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Key Takeaways
Research which events actually drive demand in your market: Chamber and tourism calendars list everything, but ’yoga with Susan in the park’ isn’t pulling travelers from 200 miles away. Mustang Week, bike weeks, and a golf tournament that draws tens of thousands of players absolutely do. No distant marketer knows your market like you do — turn up your local knowledge and build the strategy around events that actually move occupancy.
Match your marketing timeline to each event’s booking window: Some events are known months out — golf tournaments return to the same courses on published dates. Others resolve late: nobody knows which two cities send Super Bowl fans until the championship games end two weeks before, and World Cup matchups firm up round by round. Know when demand can actually materialize before you spend.
Know whether an event gives you pricing power or just visibility: Some events are marketing anchors — you’re just getting in front of bookings that were coming anyway. Others move rate: a 50-home Arizona client sold out for the Super Bowl and admitted she could have charged 20-30% more. Know which game you’re playing before you set rates and budget.
Launch cheap event landing pages and let results pick the winners: With AI drafting the content, you can stand up an event page in 10-15 minutes — ideally a search results page with the event dates pre-filled so visitors land looking at real availability. Do one or two a month, 20-30 a year, run small ads at them, then double down on the 10-12 that drive interest and drop the rest.
Don’t let keyword tools veto event content: Ahrefs and Semrush are built for steady high-volume terms, not seasonal spikes — an event term showing 30 searches a month can surge when it counts. Do the actual search instead: if Facebook events and Eventbrite URLs are ranking, an established vacation rental domain can take that spot fast. And if competitors already built the page, they’re capturing demand you’re not.
Outbound to past guests before the event — response rates will surprise you: An Outer Banks client texts past guests who haven’t rebooked: ’Just curious if you’re doing an Outer Banks trip this year?’ signed with a first name. That one message gets 10-20% of dead-cold CRM contacts — no opens, no clicks all year — to respond. Run the same play 60-90 days before an event guests attended last time. Sometimes the answer is a booking; sometimes it’s a hospitality moment worth having anyway.
Your property management system is one of your best marketing tools: Tag why guests travel — which event brought them — and event marketing gets dramatically easier. Long-running events pull the same people back year after year, so cross-reference booking patterns against the event calendar, then trigger email, SMS, and call follow-ups off those tags as the next edition approaches.
Sell value-add packages, not $20 discounts: Knocking $10 off the nightly rate isn’t marketing — it’s cut and hope. Value-add packages create real excitement, support higher rates, and make your ads concrete: one client’s World Cup package sells at $4-5k, well above normal rates, because the whole trip is bundled at one price.
- Free guided fly-fishing weekend for the first eight bookings on historically slow dates
- Flat-rate weekend pricing that drops cleanly into a Meta ad
- Stay plus airport transfer, stadium rides, and a restaurant gift card at one price
- Promo codes tied to a perk, not a discount
Cheap branded merch buys memories and repeat bookings: T-shirts, mugs, cups, even dog kerchiefs — a few dollars per guest that makes the stay memorable, travels home with them, and feeds a loop of reviews, social posts, and rebookings. The perceived cost stops most managers; the long-term return more than pays it off.
What We Cover In This Episode
Conrad and Paul make the case that events — from World Cup matches and golf tournaments to bike weeks and local festivals — are underused booking opportunities. They cover finding the events that actually drive demand, spinning up landing pages and value-add packages around them, and re-engaging past guests before the next one hits.
