Tuesday: search demand for a weekend three weeks out starts to climb.
Friday: someone spots it in a report.
Monday: it reaches the weekly commercial meeting.
Wednesday: the budget change goes live.
That is eight days. The decision was right, but the timing cost the revenue.
This is the hidden line item in hotel commercial performance. It never appears on a P&L. It shows up in every under-priced peak night, and in every OTA commission paid on a date your hotel direct booking strategy should have won.
Below: why speed now belongs inside your commercial strategy, where delays cost the most, and how to shorten the gap between signal and action.
Why Decision Speed Is Now a Commercial Strategy Question
Most hotel teams assume they have to choose between deciding fast and deciding well. The evidence says otherwise.
In a McKinsey global survey, only 20 percent of respondents said their organisations excel at decision making. (McKinsey)
McKinsey also found that respondents who reported fast decision making were 3.2 times more likely to say their decisions were also high quality. (McKinsey)
The hardest category is cross-functional decisions, such as pricing and sales planning. Only 34 percent of respondents said their organisation made these decisions both well and on time.
That last category describes most hotel commercial calls. Rate, spend and channel mix all cut across teams.
In hotel revenue management, the stakes are higher than in most industries:
A room night is perishable.
A decision made after the stay date is worth nothing.
So decision speed is not a process question to delegate. It sits at the centre of your commercial strategy.
The Booking Window Is Shorter Than Your Meeting Cycle
Guests decide within a month
SiteMinder's 2025 data shows the average booking window reached 32.15 days. (SiteMinder)
A weekly review cycle uses up nearly a quarter of that window before anything changes.
A fortnightly cycle uses up almost half.
Search is moving closer to the stay date
Lighthouse reports that the global share of hotel searches made within 28 days of the stay rose by 9% between Q1 2023 and Q4 2025. (Lighthouse)
In the US, these short-window searches grew from 32% to 46% of queries over the same period.
Guests are still researching. They are just committing later.
The implication for hotel revenue management is direct. The time you have to act on a signal is shrinking. Most hotel marketing strategy calendars have not adjusted to that.
Four Places Delayed Decisions Quietly Cost You
1. Paid media that keeps spending after demand has moved
Google's own guidance says that when a campaign is limited by budget, its ads aren't showing as often as they could. (Google Ads Help)
On dates where demand is rising, a capped budget hands that demand to whoever bids next. Often, that is an OTA.
The reverse problem costs just as much: budget still running on dates that are already close to full.
That spend buys bookings you would have received anyway.
In hotel digital marketing, a budget reviewed once a week is wrong for most of that week.
2. Direct share handed to OTAs on peak dates
Skift reports that direct bookings typically cost hotels about 4% to 5% of revenue to acquire, compared with OTA commissions above 15%. (Skift)
Peak dates carry the highest room rates, so the gap is largest in absolute terms on exactly those dates.
A late call on brand search coverage, or on showing the direct-rate benefit, pushes those bookings into the more expensive channel.
A hotel direct booking strategy that is reviewed monthly cannot protect the dates that matter most.
3. Distribution cost that compounds
Skift Research estimates that hotels paid more than $75 billion in indirect distribution costs in 2023. (Skift)
No single late decision moves a figure that large.
A habit of late decisions does, one booking at a time.
4. Rate and spend decided on different days
Revenue sets the rate on Monday. Marketing adjusts spend on Thursday.
For three days, the hotel prices for one demand picture and advertises for another.
We covered this split in One Date, Two Tabs: one stay date should drive both decisions.
When rate and spend move separately, hotel revenue management and hotel digital marketing end up correcting each other instead of reinforcing each other. Hotel commercial performance pays for the difference.
Where the Delay Actually Comes From
The signals usually exist. The delay builds up in three places.
Data in four places
Ad platforms, analytics, the PMS and rate tools each hold one piece of the picture.
Someone stitches them together, usually once a week.
We explained why this has become a board-level issue in Siloed Hotel Data.
No owner for the cross-team call
Marketing owns clicks. Revenue owns rates.
The decision between them often belongs to nobody. For example: "cut spend on this date, it's nearly sold."
Decisions without an owner wait for a meeting.
Approval chains built for monthly budgets
Many hotels approve spend changes on the same cycle they use for annual budgets.
That works for a quarterly plan. It fails for a demand shift that lasts nine days.
Since the hotel marketing plan uses a monthly approval process, it is likely that the response comes after the booking has been made by the customer.
How to Shorten the Signal-to-Action Gap
Name an owner for each lever
One person owns paid spend by stay date.
One person owns rate, usually whoever leads hotel revenue management.
One person settles the call when the two conflict.
Write all three names down. Unclear ownership is where the days go.
Agree thresholds in advance
Decide now what happens when pickup on a date passes a set level.
In hotel digital marketing, that might mean a pre-approved budget shift once cost per booking crosses an agreed limit.
Routine moves then happen the same day, with no meeting needed.
Keep meetings for decisions that genuinely need debate.
Review by stay date, at least weekly
Campaign reports show what was spent. Stay-date views show what that spend bought.
Plan your hotel marketing strategy and your hotel direct booking strategy against the same stay-date calendar.
pulse. is dhi's Integrated Commercial System, built to shorten the time between a signal and a decision.
It brings Google Ads, Meta, GA4 and your property data into one view.
It puts the next spend decision in a queue, with the evidence attached.
You approve, dismiss or undo. Nothing changes without your approval.
It does not replace your revenue manager or your hotel digital marketing team. It gives them one place to decide, and a record of what they decided.
Every Day Has a Price
A delayed decision is still a decision. It is just made by the market, on the market's terms.
The hotels that hold rate and direct share through the next demand shift won't be the ones with the most data. They will be the ones whose commercial strategy, hotel marketing strategy and hotel direct booking strategy can act in the same week the signal appears.
That is where hotel commercial performance is won.
With roots in the world’s leading hospitality brands, we bring proven, best-in-class solutions and global insight to every client we serve.
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