Case Study:
Dorp
Travel & Hospitality
Google Ads, Landing Page Design, Data & Performance Reporting
The challenge
Dorp Hotel’s main website is built to do a big job well: represent the brand, showcase the full property, and support bookings across every season and offer type. That breadth is a strength for always-on demand, but it becomes a liability the moment you need to sell one thing, for a short window, to a specific audience.
That was the position Dorp Hotel was in heading into winter. The property had a clear, time-bound offer to push, stay 4 nights or more and get 20% off the best available rate, aimed squarely at guests from South Africa and the UK. Sending Google Ads traffic to the main website meant competing against unrelated content, multiple calls to action, and messaging that wasn’t built around a single promotion. There was no clean way to isolate the performance of the winter push, and no way to give paid traffic the tight, single-purpose experience Google itself rewards.
The Objective
Launch a stand-alone winter promotion (4+ nights, 20% off the best available rate) as its own, measurable campaign.
Drive incremental direct reservations and room nights from Dorp Hotel's two priority source markets: South Africa and the UK.
Build a landing page purpose-built for paid search, one that strengthens Google's relevance and quality signals rather than relying on a general-purpose homepage.
Our Strategy
Google Ads doesn’t only reward the bid, it rewards the experience behind the click. Ad Rank is built on a Quality Score, and Quality Score is built in large part on expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. A landing page that mirrors the ad’s promise word-for-word, loads fast, and gives the user one obvious next step will consistently out-perform a generic homepage carrying the same traffic, both on cost per click and on conversion rate.
With that in mind, the strategy centred on three things:
- Message match: the landing page needed to say, visually and in copy, exactly what the ad said, 4+ nights, 20% off BAR, so there was zero gap between the promise that earned the click and the page that followed it.
- A single, streamlined call to action: no competing offers, no full site navigation, one clear path to book the winter rate.
- Separation from the main site: a dedicated page meant the promotion could be measured cleanly, without diluting always-on site metrics, and without the offer competing with unrelated content for attention.
Layered on top of this was source market targeting: campaign structure, ad copy, and audience settings tuned specifically to South Africa and the UK, the two markets the promotion was built to convert.
The Solution
Built dorp.co.za/winter as a dedicated, promotion-only page, separate from the main website, with no distracting navigation.
Aligned Google Ads keywords and ad copy directly to the landing page's core promise, 4 nights or more for 20% off the best available rate, for tight message match.
Reduced the page to a single, obvious call to action, removing the choice overload that a full-site experience creates.
Targeted the campaign specifically at South Africa and the UK, Dorp Hotel's priority winter source markets.
The Impact
The dedicated landing page did exactly what it was built to do: it gave Google Ads a tightly matched, high-relevance experience to send traffic to, and it gave guests a fast, frictionless path to book the winter offer. The result was a clear lift in direct, booked-on revenue from the two target markets, without that offer having to compete against the main site’s broader messaging.
The page also had a second, unplanned effect. By giving paid traffic somewhere focused and fast to land, it lifted engagement and discovery on the main website itself, guests who arrived for the winter offer went on to explore the wider Dorp Hotel brand, driving a significant increase in new users and key on-site events.
The Results
Direct revenue impact (YoY):
- 20% increase in reservations
- 14% increase in room nights
- 45% increase in revenue from the key source markets the campaign was built for (South Africa and the UK)
Website impact, driven by the landing page (YoY):
- 380% increase in key events on the main website
- 950% increase in new users to the main website
