Why You Should Stop Paying for Marketing You Can’t Measure

If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it, and you’re basically donating money to “marketing activity”. You might call it “branding”, “presence”, or “keeping up with competitors”, but if nobody can show you what came back, it’s not a business expense. It’s a hope. And hope is expensive in tourism.

Most owners I meet aren’t tech people, and that’s fine. You run a property, deal with staff, guests, repairs, suppliers, and the season. You shouldn’t need to become a tracking specialist to protect your budget. But you do deserve one simple thing: a believable answer to “What did we earn from this?”

Why you keep paying for marketing you can’t measure

The trap: reports that look professional but don’t answer the only question

You get a monthly PDF full of charts. Traffic is up. Impressions are up. Engagement is up. Someone circles a number in red and says “great progress”, then the invoice arrives like clockwork.

Then you ask, calmly, “How many bookings did this create?” and the room gets foggy. You hear phrases like “attribution is hard”, “the customer journey is complex”, “it supports the funnel”, “it’s long-term”. All of that can be true. It can also be a way to avoid accountability.

In real operations, you don’t run your housekeeping on vibes. You don’t buy linen because the supplier sent you a nice graph. You check occupancy, costs, complaints, and the actual work done. Marketing should be the same. If it feels uncomfortable to demand clarity, we are not for you.

Tourism makes this worse because urgency hides waste

Tourism has seasonality, and seasonality creates panic. When bookings slow down, everyone wants to “do something” fast. That urgency is where bad marketing survives, because activity looks like progress.

Owners end up paying for “being active” during the season, then cutting the wrong things in the winter. The sad part is that the good campaigns often get paused first, because they don’t look exciting. The bad ones keep running because they produce noise and screenshots.

If you’ve ever said “I don’t know what’s working but we can’t stop now”, you’re already paying the tax. It’s not just money. It’s stress, doubt, and the feeling you’re being played.

Not being tech-savvy is not the problem

The problem is accepting a system where you can’t verify outcomes. You don’t need to know how pixels work. You need a simple chain you can believe.

Money in. Real actions out. And ideally bookings.

If someone can’t explain that chain without hiding behind jargon, it’s not because you’re not smart. It’s because the system isn’t built to be checked. And anything that can’t be checked eventually becomes a place where budgets go to die.

What “measurement” actually means (plain words)

Measurement doesn’t mean perfect attribution. Nobody sane promises that, especially with privacy changes and multiple devices. What you want is a reporting model that is consistent and honest enough to steer decisions.

You are not asking for magic. You’re asking for proof that the activity connects to outcomes in a way that makes business sense. If you spend more, you should be able to see more of something real. If you spend less, you should be able to predict what you lose.

A good measurement setup answers questions without drama. It doesn’t require five meetings to interpret. It doesn’t change the definitions every month. It doesn’t depend on one person “reading the data” like a fortune teller.

For background on why tracking has gotten messier, you can look at how cookies and privacy changes affect measurement, but don’t let that become an excuse for zero clarity:  https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/12017362

Traffic is not a result. Followers are not a result.

Traffic is a cost, not a result. It can be useful, but only if it leads somewhere. The same for followers. A page with 20,000 followers and empty rooms is not a marketing asset. It’s a decoration you pay to maintain.

A result, for a small tourism business, is something you can bank:
Bookings.
Enquiries that turn into bookings.
Phone calls that lead to bookings.
Direct revenue you can tie to a campaign, a page, or at least a channel.

If the reporting stops at “more visits”, you are paying for movement, not progress. It’s like celebrating that more people walked past your reception, without knowing if anyone checked in.

The quiet danger: you start making the wrong decisions

When you can’t measure, you do two things that hurt you:
You keep bad campaigns because they look busy.
You pause good campaigns because you can’t see proof.

This is how budgets drift into waste. Not in one big scandal, but in small monthly invoices that feel too annoying to fight. After a season or two, you look back and realize you spent a serious amount without learning anything.

The worst part is the false safety. You think “we’re doing marketing”, so you feel protected. Then a competitor improves their booking engine, or Google changes something, and suddenly your “presence” doesn’t pay the bills.

What changes when measurement is done correctly

When measurement is in place, marketing stops being a debate and becomes operations. You stop arguing about opinions and start making adjustments based on what you can see.

You get a weekly rhythm where the numbers mean something. Not a thick report. A small set of signals tied to outcomes. Owners usually notice this after the first season: decisions get calmer. You don’t chase shiny ideas as much. You don’t get bullied by “experts” who talk fast.

Measurement also changes how you spend. You stop spreading budget evenly “just in case”. You put money where it produces bookings or qualified enquiries. You cut what doesn’t, without guilt.

And it changes your internal conversations. Your receptionist stops being “the person who answers calls” and becomes part of the measurement loop. Your booking engine stops being “the website thing” and becomes the cash register it really is.

What it does not change (so you don’t expect miracles)

Measurement doesn’t fix a weak product. If your photos are poor, your rooms are tired, your reviews are bad, or your pricing is out of touch, tracking won’t save you. It will just show you the truth faster.

Measurement also doesn’t remove seasonality. Halkidiki will still have peaks and gaps. Thessaloniki will still have business travel patterns and weekends. What it does is stop you from guessing inside those patterns.

It also doesn’t eliminate marketing risk. You can still run a campaign that fails. The difference is you see it early, you learn why, and you don’t keep feeding it because someone says “trust the process”.

Why I’m strict about this (and why you should be too)

I learned this the expensive way, spending my own money in my own tourism businesses. When it’s your euro, you don’t accept “we’re building awareness” as a monthly explanation. You check calls, enquiries, booking steps, cancellations, and where the guests actually came from.

I’ve seen measurement ignored for years, then the owner finally asks for proof. It usually breaks right there. Not because tracking is impossible, but because nobody built the system to be accountable. And once you ask for accountability, the relationship gets tense.

That’s why I’m strict. Not because I love numbers. Because I don’t like gambling with budgets that should pay salaries and repairs.

The owner-level questions you should be able to answer

You don’t need dashboards with 40 widgets. You need answers you can use. If you’re paying for marketing, you should be able to ask these questions and get clear responses, without defensiveness.

• Which channels brought bookings or qualified enquiries last week, not last quarter?
• Which pages on the site actually convert, and which ones leak people out?
• Which campaign or keyword is wasting spend right now?
• What is the cost per enquiry and cost per booking by channel, in plain euros?
• What must be fixed on the site or booking flow before adding more budget?
• How many calls came from marketing, and how many turned into real reservations?
• What changed since the previous period that explains the movement, not just “seasonality”?

If your provider can’t answer these, it doesn’t mean they’re evil. It means the work is not tied to outcomes. And if it’s not tied to outcomes, it will always drift toward activity, because activity is easy to sell.

What a believable chain looks like

For a small hotel or rentals, a believable chain is usually simple:
A guest searches or clicks.
They land on a page that matches the promise.
They take a trackable action: call, enquiry form, WhatsApp message, booking engine start.
Some of those actions become reservations.

You don’t need to know every step for every guest. But you need to see enough of the chain to make decisions. If you can only see the first step, you’re blind. If you can only see the last step, you’re guessing about what created it.

This is why “we got 10,000 impressions” means nothing by itself. Impressions don’t clean rooms. Bookings do.

For context on why conversion matters more than raw traffic, this is a useful reference point: https://www.semrush.com/blog/conversion-rate/

Where measurement usually breaks (so you can spot it early)

It usually breaks in boring places, not in fancy ad accounts. Small operational cracks that ruin the chain.

One common break: the phone rings, but nobody logs where the call came from. So marketing “doesn’t work” on paper, even if it fills rooms. Another break: the booking engine is a black box, so you can’t see which campaigns start bookings versus which ones bounce.

Another break is mixed access. Two agencies touch the same accounts, tags, or site. Nobody owns the truth, so everyone argues. We’ve seen this fail many times, and it always ends the same. The owner pays twice and still doesn’t know what’s real.

And sometimes the break is the website itself. Slow pages, confusing room types, weak calls to action, or an enquiry form that feels like a tax return. Google can send you traffic all day and you’ll still lose it at the door. Google even publishes why speed and experience matter, but owners rarely see it connected to money: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/page-experience

Common excuses you should stop accepting

You will hear these lines if you push for measurement. Some are half-true, but they are not a reason to stay blind.

“Attribution is impossible.”
No. Perfect attribution is impossible. Useful measurement is very possible.

“It’s branding.”
Fine. Then define what branding means in your business. Is it more direct searches? More repeat guests? Higher conversion on your name? If nobody defines it, “branding” becomes a hiding place.

“Tourism is different.”
Yes, tourism is different. That’s why you need cleaner reporting, not weaker reporting.

“Google changed everything.”
Google changes often. That’s not news. Serious systems are built to adapt, not to excuse.

If someone uses these excuses to avoid tying spend to outcomes, you’re not buying marketing. You’re buying comfort for the provider.

When this is a bad fit

Some owners don’t actually want measurement. They say they do, but they don’t want the consequences. If this feels uncomfortable, we are not for you.

It’s a bad fit if you want to keep spending without accountability because it feels safer. It’s also a bad fit if you want to judge everything by feelings, or if you change prices, availability, and offers weekly but expect marketing to stay stable.

And it’s a bad fit if multiple people have access to your marketing systems and nobody is willing to lock it down. Measurement needs one source of truth. If access is shared like a village key, the data becomes a political argument.

What you can do this week without becoming a tech person

You don’t need to touch tools. You need to change the conversation.

Next time you get a report, ask one question and stay quiet: “How many bookings or qualified enquiries did this create, and how do you know?” If the answer is “we can’t know”, ask “Then what are we optimizing for, exactly?”

If they answer with charts, bring it back to operations: “Okay, but what did we earn?” It’s a simple question. The discomfort you feel is the point. That’s where waste hides.

If you want a neutral reference for what modern analytics is trying to do, read Google’s own explanation of events and conversions. Not to learn it, just to see that this is normal business practice: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9322688

What we mean by “measurable” at UnderLab

Measurable means your marketing activity is tied to actions that matter to your business, and the reporting is understandable without translation. It means you can look at a week and decide what to keep, what to cut, and what to fix.

It also means we don’t pretend every booking has a neat label. But we do insist on a chain that holds up under questions. If it doesn’t hold up, we treat it as a risk, not as “normal marketing fog”.

We also set boundaries. We don’t run social media campaigns. We don’t optimize accounts if other agencies have access. And we don’t keep spending into a broken booking flow just because the season is hot. That’s how owners get burned, then swear off marketing for years.

Make the decision like a business owner, not a hopeful customer

This isn’t about being cynical. It’s about being in control. Every euro you spend without measurement is a euro you can’t improve. It might work by accident, but you won’t know how to repeat it. It might fail quietly, and you’ll keep paying because nobody can prove it.

If you’re tired of “activity” and want a simple reporting model tied to bookings and revenue in 2026, we can meet at your location and define what “real results” means for your property. We’ll keep it owner-level, not tool-level, and you’ll leave knowing what you should be able to see each week.

Not sure where to start? Contact our local team for friendly, personalised advice and to arrange a meeting in person.

No shortcuts. No noise. Data analysis. Use only what works.