More direct bookings.Less OTA dependence.
OTAs keep 15 to 20% of every booking they take, including bookings from guests who already knew your name. We build the brand and the booking path that bring those guests to you directly. For owner-run lodges and boutique hotels in Southern Africa.
A lot of that commission is paid on guests you already had.
Someone hears about your lodge from a friend. They search your name, and the first thing they see is Booking.com, sometimes an OTA ad bidding on your own brand. They book there. You pay commission on a guest you earned, and you never get their email address.
Nobody planned it this way. An OTA listing worked, so it became the default. A retainer ran on for months because no one was measuring it. The direct booking side never got built.
The rules have moved in your favour. Your own website still has to give guests a reason to use it.
- 15 to 20%
- Commission an OTA keeps on each booking it takes.
- August 2024
- The Competition Commission ruling that lets you offer a better rate on your own site than on Booking.com.
We build the brand before we buy any traffic.
The work runs in a fixed order. Positioning comes first, because every page and every ad after it depends on it.
If a property hasn’t decided what it stands for, more advertising only sends more guests to the OTA listing.
Strategy
Who the property is for, and the position it can defend.
Brand
An identity made for this property and no other.
Guest Experience
The path from first search to second stay.
Our attention is the product, so we limit who gets it.
Owner-run properties that lean too hard on the OTAs.
We work with
- Independent lodges, reserves, boutique hotels, winelands estates and retreats in Southern Africa
- Roughly 8 to 25 rooms, suites or villas
- More than half of bookings arriving through OTAs
- An owner who lives on or near the property and makes the marketing decisions
We don’t work with
- Hotel groups and international chains
- Properties where a committee decides marketing without the owner
- Anyone who measures success in followers or impressions
- Anyone who wants content before the brand is settled
We also apply one test of our own. We only take on properties we would happily send a friend to stay at.
OTA dependency is a brand problem first.
Claudia and Cameron started Vicinity Agency in 2026. Claudia leads the strategy and the roadmap. Cameron leads the creative work and holds every deliverable to one standard: would we put our names on it?
Guests book through an OTA when your own brand gives them no reason not to. So we fix the brand first and build the booking path on top of it. Then we measure what it returns in bookings and revenue.
We’re a young studio, and our first clients know they’re first. They chose us for the thinking, and because the two of us do the work ourselves.
Start a Conversation
Tell us a little about your property and where your bookings come from. One of us will reply personally, and if it looks like a fit we’ll set up a call.
Based in South Africa, working with properties across southern Africa and internationally.