The Palms Hotel & Spa is a family-owned independent beachfront resort in Miami, where the owners maintain a strong connection to the day-to-day operations. Family-owned and operated, the hotel benefits from hands-on leadership that has always recognized the value of direct bookings. In 2019, the team hired digital marketing director Franny Mann to take charge of improving their share of direct website revenue.
Franny sums it up simply:
“[Building direct bookings] is my life’s work. When The Palms brought me on, the goal was to grow its direct channel.”
- Franny Mann
In 2019, 23% of bookings came through the hotel’s website. By the end of 2024, that figure had increased by more than half to 34%. Combined with phone bookings, direct now accounts for over 50% of The Palms' transient room revenue.
This shift hasn’t happened overnight. It’s the result of:
The leadership team is feeling more and more convinced of the importance of direct bookings as these numbers climb.
“Ever since we've been eliminating those higher OTA commissions and shrinking that channel a little bit, [the leadership team] has seen the measurable revenue growth and cost-savings over the past few years. As a result, they’ve been strong champions of any investment that supports the direct booking channel."
-Franny Mann
Franny oversees all digital creative and campaign strategy herself—from content entry and copywriting, to building on The Palms’ longer-term strategic goals. Despite balancing a lot across the marketing mix, her strategy’s results speak for themselves.
The Palms depends on Triptease Metasearch to ensure that guests searching for their hotel don’t end up booking via OTAs. In Q2 2025, The Palms’ metasearch channel achieved a 23x ROAS.
Plus, contribution from metasearch to total stayed revenue after cancellations (which is the metric most important to The Palms’ leadership team) rose from 8% in 2023 to 13% in 2024.
The Palms uses Triptease Retargeting to ensure that it’s not saying goodbye to guests who have visited the site and left without booking. This channel has delivered great results for the hotel from day one, including this strong performance from Q2 2025:
Franny handles all retargeting asset creation herself, using The Palms’ custom-branded images alongside Triptease’s unique price personalization feature. The capability to use custom designs within Triptease’s tool was really important to Franny, due to The Palms’ well-defined brand standards that help the hotel to maintain a cohesive and sleek brand across all its channels.
“We have a strong corporate identity, and it was refreshing to be able to incorporate it throughout the customer journey. And having that personalization power on top of that has been pretty powerful”.
-Franny Mann
The Palms uses Triptease Messages to personalize website interactions, including for rate transparency using Triptease’s Price Check capabilities, to highlight loyalty rewards and to message visitors with a targeted discount when they’re about to leave the site without booking.
The Palms also employs a targeted message encouraging guests to reach out in cases where they don’t have availability. This has received over 66,000 impressions, helping to drive more guests into The Palms’ offline channels rather than lose them to another hotel.
While she works closely with another marketing director, Franny manages everything on the digital side on her own.
“I’m doing everything—from content entry to email design. I actually don’t mind it, but it doesn’t leave as much time as I'd like for more strategic decision-making.”
-Franny Mann
Running multiple products with Triptease has been one way to lessen overall workload and leave Franny more time to focus on those larger initiatives.
And while a smaller team means big responsibility for every player– it also means that change can happen fast, with leadership not far from the action. They’re always on deck to help enact changes.
“The team is really close to the decision-makers. That makes a big difference when it comes to executing and aligning strategies.”
Franny Mann
As long-standing customers of Triptease, The Palms is a case study in what long-term, focused investment in the direct channel can deliver. The team has also seen the Triptease product grow over time to keep up with new opportunities and challenges. And that’s what Franny appreciates the most about Triptease–the dedication to improvement, while still keeping the same overarching goal in mind.
“I like that Triptease is constantly evolving, and is always thinking about the hotelier. The team isn’t just thinking about better profits or just trying to roll out something shiny and new–they’re always laser-focused on direct bookings. It’s really refreshing.”
- Franny Mann