Alliance Hostel

Meta Ads killed Booking

Hospitality
Geography Warsaw, Poland

The hostel was heavily dependent on Booking and Airbnb. It worked — but at a cost.

High commissions eating into margins 💸 Strict price rules — you can't just set your own pricing. And always that risk of getting limited or pushed down.

Then another issue started showing up. The audience. Platforms were bringing mostly tourists. 1–2 nights. Low value. Not really the kind of guests you want to build a stable business around. 👉 And still — up to 80% of occupancy was coming from them.

At some point it became obvious: they weren't controlling demand. The platforms were.

01
Alliance Hostel — direct bookings, Warsaw
02
Alliance Hostel — Meta & TikTok calls

So we shifted things.

Launched Meta Ads with a simple idea — get people to call directly. No forms. No funnels. Just straight intent.

Campaigns in 5 languages: Polish, English, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish.

Built around how people actually book in Warsaw — fast decisions, clear pricing, quick contact.

Results 📞

Meta Ads were already strong:
~$2 per inbound call
40+ creatives tested
stable flow of calls
Then we added TikTok.
And it got even better:
$1.25 per call
But the biggest change wasn't the cost. It was the people.

Instead of short-term tourists:

✔️ local workers
✔️ longer stays (weeks, sometimes months)
✔️ way more predictable revenue

What this actually changed

Less chaos. Better guests. More control.

This wasn't just about ads. It was about finally not relying on platforms.