Direct bookings no one can defend
At Palladium, 40% of inbound traffic had no source or medium and 35% of the bookings GA4 recorded had no channel. Brand teams, departments and agencies came to the same meeting with different numbers.
Industry · Hotels
Every booking confirmed.
Its channel
unknown.
At Palladium Hotel Group, 35% of the bookings GA4 recorded had no channel. Sealmetrics measures the direct-booking path without cookies, keeps the original source when the guest crosses to the booking engine or the payment gateway, and gives the group one channel view it can check against its own booking total.
Booking engines and payment gateways · no cookies · one account for every property · EU-hosted in Dublin
Quick answer
Analytics for hotels is the measurement of the direct-booking website, from the landing page through the availability search, the booking engine and the payment gateway to the confirmation. Sealmetrics does it without cookies or storage on the guest's device, so the analytics does not wait for the consent banner. Each booking is attributed last click to the channel of the session in which it happens, and reported as aggregate totals by channel, campaign, country and property. When the booking engine or the payment gateway runs on another domain, registering it as a passthrough referrer keeps the original source when the guest returns. Palladium Hotel Group found that 35% of the bookings GA4 recorded had no channel; Dreamplace Hotels attributes 15–20% more sales than its previous tool, checked against its CRM total. Bookings made on an OTA's own site never load your website, so Sealmetrics cannot see or attribute them.
Where the booking path breaks
Five steps to a booking.
Each one can lose the source.
A hotel booking crosses more systems than a shop checkout: meta-search, a booking engine that often lives on another domain, a payment gateway, 3-D Secure. The channel has to survive all of them.
| Step | What consent-based analytics loses | What Sealmetrics does | What you configure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arrival from meta-search, paid search or social | The guest who rejects the banner, and the click that brought them | Reads UTMs and click IDs from the landing URL, banner or no banner | Consistent UTMs on Google Hotel Ads, meta-search and paid links |
| Availability search | The strongest intent signal, for the same visitors | Records the search as a microconversion, with dates and guests as properties | One microconversion on the search form |
| Jump to the booking engine | A cross-domain session that relies on cookies accepted on both sides | Keeps the session on a subdomain; on another domain, a passthrough referrer keeps the source on return | The engine on your subdomain, or its domain registered through the API |
| Payment gateway and 3-D Secure | The return, recorded as a referral from the gateway | Recognises major gateways from a built-in list | Any gateway not on the list, registered as a passthrough referrer |
| Booking confirmation | The booking itself stays, but with no channel to credit | Records the conversion with revenue, currency and booking properties | One conversion call after the tracker has loaded |
Each booking is credited by last-click attribution within the session, from the UTM parameters or the referrer of the landing. How revenue is then read by channel, campaign and creative is covered in campaign revenue attribution.
What the gap costs a hotel group
The rooms are sold.
The channel credit is not.
The booking engine and the CRM know every reservation. The damage is in the budget decisions made on the share of them that analytics cannot credit.
Paid media judged on its own report
Dreamplace attributes 15–20% more sales than its previous tool, and Meta and Google were the first budgets to move. In the words of Eduardo Martin, Analytics & Campaigns: “You shift toward a channel or strategy you were not seeing before.”
Display bought on volume, not intent
Palladium rebuilt its Display & Video 360 buying around Cost-per-Search, using availability searches in the booking engine as the intent signal. Display Cost-per-Search improved by 165%.
Set it up on a hotel website
Map the booking path.
Then compare with your bookings.
The work is in the booking engine and the gateways, not in the tag. The longer version, with PMS reconciliation patterns, is in the guide to cookieless analytics for hotels.
Install the tracker on every page
Add the Sealmetrics tracker to every page of the hotel website, including the booking confirmation page. Serving it from a subdomain of your own through an A record is optional and makes the requests far less likely to be blocked.
Keep the booking engine in the session
If the engine runs on a subdomain of your site, add the tracker to its pages. If it runs on the provider's own domain, register that domain as a passthrough referrer through the Sealmetrics API, so a guest who comes back within the session keeps the original source.
Register the payment gateways
Major payment gateways are recognised from a built-in list. Register any other gateway or 3-D Secure domain your booking flow passes through, so the return is not credited to the gateway.
Record the search and the booking
Fire a microconversion on the availability search and a conversion on the confirmation, with revenue, currency and properties such as check-in date, nights, room type and property. The tracker must load before the conversion call.
Compare with your booking total
Compare the same period, timezone and currency with the booking engine or CRM total, leaving out OTA, phone, group and walk-in bookings and cancellations. Keep GA4 running over a full booking cycle before moving budget.
Who uses it in a hotel group
One measurement layer.
Four teams reading it.
Nobody has to give up their tools. What changes is which number settles the discussion about channels.
Direct sales
A channel view agencies and brands accept.
Palladium uses Sealmetrics as the neutral reference that brand teams, departments and agencies read the same way.
One number for every teamRevenue management
Booking window and market by channel.
With check-in date sent as a booking property, bookings can be read by days to arrival and by country next to the channel that produced them.
Conversion tracking without cookiesPaid media and agencies
Budget moved on reconciled data.
Dreamplace compares attributed sales with the CRM total, then moves investment toward the channels the previous stack undercounted.
Campaign revenue attributionLegal and DPO
Analytics that stores nothing on the guest's device.
No cookies, no device storage and visitor data hosted in Dublin, with the documents a hotel group's DPO asks for.
Demonstrate complianceMeasured in hotel groups
“The data Sealmetrics delivers is agnostic, unbiased and neutral. There's no black box.”
Toni Andújar · Digital & Direct Sales Director · Palladium Hotel Group
Two hotel groups run Sealmetrics next to their existing stack. Palladium uses it as the reference brand, departments and agencies accept. Dreamplace, after almost two years, uses it to move paid-media budget, checked against its CRM total.
of the bookings GA4 recorded had no channel
Palladium Hotel GroupRead the case
improvement in Display Cost-per-Search after rebuilding the DV360 model
Palladium Hotel GroupRead the case
more sales attributed than the previous tool, against the CRM total
Dreamplace HotelsRead the case
What it does not do
It measures your website.
Not the whole distribution mix.
These limits come from where a booking happens. Why a complete count of your own website still matters is argued on complete data.
— OTA bookings are out of reach
A booking made on Booking.com, Expedia or another OTA's own site never loads your website, so it has no session to attribute. The OTA extranet stays the source for that channel.
— Bookings with no web session
Phone, call-centre, group, event and walk-in bookings have no visit behind them. Leave them out of the comparison.
— An engine you cannot tag
If the booking engine runs on the provider's domain and never returns the guest to a page on yours, the booking cannot be recorded in the browser. Ask the provider for a subdomain or a return to your confirmation page.
— Passthrough referrers are per account
They are managed through the API, with no dashboard screen, and are not inherited when a new brand, market or property opens its own account.
— Reconciliation is on totals
Booking references are not stored, so you compare totals and channels with the booking engine or CRM, never booking by booking.
— Last click per session
No multi-touch model and no view-through. A guest who returns days later by typing your address is credited to direct.
Common hotel questions
Before you measure
your booking path.
Can Sealmetrics track bookings when the booking engine is on another domain?
Yes, with configuration. If the engine runs on a subdomain of your site, add the tracker to its pages and the search and booking stay in the same session. If it runs on the provider's domain, register that domain as a passthrough referrer through the Sealmetrics API, so a guest who returns within the session keeps the original source, and record the booking on a confirmation page on your domain.
Does Sealmetrics integrate with my PMS or booking engine?
There is no PMS-specific plugin. The booking is a standard conversion event fired on the confirmation page, with revenue, currency and any properties you send, such as check-in date or room type. Totals are then compared with the PMS, booking engine or CRM from the reports, the REST API or the BigQuery export.
How does Sealmetrics handle meta-search and OTA traffic?
Visits from Google Hotel Ads, Trivago or other meta-search sites are credited from their UTMs, click IDs or referrer, like any other channel. A booking made on an OTA's own site never loads your website, so Sealmetrics does not see it; the OTA's extranet stays the source for that channel.
Can a hotel group see every property in one account?
Yes. Each property or brand website is a site inside one organization, one login can open all of them, and members can be limited to the sites they are assigned. Every plan includes unlimited websites and users and a portfolio view. Passthrough referrers, however, are registered per account.
Why are some bookings credited to a payment gateway?
When the guest pays on a gateway or 3-D Secure page and returns to your confirmation, the return can start a new visit with the gateway as referrer. Major gateways are recognised from a built-in list; register any other gateway domain as a passthrough referrer through the API, and the booking keeps its original source.
Can revenue managers analyse last-minute versus early bookings?
Yes, if the booking engine sends the check-in date or days to arrival as a property of the booking conversion. Conversion properties can be broken down by source, medium and campaign, so the booking window can be read next to the channel and the country of the visit.
Do we still need GA4 and the ad pixels?
They can stay. Sealmetrics does not send conversions to Google Ads or Meta, so the ad platforms keep their own consent-based setup for bidding. Run Sealmetrics and GA4 side by side over a full booking cycle, compare both with the booking total, and then decide which one settles budget discussions.
Does a hotel website need a consent banner for Sealmetrics?
Sealmetrics sets no cookies and stores nothing on the guest's device. The ad pixels, chat widgets and retargeting tags on a hotel website usually do, and still need consent. Whether your analytics is exempt from consent depends on your configuration and on your national authority's criteria.
Hotel measurement review
Compare with your booking total.
See the channels you cannot credit today.
Book 30 minutes with the founder. We map your booking path, from the landing page to the booking engine and the payment gateway, and set up the comparison with your booking engine or CRM total.