Ask ten people how much a small hotel, restaurant or spa should spend on marketing and you will get ten percentages. The honest answer is that a percentage alone cannot tell you, because it ignores what a booking is worth to you and how well your marketing already converts. This guide shows what the published benchmarks say, why they disagree, and a simple method for setting a budget you can defend.
Quick answer
There is no single right percentage. Published figures range from under 2.5% of revenue to around 10%, and most were not written for small UK venues. A better method is to work out what a booking is worth to you, decide how much of that you will reinvest to win it, and cap your spend there. Fund the basics first (your website, Google profile and tracking), then keeping guests coming back, then paid ads, and review the results every month.
1. What the published benchmarks say, and why they disagree
You will find plenty of rules of thumb online. Here are the most-quoted ones, with who they actually describe.
| Source | Figure | Who it covers | Caveat |
| Gartner CMO Spend Survey 2026 | 7.8% of revenue (7.7% in 2025) | 401 marketing leaders in North America, the UK and Europe, mostly at companies with revenue over $1bn | Large companies with big brand budgets, not small venues |
| US Small Business Administration guideline, as cited by Hospitality Net (2025) | 7–8% of revenue | Small businesses in general | US, cross-sector, and quoted second-hand |
| STR data, as cited by Hospitality Net (2025) | Under 2.5% of room revenue | US hoteliers, including sales and marketing payroll | US hotels, and includes staff costs |
| Industry commentators in the same article | 4–8% for established hotels; 15–25% for launches | Hospitality experts giving their own views | Opinion, not survey data |
How much a small UK hospitality business should spend on marketing, and how to set a budget you can defend. |
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Put together, the numbers run from under 2.5% to around 10%, and higher for a launch. That spread tells you something useful: the percentage matters less than what you buy with it. Use these figures as a sanity check. If your plan is far outside the range, ask why. Do not treat any of them as a target.
We could not find an independent UK benchmark specific to hospitality SMEs, so we have not invented one.
2. Why a percentage on its own is a poor guide
- Margins are thin. UKHospitality’s January 2026 modelling warned that more than 2,000 venues could close this year without business rates reform. When margins are tight, spend has to be tied to bookings, not to a share of turnover.
- Your starting point differs. A venue with a weak website and few reviews needs to fix those first, and may waste money on ads until it does.
- Channels cost different amounts. Replying to reviews and sending emails cost time. Paid ads cost money per click. The same 5% buys very different results depending on where it goes.
- Staff time counts. If you or your team spend ten hours a week on marketing, that is a cost, even if it never appears as a line in the accounts.
3. A better method: work backwards from what a booking is worth
This method takes five minutes and works for a hotel, restaurant, or spa.
- Find your average booking value. For a hotel, the average value of a direct booking. For a restaurant, the average spend per table. For a spa, the average treatment or package.
- Work out what you keep. Take the value and remove the direct costs of serving it, such as food, linen, products, and staff time. What is left is your contribution per booking.
- Decide how much you will reinvest. Pick the share of that contribution you are willing to spend to win the booking. Newer venues often accept a higher share. Venues with strong repeat business can afford more, because a guest is worth more than one visit.
- Calculate your allowable cost per booking. Contribution per booking multiplied by your reinvestment share.
- Set your monthly cap. Allowable cost per booking multiplied by the number of extra bookings you want each month.
Illustrative examples (not benchmarks)
The figures below are made up to show the method. Replace them with your own.
| Venue | Average booking value | Contribution after direct costs | Reinvest 30% | Cap for 20 extra bookings |
| Small hotel (direct booking) | £180 | £110 | £33 | £660 a month |
| Restaurant (table of three) | £90 | £40 | £12 | £240 a month |
| Day spa (treatment) | £75 | £50 | £15 | £300 a month |
Notice what the restaurant row tells you. At £12 per table, paid clicks will struggle to pay back, so a restaurant should lean on free or low-cost channels (Google profile, reviews, email) and use ads for specific events or quiet nights. A hotel with a higher booking value can afford more paid acquisition.
4. Build the budget in four layers
Once you have a cap, spend it in this order. Each layer makes the next one work harder.
| Layer | What it covers | How to size it | How you know it works |
| 1. Foundations | Website upkeep, Google Business Profile, tracking, booking page speed | Fix first. Mostly time and small fixed costs | Guests can find you and book on a phone, and you can see where bookings came from |
| 2. Keep guests coming back | Email platform, review requests, regular content | A steady monthly amount | Repeat-guest rate and recent review count rise |
| 3. Paid growth | Google search and one social channel, such as Meta | Capped at what you can afford to lose while you learn | Cost per booking stays under your allowable cost |
| 4. Test fund | One new idea at a time | A small slice, kept separate | You can say clearly what you learned |
See our website design guide for layer one, the marketing automation guide and reputation management guide for layer two, and the online advertising guide for layer three.
5. A worked example for a small hotel
Illustrative only. Take a 12-bedroom hotel with annual turnover of £650,000. A budget of 5% would be £32,500 a year, or about £2,700 a month. That figure sits within the published range, but it is a starting point to test, not a recommendation.
| Layer | Monthly | What it might pay for |
| Foundations | £600 | Website upkeep, Google profile photos and updates, tracking, tools |
| Keep guests coming back | £500 | Email platform, review requests, a monthly offer or update |
| Paid growth | £1,300 | Branded Google search and one other channel, capped |
| Test fund | £300 | One new idea, such as a midweek offer or a new landing page |
| Total | £2,700 |
Now check it against the method. If a direct booking contributes £110 and you reinvest 30%, your allowable cost per booking is £33. Spend of £1,300 on paid growth needs to bring in about 40 bookings a month to stay inside that limit. If it brings in 15, either the booking page needs fixing or the paid budget is too high for now.
Not sure where your marketing money is going?
ThisRapt works exclusively with UK hospitality SMEs on search, AI visibility and direct bookings. Book a free consultation and we will review your spend, your booking page and your tracking.
6. When to spend more, and when to spend less
Spend more when
- You are launching, rebranding, or reopening.
- Your cost per booking is comfortably under your allowable cost, and you have the capacity to serve more guests.
- A quiet season is coming, and you have a specific offer to fill it.
Spend less, or fix something first, when
- Your website is slow or hard to book on a phone.
- Your Google profile is incomplete, or your recent reviews are weak.
- You cannot say where your last ten bookings came from.
Our guide to analysing your marketing ROI and the tracking and automation tools guide covers how to measure this.
7. Review it every month
- Which channel produced bookings, and what did each booking cost?
- Is that cost under your allowable cost per booking?
- Did your direct share of bookings go up?
- What did the test fund teach you?
- What will you stop, keep, or increase next month?
If a channel stays above your allowable cost for two full months, fix the page or offer behind it before you spend more. Do not simply raise the budget.
8. Common mistakes
- Copying a percentage from another business or country without checking it against your own margins.
- Starting with ads before the website, Google profile, and tracking are in order.
- Ignoring staff time, which can be your biggest marketing cost.
- Spreading the money thinly across five channels instead of doing two well.
- Cutting marketing in quiet months and losing the momentum from reviews, email, and search.
- Never reviewing the numbers, so the same money keeps going to the same places.
9. Key takeaways
- Published budget figures range from under 2.5% to around 10% of revenue, and most were not written for small UK venues.
- Work backwards: booking value, contribution, reinvestment share, allowable cost per booking, monthly cap.
- Spend in layers: foundations, keeping guests coming back, paid growth, then a small test fund.
- Restaurants usually have a low allowable cost per booking, so lean on free and low-cost channels.
- Review monthly, and fix the page or offer before raising the budget.
Next, read our hospitality marketing guide for small businesses for the bigger picture.
Sources: Gartner, 2026 CMO Spend Survey press release (11 May 2026); Hospitality Net, “How much should hoteliers be spending on marketing?” by Max Starkov (12 Aug 2025), citing Gartner, the US Small Business Administration and STR; Morning Advertiser, UKHospitality business rates warning (12 Jan 2026).
10. Frequently asked questions
There is no single right figure. Published numbers run from under 2.5% of room revenue for US hoteliers to around 10%, with launches higher. Treat them as a sanity check and set your budget by working backwards from what a booking is worth to you.
Not necessarily, and not always enough. What matters is whether the money brings bookings at a cost you can afford. If your cost per booking stays under your allowable limit, a higher spend can make sense. If not, fix the basics first.
Yes. If you or your team spend regular hours on marketing, count them. Otherwise you will underestimate what marketing really costs, and overestimate how cheap your results are.
Start with a cap you can afford to lose while you learn, and begin with branded search so people looking for your hotel do not land on a booking site’s ad. Then compare your cost per booking with your allowable cost before increasing spend.
Paid ads can bring bookings within days. Local search, reviews and email build over months, so expect first signs from foundation work within a few weeks and more reliable results after three to six months.
Usually yes. Plan extra effort ahead of your quiet periods and peak booking windows, and keep the low-cost basics running all year, because reviews, search and email compound.
Cut paid ads that send traffic to a weak booking page, and anything you cannot trace to bookings. Keep your Google profile, reviews and email going, because they cost little and keep working.
