The Money You Spend On Being Found
Listings, boosted posts, promoter fees and the thing somebody set up years ago. Most venues cannot say which of them brings anyone, because nobody asks the one question that would answer it.
You are paying for several ways to be found. Ask which of them brought last month's new guests and the honest answer is that nobody knows.
It is not a hard question. It is one that nobody asks the guests.
Why attribution feels impossible
People do not arrive from one thing. They saw a post, a friend mentioned it, they walked past. ⚠️ All true, and it does not make the question unanswerable — it makes precision unavailable, which is different.
The measurement lives with the platform. Impressions, reach, clicks. None of which is a person in your room.
The gap between click and door is unbridged. ⚠️ This is the actual problem, and it is closed by asking, not by better analytics.
The one question
At booking, or on arrival, for first-time guests:
"How did you hear about us?"
Ask it. Write the answer down. ⚠️ That is the entire method, and it beats every platform's own reporting because it measures people who arrived rather than people who scrolled.
It will not be complete. Some will not remember, some will say "the internet." Partial data on arrivals beats complete data on impressions.
What it produces after a month
A ranking that is usually a surprise. ⚠️ The largest source is frequently the one costing nothing — word of mouth, or the listing somebody set up years ago and forgot.
A line item that produces nobody. There is nearly always one, and it is being paid monthly.
A sense of what a new guest costs you. Rough is fine. It is the first time the number exists at all.
What to do with it
Stop the one producing nothing. ⚠️ After two months of data, not one — a quiet month is not evidence.
Put more into the one that works, if it can absorb it. Some cannot — a listing is a listing, and doubling the spend does nothing.
And protect the free one. ⚠️ If word of mouth is your largest source, the things that produce it are your marketing budget — the service, the recognition, the reason people mention you. They are rarely thought of that way.
The promoter question
Where somebody is paid per head or per night.
Ask whether those guests return. ⚠️ Count it at sixty days. A promoter who brings a full room of people who never come back is a room-filling service, not a marketing channel — both are legitimate purchases, and you should know which one you are making.
What not to measure
Reach, impressions, followers. ⚠️ None of these has ever bought a drink. They are useful to a platform selling you advertising and to nobody else.
If a number cannot be connected to somebody in your room, it is not a marketing measurement.
You do not need complete attribution
Trying for complete a year passes and nothing is measured
Trying for one thing you can stop answerable in a month
⚠️ The goal is not a pie chart. It is finding one line of spending you can reduce without anything happening, and that is a much lower bar.
Why complete attribution is impossible anyway
Guests do not experience one source they experience four, over months
The thing that worked is rarely the thing they touched last
Asked too late they invent a plausible answer
⇒ ⚠️ The third is the one that quietly poisons the data. People are being helpful, not dishonest, and an invented answer looks exactly like a real one.
The question, and when to ask it
On arrival they remember, and they are not busy
At payment they have moved on
Afterwards you get a reconstruction
⚠️ Timing decides whether the answer is worth anything. ⇒ And name who asks. "Everybody" means nobody, reliably.
One follow-up, and only one
"Online" is not an answer ask what they saw
⇒ ⚠️ Stop at the second question. A third turns a friendly exchange into an interrogation, and the guest remembers that instead of the night.
What a month of answers actually produces
Not a reliable percentage split
But a list of sources nobody mentioned at all
⚠️ Thirty answers with zero mentions of a source tells you it is not where to add money next. That is a weak conclusion, and it is an actionable one, which is more than the strong conclusion you were waiting for.
Acting on it without guessing
Stop it entirely you learn nothing if numbers also moved for other reasons
Halve it, watch a smaller signal, but an interpretable one
⚠️ Change one thing at a time. Two reductions in the same month leave you unable to attribute the result — which is the problem you started with.
Referrals are the cheapest and least visible
Not counted because nobody asks
Not grown because it is not counted
⚠️ Word of mouth rises and falls without you knowing, and the only reason it is invisible is that the question is never asked.
What not to measure at all
Views, impressions, follows they move without your nights moving
⚠️ If a number cannot change what you do, do not collect it. ⇒ Collecting it is not free — it costs the attention of whoever reads the report, and that attention is the scarcest thing you have.
Three to hold
New guests by stated source, monthly. ⚠️ From asking, not from analytics.
Cost per new guest, by source. Rough division. It settles most arguments immediately.
Sources producing zero over two months. Cancel them. There is always at least one, and it has been running for years.
Where the record has to sit
The answer to "how did you hear about us" is worth nothing in a person's memory. It has to go on the guest record at the moment it is given, or it is a pleasant exchange that produces no information.
tasteck keeps guest records with the booking, so where someone came from can sit alongside whether they came back.
You are not wasting money. You are spending it without the one piece of information that would tell you where — and it costs one question at the door.
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