Michaël Bélanger
Vice President of Commercial Strategy at GCP Hospitality
About GCP Hospitality
GCP Hospitality is a hotel management company operating a diverse portfolio of independent hotels and hostels across the Asia-Pacific region. With properties ranging from luxury resorts to brand-forward hostels, GCP operates a highly adaptive, analytics-first approach to revenue and distribution. While direct bookings are an important goal, GCP’s strategy centers on sustainable growth, healthy channel mix, and guest retention.
To support that vision, GCP partners with Triptease for its New Zealand-based hostel brand, Haka House, leveraging Triptease’s metasearch and messaging tools to build a forward-thinking direct booking strategy. We spoke with Vice President of Commercial Strategy, Michaël Bélanger, and Cluster Revenue Manager, Leo Fyot, to learn more.
A balanced approach to direct bookings
GCP takes a strategic approach when it comes to driving direct bookings. They appreciate the role that OTAs can play in a guest discovering a property, but they don’t want to rely too much on these third parties.
“We don’t necessarily set a specific target for any of our properties. We’re mostly focusing on year-on-year growth. That comes down to retention, building loyalty, and making sure that we’ve got the best rates and best content on our direct channel.”
Michaël Bélanger, Vice President of Commercial Strategy
GCP’s goals differ by market and property. In key leisure destinations, they aim for direct bookings to make up 20–30% of total reservations, while recognizing that some remote or once-in-a-lifetime destinations will likely see more OTA-driven demand. For their hostel properties, they often depend on OTAs to bring the guest to the first destination, and then try to convert the guest direct for their next stay.
“In New Zealand, there are some places that are the first point of contact for travelers, and we’d often depend on OTAs for that first booking. So if a guest books through Booking.com for their Auckland stay, we’d like them to book direct in Taupo or Queenstown or Rotorua.”
Michaël Bélanger, Vice President of Commercial Strategy
They choose to work with Triptease to make sure that guests who come through OTAs continue as direct bookers.
Metasearch: Ensuring that the final booking comes direct
Metasearch plays a foundational role in GCP’s direct booking strategy. While many guests first discover GCP properties through OTAs, metasearch becomes essential later in the booking journey—particularly for rate-aware guests comparing prices across platforms.
Triptease’s AI-powered algorithm takes into account important levers on metasearch like rate parity, location, and length of stay, and bids higher in auctions where the searcher is most likely to convert. By bidding smarter, Triptease Metasearch drives an 18x ROAS for GCP hospitality and makes up 15% of direct revenue across the portfolio.
“Knowing that Triptease is making sure that bidding is optimized for when we’re in parity or cheaper than the OTAs really means that our money is well spent, and we’re not wasting money on auctions we won’t win.”
Michaël Bélanger, Vice President of Commercial Strategy
Triptease’s ability to showcase rates effectively in the metasearch auction for single beds in a shared room (something that not all metasearch providers are equipped to do) is also key to GCP’s success when promoting its hostel properties.
“Metasearch for hostels is a bit tricky, and we’ve been able to work closely with Triptease’s product team to make sure that we really get the bang for our buck in the metasearch auction.”
Michaël Bélanger, Vice President of Commercial Strategy
Website personalization that adapts to GCP’s goals
GCP uses Triptease Messages with nuance, depending on the unique needs of the property and its audience.
Exit messaging in particular has proved extremely effective, driving over $170k in revenue by offering a discount to customers who look likely to leave the website without booking. Overall, these messages have over a 5% conversion rate.
“Exit messaging is an obvious one where, if you know the guest is about to leave your site, you definitely want to keep that line of communication open.”
Michaël Bélanger, Vice President of Commercial Strategy
With messages being used by multiple team members, both at the corporate level and at individual properties, the overall ease of the platform has proven invaluable.
"It’s very easy to create messages, and the information in the dashboard is great.”
Michaël Bélanger, Vice President of Commercial Strategy
A platform that drives collaboration and adoption
One of the standout benefits of Triptease for GCP isn’t just performance: it’s usability. GCP is a large group, and while much of the revenue and marketing team sits at corporate level, property-level employees are also key to direct booking success.
From on-property teams to senior leadership, the intuitive nature of the Triptease platform has made it accessible to all levels at GCP. Dashboards and data are easy to interpret, and adoption has been high even among teams without technical or marketing backgrounds.
“It’s been very easy for us to encourage adoption at the hotel level because the system is intuitive. Even a GM can just look and see how much business they’re getting. In many ways it’s far better than Google Analytics, which gives too much information for someone not trained in digital marketing. We use it regularly in our performance reviews.”
Michaël Bélanger, Vice President of Commercial Strategy
Looking ahead
As GCP continues to expand its reach across the APAC region, its team remains focused on optimizing its channel mix, building loyalty, and adapting its distribution strategy to each unique market. With Triptease as a strategic partner—not just a tech provider—GCP has the tools, flexibility, and support it needs to scale direct bookings thoughtfully.
