Diane Koczur
Corporate Director of Marketing, Evans Hotels
About Evans Hotels
An independent, family-owned and operated hospitality group based in San Diego, Evans Hotels exemplifies how a regional brand can compete—and thrive—in an increasingly global marketplace. The group has built a reputation grounded in authenticity, service excellence, and local connection across three distinctive luxury properties (The Lodge at Torrey Pines, Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa, and Bahia Resort Hotel) and acclaimed dining and spa experiences.
Partnering to drive direct bookings
Direct bookings and brand-led engagement have always been priorities for the group, supported by a nimble in-house team of marketing experts. But like many independent operators, Evans leverages strategic partnerships and third-party platforms to extend reach, capture new audiences, and sustain growth.
The partnership between Evans and Triptease exemplifies this approach. The Evans team are long-time users of Triptease’s website personalization product, Triptease Messages, and recently expanded their use of the Triptease platform to include Display Retargeting.
We spoke with Corporate Director of Marketing Diane Koczur and Digital Marketing Manager Stefanie Maio to learn more about how Triptease is helping them to achieve their direct marketing goals.
Why direct bookings are so key for Evans Hotels - and how Triptease tools can help
"At Evans Hotels, we always prefer direct bookings. They’re more profitable, and they let us start a relationship with the guest right away. That connection enhances our ability to personalize experiences, build loyalty, and strengthen our brand relationships over time."
Diane Koczur, Corporate Director of Marketing, Evans Hotels
Evans Hotels' focus is evident in results: the group is doing really well at capturing direct bookings, with a 60/40 split of direct vs. OTAs for their “leisure” category. (Evans also sells rooms direct as part of the critical meetings and weddings side of the business.)
But the team at Evans is always trying to improve. With such a large direct share already, a key part of their approach is ensuring that guests who have already discovered the brand book direct next time they stay.
Triptease Messages as a promotion and conversion tool
Evans Hotels uses Triptease Messages to support limited-time promotions and capture high-intent traffic, but always with an eye on guest experience, ensuring that they use a mix of different types of messages for different offers or updates.
Seasonal promotions
Evans has a regular promotional calendar that helps to maintain interest and direct bookings in a market that can be challenging. The team makes sure these are activated across a variety of channels, including their website, taking advantage of the ability Triptease Messages gives them to publish new content in just a few minutes without the need for any web development expertise. Some recent examples include:
- For Cyber Monday 2024, Evans used countdown messaging to promote a marketing-leading 50% offer, which led to over $280K in revenue.
- In summer 2025, Evans used a message to encourage guests to book a midweek offer, driving around $45K in revenue on dates that traditionally have lower occupancy.
- For a different angle, Evans offered a 20% off discount + $50 resort credit as part of a summer 2025 campaign. They promoted this across desktop and mobile, and through a variety of different messages across their website. This promotion drove an impressive $284K in revenue in just a few days.
Every marketing channel used by the Evans team contributes to the success of these promotional campaigns, but they recognize the importance of web personalization in capturing the demand that has been generated:
“We can see in our reporting: people would not have booked this particular package if it wasn’t for that Triptease nudge.”
Stefanie Maio, Digital Marketing Manager, Evans Hotels
Promoting Non-room offers
Non-room offers are really important to the team at Evans. The performance of the group’s restaurants and spas is a key part of evaluating success.
Evans uses Triptease Messages to capture visitor email addresses, allowing them to inform potential customers about upcoming promotions and events. For example, messaging about the spa at Torrey Pines captured 665 valuable customer emails, which led to over $23K of subsequent revenue.
Personalized retargeting with live rates and availability
Evans moved its retargeting ads over from Google remarketing to Triptease in November 2024. Triptease Retargeting has been a highlight for the team, with Triptease’s ability to pull real-time rates and dates directly into creative assets proving especially valuable.
“What I love is that with Triptease Retargeting, the ads pull in the dates and pricing. Google can’t do that. This dynamic capability means we’re showing users exactly what they searched for, removing the risk that potential guests see the wrong price. This granular personalization drastically improved our click-through rates and lowered our overall Cost Per Acquisition compared to the static campaigns we ran previously.”
Stefanie Maio, Digital Marketing Manager, Evans Hotels
In the first half of 2025, (just a month after activating Triptease Retargeting), Evans recaptured over $1.3 million in revenue from bookings they might have otherwise lost. That’s an average of over $218K every single month, all at a 54x ROAS.
Stefanie also loves that the ads are dynamic, and each cycles through three different images that she adds to the platform.
Looking Ahead
Evans Hotels continues to build on its direct booking success, combining expert in-house execution with the tools Triptease offer. The team loves Triptease’s spirit of continuous improvement, and the openness of different members of the team to offer guidance and support.
“I love how everyone at Triptease is open to getting feedback from the users to constantly improve the product. I’ll be on a call directly with the product developer, whereas with other companies there’s always a roadblock. Where Triptease can make it work, they do.”
Stefanie Maio, Digital Marketing Manager, Evans Hotels
