What We Do
Ads on your hotel’s name and your area, so the guest who already wants you books direct - not through an OTA that bids on your brand.
Your direct rate next to the OTAs on Google Hotels, Trivago, Tripadvisor and Kayak, at the moment travelers compare prices.
Ads that reach travelers planning a trip to your area, with creative that gets them to click and book direct.
Short video that shows the stay and puts your hotel in front of travelers who don’t know it yet.
Pricing Models
Sail pay-per-stay
Retainer agency
OTA (Booking.com, Expedia)
Pay per booking (CPA)
What you pay
A commission on net room revenue of completed stays - no tax, no add-ons
A fixed monthly fee, often $1,500 to $30,000+
18-25% commission on each booking
A fee or percentage per booking, sometimes next to a license fee
Who pays for the ads
Sail funds 100% of the ad spend
You, on top of the fee
The OTA, paid back through its commission
Depends on the vendor
If nothing books
You pay nothing
You still pay the fee
You pay nothing
You pay nothing, but license fees can still apply
If the guest cancels
You pay nothing - we bill only after checkout
You still pay the fee
Depends on your cancellation policy
Billed at booking, so a cancelled booking can still cost you
Who owns the guest
You - guests book direct on your website
You
The OTA holds the guest relationship
You
If Sail didn’t drive the stay, Sail doesn’t get paid.
The Math
What you pay an OTA for that one stay at 18-25% commission.
Extra $450 stays you need each month just to match a $3,000 retainer - before you spend a dollar on ads.
What you pay Sail when a booking cancels, no-shows or never happens.
Example math with a $150 rate and a $3,000 example retainer. Your rate, length of stay and fees will differ.
Built by operators: Sail’s team has run hotels and restaurants in Miami, New York and New Jersey for 20 years. The Sofia (211 keys) doubled its direct bookings with Sail, and a 139-key boutique hotel grew direct bookings 65%.
Our Research
publish what they charge for marketing. The other 13 show no marketing fee on their site.
offers a commission paid only after the guest stays - as one plan next to CPM and budget-based fees.
use pay-per-stay as their only pricing model. With Sail Pay Per Stay, every channel is billed only on completed stays.
Method: US Google results from DataForSEO, desktop and mobile, up to three checks a day. Agency websites read on October 15, 2026. We count only prices an agency publishes for its own services.
How to Choose
Sail’s answers: we do; completed stays; nothing; yes; yes; and your account is run by people who have run hotels and restaurants themselves.
FAQ
Most agencies charge a monthly retainer plus your ad spend. Published ranges run from $1,500 to more than $30,000 a month, based on property size, channels and markets. Some take a percentage of ad spend instead. Sail charges no retainer and no upfront fee: we fund the ads and take a commission only on completed stays.
You pay only after a guest that the marketing brought in completes the stay. With Sail, that covers the whole stack - Google Search, Google Hotel Ads and metasearch, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok - and Sail funds the ad spend. Google Ads also has a pay-per-stay commission option for hotel campaigns. That option covers Google’s hotel ads only, and you still manage the campaign yourself.
Our tracking on your website and booking engine ties each booking to the ad that drove it. We bill only once the stay is complete, and only once per stay, even if the guest clicked several of our ads first.
Not with Sail. We bill only on stays that complete. Pay-per-booking (CPA) programs bill when the booking is made, so a later cancellation can still cost you.
You do. Guests book direct on your website and your booking engine, so the guest relationship and the next stay are yours. That is the opposite of an OTA booking.
No. OTAs still fill rooms you can’t fill yourself. The goal is to stop paying 18-25% commission on guests who were already looking for you, and to reach new guests directly.
Yes. Management companies with independent hotels in their portfolio are a strong fit: each independent property can run on pay-per-stay, with no retainer.
In days. We connect your booking engine, set up the campaigns and go live. Then our AI moves spend to the ads that turn into stays.
Both. Sail is run by hotel operators and uses its own technology to tie ad spend to the stays it produces. You get a team that runs the campaigns, not a dashboard to run yourself.
30 minutes, no pitch deck. We look at your real booking and ad data, and you keep the findings either way.
hi@sailtech.ai
36 East 31st Street, New York, NY 10016
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