookings. If you run a resort in Aruba or Curaçao and want a partner that grows the business you own, book a free marketing session with The Lab or send us a message — we will show you where your demand is leaking and how to win more of it directly.