The challenge: Reclaim market share from OTAs

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Sands Hotels was losing direct booking share to Online Travel Agencies across Asia-Pacific. The pressure was sharpest in Southeast Asia, where OTAs had captured a large share of regional hotel bookings, and were outspending traditional hospitality brands on digital advertising.

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The brand needed a turnaround that would reduce dependency on third-party platforms, rebuild direct demand, and re-establish Sands as a destination of choice for travellers from key feeder markets.

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The strategy

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Our team built an integrated programme across three workstreams.

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Culturally targeted creative

Campaigns were anchored by partnerships with popular celebrities and music tie-ins designed to travel across short-form video platforms. The intent was to generate organic share velocity rather than rely solely on paid impressions.

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Precision targeting-driven optimisation

Drawing on historical booking and engagement data, we identified music/celebrity affinity insights to inform our campaign's KOL strategy while simultaneously restructured product bundles and tested ad formats engineered for viral reach.

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Rapid multilingual A/B testing

Creative variants were deployed across the region with multilingual materials in eight languages, with winning variants scaled for optimised scale across the campaign's markets.

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Results

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Through this strategic overhaul, Sands Hotels reclaimed its position as a leading hospitality brand in the Asia-Pacific market:

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• 5B+ annual user touchpoints
• 7x increase in website traffic and bookings
• 75% surge in ad click-through rates
• 25% reduction in Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Three factors compounded the result. Culturally specific creative travelled organically rather than being pushed; data discipline allowed budget to follow performance in near real time; and language-level testing meant no market was treated as an afterthought. Together, they reduced reliance on OTAs and rebuilt direct demand at scale.

Ready to grow your business? Speak to our team.

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