How Staycae drove 220% more direct bookings and cut OTA dependency in half.
What Staycae needed to solve.
Staycae, a boutique hotel and serviced apartment brand in Dubai, was heavily reliant on OTAs — paying 15–20% commission on every booking. They had tried Google Ads independently but with poor results. They needed a full-funnel performance marketing strategy that could drive direct bookings profitably.
We'd been trying to crack direct bookings for two years. Synap built a proper full-funnel strategy and within 6 months we'd genuinely changed the business model. OTA dependency is down by half.
How we delivered the results.
Google Ads hotel campaigns
Rebuilt Google Ads from scratch — Google Hotel Ads with direct booking integration, branded search protection, and high-intent accommodation search campaigns targeting visitors to Dubai.
Meta & Instagram paid social
Built a Meta funnel targeting prospective Dubai visitors by travel intent — with awareness creative featuring Staycae properties, mid-funnel retargeting of website visitors, and bottom-funnel direct booking offers.
Snapchat awareness campaigns
Snapchat Story Ads targeting UAE and GCC residents for staycation demand — reaching Staycae's younger audience segment at significantly lower CPMs than Meta.
Full-funnel attribution
Custom UTM tracking and attribution modelling to understand the true contribution of each channel to direct bookings — separating organic, paid search, and paid social touchpoints.