Roberto Safi
Co-Owner, Safi Hoteles
A family business, built on design and detail
Safi Hoteles is a family-run hospitality group in Monterrey, Mexico. Over the last two decades, the Safi family has grown the brand from a single five-star property into a portfolio of three luxury hotels and a broader mixed-use development—including high-rise residences, restaurants, and shopping spaces. The hotels are stunning and Safi has a penchant for memorable branding, like creating tequila bottles in the shape of their most recent hotel, the Metropolitan.
While Safi has never struggled to stand out in a market dominated by chains, there have definitely been consistent struggles in gaining bookings direct rather than paying high commissions to OTAs.
We spoke to co-owner Roberto Safi about Safi Hoteles’ continuous drive for success, which includes its constant dedication to driving direct bookings.
Building visibility with Metasearch
Triptease-powered metasearch contributed up to 23% of direct website revenue across Safi Hoteles properties in 2024, and up to 30% in Q2 of 2025. Plus, the group received nearly a million impressions on metasearch in 2024–visibility that’s key for an independent hotel group. They're able to work with Triptease on a flexible, commission-based billing model, allowing them to pay only for clicks that actually convert.
Recapturing lost traffic with Retargeting
In March 2025, Safi began running retargeting ads for the first time with Triptease. This new channel for the brand is ensuring that it no longer misses out on bookings from guests who have visited the website and not booked, and has driven incremental value including:
- 6.7% of total website revenue contribution in Q2 2025, their first full quarter using Triptease retargeting
- 49 bookings in the same period that overwise would have been lost to competitors or OTAs.
- Average monthly revenue of over $15,000. That means that Safi Hoteles could be bringing in over $180,000 additional revenue per year by investing in Triptease retargeting.
Owning brand traffic with Paid Search
Safi Hoteles uses Triptease to manage its paid search, ensuring that guests looking for Safi properties on Google search find the direct website first. Paid Search contributed 11% to Safi’s direct website revenue in Q2 2025, making up a key component of the brand’s direct booking stack.
Reducing OTA Dependence, one step at a time
Roberto takes a pragmatic view of OTA partnerships. As an independent brand, he sees value in their ability to reach new customers and markets—but he wants to ensure that the bookings coming via OTAs are incremental, and not targeting guests who would have otherwise chosen to book direct.
So while recognizing the value of OTAs, Safi Hoteles has been working to lower its dependence on them, both in terms of bookings and commercial relationships. For example, Safi managed to lower its Expedia commissions by 1%. That’s the type of seemingly small, but in fact really meaningful change that can make a significant difference to the company’s bottom line.
This type of consistent action has been a success. A few years ago, OTAs made up about 42% of its bookings. Now, that number is down to 35%, and the team is working hard to balance things out even more.
“Being an independent hotel, we don't have the leverage of a chain. So I do think that we do have to support ourselves with the OTAs, and we've been trying to improve our relations with them.”
-Roberto Safi
Upcoming initiatives, inspired by the Direct Booking Summit
Roberto attended Triptease’s Direct Booking Summit 2025 in Dallas with notebook in hand, returning to Monterrey with a list of over 70 tactical changes inspired by sessions and consultations with the Triptease team, especially his one-on-one website audit with staff designer Chimmy Kalu.
Some of the most impactful updates included: replacing the homepage video to better showcase the guest experience, adding video icons to room listings to avoid guests missing out on previously existing(but challenging to find) room tours, and clarifying currency displays to make it clear that prices are in pesos–not more expensive dollar amounts.
Roberto’s sense of hands-on ownership at DBS shows up in the group’s approach to digital strategy.
Final Thoughts
“What I like most about Triptease is that they're always looking to improve their portfolio of products. And that aligns with what we want–to keep evolving. We have to be on our toes.”
-Roberto Safi
With committed leadership, a willingness to test and adapt, and the guidance of Triptease’s direct booking experts, Safi Hoteles is building on its strong foundations and enacting a smarter, more resilient direct booking strategy.
