Marketing, Advertising & Digital Assets Management Proposal
Hunter Valley luxury estate at golden hour
Prepared for Sasha Degen & John Vanson · Hunter Valley Stays

Two hours from Sydney.
A market worth owning together.

DocumentMarketing, Advertising & Digital Assets Management
Prepared byInventiva Creative Studio
DateJuly 2026
Introduction

Welcome to your next chapter.

Hunter Valley Stays manages one of the finest boutique accommodation collections in Australia's most-loved wine region. Together, we're going to make sure the people searching for exactly that experience actually find you.

Where we're starting from

You've already built something rare. Hunter Valley Stays is the region's No.1 privately owned boutique property management agency, named 2024 Accommodation Operator of the Year, with a hand-picked collection of around thirty properties from romantic cottages to grand estates, a founding family whose roots in Wine Country run back more than two decades, and a philosophy, quality over quantity, that the bigger operators simply can't claim with a straight face. The product is genuinely premium, and the guests who find you love you for it.

An area of opportunity lies around that word, find. The modern trip almost always begins in one of three places: a Google search, a travel platform, or, more and more, a question typed into an AI assistant. Right now we're lightly represented in the first, not yet on the shelf in the second, and largely unseen in the third. That's not a criticism of anything you've done, it's simply the ground we get to claim next, and most of it is wide open.

How this proposal is built

We've written this in two halves. The first half is the groundwork: a proper look at the market we're playing in, the seasonal rhythms that shape demand, and a look at every other player in the space, each with its own scorecard and SWOT, ending in a clear picture of where we should catch up, where we already lead, and the open ground nobody in the Valley has claimed yet. the second half turns that into the plan: what we'll build, how each channel works, the roadmap and timeline, deliverables, service levels, KPIs and budget.

A quick word on how we work. Nothing in here is guesswork. Market figures come from Destination NSW and published tourism research. The competitor read comes from us sitting down and going through each of their live websites, positioning and rates in July 2026. Where a number is a model rather than a measurement, we've said so. We believe a proposal created with the intent of asking for your trust should show its working, and we've made every effort to ensure this one does.


Document Map

01 · Foundational Research

The market: Australia's oldest wine region, two hours from five million wallets.

1.1

The region as an economic asset

Why proximity to Sydney is the engine under every other number
Da Vinci style study of a grapevine
Study of the vine

The Hunter Valley isn't just a pretty landscape with vines on it; it's a mature, high-yield tourism economy with a structural advantage almost no other Australian wine region enjoys: proximity. The region sits roughly two hours' drive north of Sydney, which puts Australia's largest and wealthiest metro population, more than five million people, inside comfortable weekend range. No flight, no overnight travel, no planning friction. A Sydney couple can decide on Thursday to spend the weekend among the vines and be tasting semillon by Saturday lunch. That impulse-accessible geography is the engine underneath every other number in this section.

The numbers themselves are substantial. The region draws roughly 1.4 million overnight visitors a year, making it the most visited wine region in the country, and its wine-tourism economy is worth around $557 million annually. Those visitors move through more than 150 cellar doors, a dense constellation of hatted restaurants, championship golf courses, day spas, concert amphitheatres and wedding venues. The Hunter is also Australia's oldest wine region, with commercial viticulture dating to the 1820s, which gives the brand a heritage depth newer regions market hard but can't manufacture.

What matters commercially isn't the size of the market but its make-up. Wine-region visitors skew decisively toward the guests a premium operator wants: higher household income, higher per-trip spend, and travel occasions, anniversaries, milestone birthdays, weddings, corporate retreats, that carry real emotional weight and are therefore far less price-sensitive. Someone booking a six-bedroom estate for a fortieth birthday isn't shopping the way a business traveller shops a highway motel. They're buying an occasion, and occasions carry margin.

1.4mOvernight Visitors AnnuallyMost visited wine region in Australia
$557mWine-Tourism EconomyAnnual value across the region
150+Cellar DoorsPlus hatted dining, golf, spas & venues
~2hrsDrive From Sydney5m+ people in weekend range
Aerial patchwork of Hunter Valley vineyards
The Hunter Valley floor · vineyard blocks and eucalypt lines toward the Brokenback Range
1.2

Demand structure: three markets wearing one region's name

Each has its own clock, its own price behaviour, its own channel

Treating "Hunter Valley demand" as a single market is the mistake that produces generic marketing. In reality the region hosts at least three distinct demand systems, each with its own booking window, price behaviour and seasonality, and our program addresses each on its own terms.

The leisure weekend economy is the volume engine: couples and small groups from Sydney and Newcastle, booking two to six weeks out, concentrated Friday to Sunday, peaking through summer and the event calendar. It's the most price-visible segment and the one where brand search and remarketing do the heaviest lifting. Its structural quirk is the midweek trough: the same property that commands a premium on Saturday can sit empty on Tuesday, which is why smart operators build midweek products, wine-and-dine packages, longer-stay value, remote-work escapes, rather than discounting the weekend.

The celebration economy, weddings above all, runs on a completely different clock. Hunter Valley weddings get booked twelve to twenty-four months ahead, with venue and accommodation chosen together, and every wedding pulls an entourage: a bridal-party house, guest overflow across several properties, pre- and post-event stays. October and March are the ceremonial peaks. The implication is easy to state and easy to miss: marketing aimed at weddings has to run now to fill calendars eighteen months out. Pause it in a quiet month and you're quietly emptying a year you can't see yet.

The corporate economy, retreats, executive off-sites, team events, books on a quarterly planning cycle, values capacity, privacy and turnkey service over headline price, and is reached through entirely different channels: LinkedIn, direct outreach, search terms like "corporate retreat NSW" that leisure operators never think to contest. It's the segment where a large-estate collection has its most defensible edge, because a hotel can offer a conference room but not a private twelve-bed estate with its own grounds.

Layered across all three is the event calendar. The Hunter's amphitheatres stage major touring acts through summer, and event weekends behave like miniature peak seasons: minimum-night stays, surcharges, compressed availability. Your own listing terms already reflect this rhythm, which is exactly the kind of sophistication the market rewards. The curve below shows the composite effect: a demand system that never fully sleeps but breathes hard, with a winter trough that represents not dead months but the cheapest customer-acquisition window of the year, when the price of attention collapses while a genuine cohort, the cosy-fireplace, red-wine-weather crowd, keeps travelling.

Composite demand pattern by month · Hunter Valley accommodation
JANFEBMARAPRMAYJUNJULAUGSEPOCTNOVDEC MAR · WEDDINGS OCT · WEDDINGS WINTER · CHEAPEST REACH

Pattern composite: seasonal visitation research, event calendar and observed regional minimum-stay behaviour · indicative shape, not absolute volume

Search interest for Hunter Valley stays across the year
Relative Google search interest, indexed to the annual peak · the pattern our media calendar is built around 100500 JANFEBMARAPRMAYJUNJULAUGSEPOCTNOVDEC

Indexed search-interest pattern consistent with Google Trends seasonality for Hunter Valley accommodation terms · indicative shape

The shift we're getting ahead of
Where trip-planning searches are heading, and why AI visibility is the open field 202320252027 AI-ASSISTED TRIP PLANNING

Two patterns shape the plan. The seasonal curve tells us when to lean in and when to buy reach cheaply, our budget follows it month by month rather than spending flat. The shift toward AI-assisted search tells us where to plant a flag now: a fast-growing slice of trip planning already begins with a question to an assistant rather than a search box, and almost no operator in the Hunter is structured to be the name it returns.

Getting ahead of both is the whole thesis, spend with the season, and build the AI-search presence while the field is still empty.

1.3

The supply landscape and where we sit in it

Three tiers competing for one wallet with very different products
Couple at a Hunter Valley cellar door
The occasion we sell · a cellar-door afternoon

Hunter accommodation supply stratifies into three tiers that chase the same wallet while offering fundamentally different products. At the top of the awareness curve sit the branded resorts: Chateau Elan at The Vintage, the Spicers properties, Voco Kirkton Park, Oaks Cypress Lakes, Rydges. They bring brand recognition, loyalty programs, conference infrastructure and marketing budgets, and they anchor the region's premium price perception. What they can't offer is the thing the celebration and group economies most want: a whole private house. Twelve friends celebrating a milestone don't want twelve hotel rooms and a shared lobby; they want a kitchen, a pool, a long table and no strangers.

At the bottom sits the platform long tail: hundreds of individually hosted properties on Airbnb and Stayz, wildly variable in quality, service and reliability. This tier competes on price and quantity, wins enormous discovery share through the platforms' own gravity, and steadily erodes trust with inconsistent experiences, which is precisely the opening a professionally managed collection exists to fill.

Between them sits the tier that matters for this proposal: professionally managed boutique collections. This is where Hunter Valley Stays lives, alongside Unwind Hunter Valley, The Vintage Holiday Houses and a handful of smaller operators. The product logic is compelling, whole-house privacy with hotel-grade reliability, curated quality without the anonymity of the platforms, and observed nightly rates across the region run from roughly $95 at the budget fringe to $2,200+ for premium estates, with the managed-boutique tier sitting in the upper half of that range almost by definition.

Our position within the tier is distinctive on product and full of opportunity on distribution. On product: a deliberately curated collection, every property personally inspected, a signature setup standard, and a genuine services layer that the "quality over quantity" positioning describes accurately. On distribution: we're not yet listed on the major travel platforms, which means every listing we create is net-new reach rather than a cost to claw back. Section 02 looks at what each player does with the exposure they have, and Section 04 turns our distribution position into the centrepiece of the plan: latent reach we can switch on deliberately, on our terms, with the conversion machinery ready to turn platform discovery into direct, repeat relationships.

1.4

The discovery battleground: where guests actually begin

Three search surfaces, and the one moving fastest is wide open
Hunter Valley Stays villa crowning the landscape
Where we intend to stand · the landmark guests find first

Everything above converges on a single strategic surface: the search results page, in its three modern forms. The first is classical Google search, where queries like "Hunter Valley accommodation," "Pokolbin luxury stay" and hundreds of long-tail variants are contested by the platforms' enormous SEO machines, the resorts' brand weight, and the sharper boutique operators' content. The second is the platforms themselves, which work less as booking engines than as the region's de facto discovery layer; a large share of guests begin a trip by browsing Airbnb or Booking.com the way an earlier generation browsed a brochure rack. Being absent from them means being absent from that browse, which is exactly the reach we get to switch on.

The third, and fastest-moving, is AI-mediated search. A growing share of trip planning now starts as a conversation, "where should we stay in the Hunter for a group of ten?", answered not with ten blue links but with a handful of named recommendations synthesised from whatever the AI systems can read and trust. Getting named in that answer is earned through structured data, consistent signals, third-party corroboration and machine-readable content, disciplines almost no accommodation operator anywhere, let alone in the Hunter, has begun to practise. This is the widest open field in this document, and it gets an entire vertical of its own.

The Hunter's visitors are already coming. The whole game is being where they look, and that's exactly the ground we're about to claim.

02 · The Field

Five players, five playbooks, one gap none of them has closed.

We went through each player directly, positioning, portfolio, pricing, distribution and digital execution, in July 2026. Each gets a screenshot, a scorecard and a SWOT, read from where we sit.

Unwind Hunter Valley logo Primary Direct Competitor

Unwind Hunter Valley

unwindhuntervalley.com.au

The most strategically advanced operator in our tier, and the one whose playbook most resembles the strategy this proposal recommends, which is exactly why it earns our attention. Unwind leads its whole brand with "Book Direct & Save Up to 20%," turning the commission argument into a consumer discount and training guests to bypass the very platforms it uses for discovery. Its collection is larger and broader than ours, stretching to properties sleeping up to 34 guests, which lets it capture the large-group and multi-family segment. It publishes location-structured content (Pokolbin, Lovedale, the gateway villages) that wins long-tail local SEO, and, most tellingly, it runs an explicit owner-acquisition funnel, competing not just for guests but for the property inventory that is our own growth ceiling too.

Unwind Hunter Valley website
Live site · captured July 2026
Digital Footprint Score5.7/10
Paid Advertising
6
Website Quality
6
Maps SEO
7
General SEO
8
AI-SEO
2
Social Media
6
Brand & Content
5
Take Away

Take away: Unwind is running the right strategy with an average brand. Our counter isn't to out-shout them, it's to out-class them: premium positioning, better storytelling, and the AI-search and platform-conversion machinery they haven't touched yet.

The Vintage Holiday Houses logo Direct Competitor · Niche

The Vintage Holiday Houses

thevintageholidayhouses.com.au

A focused operator built around a single geographic asset: The Vintage golf estate and its surrounds. The niche is genuinely defensible, golf-weekend groups, fairway-view stays, an affluent repeat clientele attached to the course itself, and the named-property branding ("10AK · One of a Kind," "Dashaz Dream") shows a real instinct for character marketing. But the concentration cuts both ways: the brand means little beyond golf-adjacent demand, its discovery footprint is thin outside its own name, and it meets us only at the edges of the group and celebration segments. Worth noting, we already manage a property on the same estate, Hollyford House sits on The Vintage, so we can contest this niche without conceding our broader positioning.

The Vintage Holiday Houses website
Live site · captured July 2026
Digital Footprint Score4.1/10
Paid Advertising
3
Website Quality
6
Maps SEO
5
General SEO
4
AI-SEO
1
Social Media
4
Brand & Content
6
Take Away

Take away: A niche worth respecting, not fearing. We hold property on the same estate and can capture golf demand as one segment among six rather than betting the brand on it.

Hunter Valley Holiday Homes logo Direct Competitor

Hunter Valley Holiday Homes

huntervalleyholidayhomes.com.au

An operator whose positioning rests almost entirely on the anti-commission argument: book with the owner or a dedicated manager, skip the platform fees, get personal local knowledge. It's essentially the book-direct thesis with the marketing spend removed. The message is sound and it resonates with a slice of travellers, but the execution is modest, a smaller, less curated collection than ours or Unwind's, limited brand production, and little sign of systematic search, content or paid acquisition. It's useful intelligence, though: it proves the direct-booking message has native pull in this region, and it shows what that message achieves without professional machinery behind it, which is exactly the difference we bring.

Hunter Valley Holiday Homes website
Live site · captured July 2026
Digital Footprint Score2.9/10
Paid Advertising
2
Website Quality
4
Maps SEO
4
General SEO
3
AI-SEO
1
Social Media
3
Brand & Content
3
Take Away

Take away: Proof the message works, and a reminder about under-investment. The premium book-direct narrative here is still unclaimed; the first operator to own it professionally owns it for years.

Indirect · Shared Wallet

The Resort Tier

Chateau Elan · Spicers · Voco · Oaks

The branded resorts aren't direct competitors for the whole-house product, but they compete hard for the guest's weekend and, more importantly, for the search results page. Their international brand systems bring loyalty databases, corporate travel agreements, spa and golf infrastructure, and budgets no boutique operator matches head-on. They dominate generic "Hunter Valley luxury" queries and set the region's premium price ceiling, observed from roughly $147 midweek to well beyond $500 in peak, which usefully legitimises the rates a premium estate collection charges. Their blind spots are just as clear: no privacy at scale, no way to host a wedding party across a private estate, and a corporate product that's a conference room, not a retreat. We win here not by comparison but by reframing the category: a hotel is where you sleep near the Hunter; a private estate is how you actually inhabit it.

Screenshot omitted · composite of multiple international brands

The Resort Tier

Chateau Elan · Spicers Vineyards Estate · Voco Kirkton Park · Oaks Cypress Lakes · Rydges. A composite of the branded resorts, no single site to picture.

Digital Footprint Score7.1/10
Paid Advertising
8
Website Quality
8
Maps SEO
8
General SEO
8
AI-SEO
3
Social Media
7
Brand & Content
8
Take Away

Take away: Concede the generic head terms, take the occasions. Every wedding party, group celebration and private retreat is a booking the resorts structurally can't serve, and the search terms describing those occasions are far cheaper than the ones the resorts defend.

Hunter Valley Stays logo The Subject · Honest Self-Assessment

Hunter Valley Stays

huntervalleystays.com.au

Assessed with the same lens we applied to everyone else. The strengths are real and rare: the only awarded operator in the tier, a genuinely curated collection with a signature standard, deep family roots in the region, thirty produced property films most operators would envy, and the whole-house premium product the market's most valuable occasions demand. The areas of opportunity are just as real and, importantly, all of them are execution gaps rather than product gaps: a platform whose technical constraints limit search performance, room to establish presence on the discovery layer, AI-search readiness to build, and operational workflows (manual property publishing among them) that we can streamline to free up capacity for the growth ahead. Every opportunity here has a matching workstream further down, that's the design of this proposal, not a coincidence.

Hunter Valley Stays website
Live site · captured July 2026
Digital Footprint Score4.9/10
Paid Advertising
3
Website Quality
5
Maps SEO
5
General SEO
5
AI-SEO
2
Social Media
6
Brand & Content
8
Take Away

Take away: A premium product with room to grow its visibility is the best position in marketing, because visibility is buildable. The reverse never is.

03 · The Scoreboard

Everyone in the space, side by side.

The same seven dimensions, scored one to ten for every player, so the shape of the opportunity is visible at a glance.

Feature & strength comparison

Higher is stronger · Hunter Valley Stays highlighted
PlayerPaid AdvertisingWebsite QualityMaps SEOGeneral SEOAI-SEOSocial MediaBrand & ContentOverall
Hunter Valley Stays35552684.9
Unwind Hunter Valley66782655.7
The Vintage Holiday Houses36541464.1
Hunter Valley Holiday Homes24431332.9
The Resort Tier88883787.1

Overall digital footprint

Average across all seven dimensions
The Resort Tier
7.1
Unwind Hunter Valley
5.7
Hunter Valley Stays
4.9
The Vintage Holiday Houses
4.1
Hunter Valley Holiday Homes
2.9

Scores are Inventiva's assessment from direct examination of each player's live digital presence, July 2026. They describe current visible footprint, not business quality or guest satisfaction, areas where Hunter Valley Stays already leads the tier.

04 · Where We Play

Catch up. Defend. Claim the open field.

Every fact above sorts into one of three buckets, and the plan that follows assigns every workstream to one of them.

Catch up · where others lead

  • Platform presence: every serious player is on the shelf; this is reach we're about to switch on
  • Book-direct messaging: Unwind states it as a headline; we're yet to capitalise on this opportunity
  • Location-structured SEO: Unwind's architecture wins long-tail searches we can readily contest
  • Owner-acquisition funnel: Unwind recruits inventory systematically; a pipeline we can build too

Defend · where we lead

  • The only awarded operator: Operator of the Year is a trust signal no rival holds
  • Curation and service standard: the genuine premium position in the tier
  • Whole-estate product across weddings, groups and corporate retreats
  • Thirty property films: a content library others would need years to build

Open field · unclaimed by anyone

  • AI-search visibility: no regional operator is structured for the answer engines yet
  • Premium book-direct narrative: claimed at volume level, wide open at luxury level
  • Agent-ready infrastructure: machine-readable listings and availability, unclaimed anywhere here
  • Regional authority content: the definitive Hunter Valley guide is still unwritten

What follows turns this into the program: requirements, the plan across every channel, roadmap, deliverables, SLAs, KPIs and budget.

05 · Business Requirements

What we're setting out to achieve

Before the how, the what. These are the outcomes this whole program is built to deliver, and everything that follows ladders up to one of them.

R1

Grow bookings, direct-first

Drive more demand straight to the website, and as we expand onto new discovery channels for reach, turn those guests into direct, repeat relationships we own.

R2

Get found everywhere guests look

Strong, consistent visibility across Google, the new discovery channels we open up, and the AI answer engines, so the search more and more often ends with us.

R3

Fill the quieter periods

Smooth the midweek and winter troughs with the right offers reaching the right segments at the right moment in the season.

R4

Grow the portfolio

Build a steady owner-acquisition pipeline so the collection keeps growing with quality properties, the real ceiling on long-term growth.

R5

A platform that pulls its weight

A fast, modern website and booking experience that converts the traffic we send it and frees the team from manual work.

R6

Clear, honest measurement

Always know which dollar produced which booking, with reporting in plain English and a partner accountable for the numbers.

06 · The Plan

Six moving parts, built to work as one system.

Each of these earns its place on its own, but the real returns come from how they feed each other, search feeds AI, reviews feed both, platforms feed brand searches, and every booking makes the next one cheaper.

V1

Search Engine Optimisation

Own the searches that already happen

Every month, thousands of people type some version of “Hunter Valley accommodation” into Google. Most of them never see us. SEO is how we change that, and it's the highest-return channel we have because the traffic is free once earned and compounds over time.

Technical foundation

A fast, clean, crawlable site with structured data on every property, so Google can read exactly what each listing is, sleeps, costs and offers, and show it richly in results.

Location & content architecture

Dedicated pages for Pokolbin, Lovedale and the gateway villages, plus a regional guide layer that makes us the authority Google trusts on the whole Hunter.

Local & Maps SEO

Google Business Profile optimised and fed, so we appear in the map pack when someone searches nearby, the single highest-intent moment in travel.

V2

AI Search & Answer Engines

Get named when the AI recommends

A fast-growing share of trip planning now starts with a question to ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, and the answer names a few properties rather than listing ten links. Almost nobody in the Hunter is structured to be one of those names. This is the widest open field in the whole plan.

Machine-readable everything

Structured data, clean entity signals and consistent details across every place we appear, so the AI systems resolve us into one confident, citable recommendation.

Third-party corroboration

Reviews, mentions and listings that give the answer engines independent reasons to trust and recommend us, the signals they lean on most.

Agent-ready infrastructure

Machine-readable property and availability data so that when AI agents begin booking on travellers' behalf, and they will, we're the operator they can actually transact with.

V3

Paid Advertising

Buy the guests we can't yet earn

SEO compounds but takes time; paid media buys us qualified guests now, and funds itself through bookings while the organic engine builds. Structured well, with tracking wired to booking value, it's the fastest lever we have.

Search & brand defence

Capture high-intent searches and our own brand terms, the cheapest, highest-converting traffic there is, before anyone else intercepts them.

Remarketing

Accommodation is a considered purchase; we stay in front of the guest who browsed but didn't book, at a fraction of cold-traffic cost.

Seasonally paced spend

Budget follows the demand curve, leaning into cheap winter reach and defending peak, so every dollar buys the most guests it can.

V4

Social Media

Turn thirty films into a booking engine

You already have thirty produced property films and a beautiful product, most of the hard content work is done. Social's job here isn't likes; it's building the audiences paid retargets, proving the experience at the moment guests decide, and claiming two channels nobody in the region has bothered with.

Instagram & Facebook

The visual shop window and the social proof a guest checks the night before booking, kept active, beautiful and on-brand.

The uncontested channels

X and LinkedIn reach corporate-retreat budgets and property owners with almost no competition in this region, attention that's nearly free because nobody else is bidding for it.

Owned communities

A Facebook group and content that we own outright, reach no algorithm change can take away, growing with every local business and guest that joins.

V5

Channel Distribution

List everywhere, convert direct

We're not on the platforms yet, which means every listing we create is net-new exposure rather than a cost to recover. We enter deliberately, present impeccably, and use the billboard effect, discover on the platform, book direct with us, to make the first commissioned booking the last.

Establish the listings

Best-in-class presence on Airbnb, Booking.com, Stayz, Agoda and more, consistent, polished, and optimised rather than left on defaults.

The billboard effect

Platform discovery drives brand searches; we make sure the guest who finds us there completes the booking with us, commission-free, and comes back direct.

Consistency as a signal

Matching details everywhere feed the same entity confidence that powers SEO and AI recommendations, one system, many surfaces.

V6

Platform & Digital Assets

A website that sells while you sleep

Marketing multiplies whatever platform it lands on. Speed, structured data, deep-linked booking journeys and automated publishing don't just improve the site, they make every marketing dollar in every other vertical work harder. This is the foundation the rest stands on.

Speed & technical excellence

A fast, modern, reliable site, because page speed feeds Google's Quality Score and directly lowers the cost of every ad we run.

Automated publishing

Streamlined property publishing so new listings go live and start earning visibility immediately, freeing your team from manual workflows.

The booking chatbot

A 24/7 assistant that answers guest questions and guides bookings even at midnight, covered in detail in the next section.

07 · Roadmap

A twelve-month plan, sequenced for early momentum.

Quick wins first, so you see movement in weeks; the compounding engine built underneath, so it keeps growing for years.

Phase 01Weeks 1–4

Foundation & Quick Wins

Kickoff, access, analytics and tracking wired up, the technical speed and health fixes that make every later dollar cheaper, and the first platform listings drafted. We want momentum the client can see inside the first month.

  • Full analytics, call & booking-value tracking
  • Site speed & technical health pass
  • Google Business Profile optimisation
  • First platform listings drafted
Phase 02Months 2–3

Presence & Discovery

Search foundations, structured data and the AI-readiness layer go live; platform listings publish and get optimised; social channels launch with the daily-posting bonus period; review automation switches on.

  • On-page & technical SEO rollout
  • Structured data + AI-search layer
  • Platform listings live & optimised
  • Social launch + review automation
Phase 03Months 4–6

Momentum & Paid Growth

Paid media launches across search and social once tracking has data to optimise against; content engine and regional authority build begins; the booking chatbot goes live; owner-acquisition funnel opens.

  • Google & social paid campaigns live
  • Content engine + regional authority
  • 24/7 booking chatbot deployed
  • Owner-acquisition funnel opens
Phase 04Months 7–12

Compounding & Optimisation

Everything shifts from build to optimise: bidding tuned to booking value, content compounding, AI-search presence measured and expanded, and quarterly strategic reviews steering spend toward what the data proves works.

  • Value-based bid optimisation
  • Content & authority compounding
  • AI-search presence expansion
  • Quarterly strategic reviews
Project Schedule

Every workstream, mapped across the year

Approximate start and end for each element of the build. Timings anchor to project kickoff and flex a little with scope, but the sequence, quick technical wins first, compounding channels layered on, holds.

Workstream
M1M2M3M4M5M6M7M8M9M10M11M12
Foundation Presence Growth Compounding
Discovery, access & tracking setup
Website speed & technical health
Technical SEO & structured data
Channel listings — build & publish
On-page SEO & regional content
ongoing
AI-search readiness layer
Social media management
ongoing
Review automation
ongoing
Paid media (search & social)
ongoing
Booking chatbot
Owner-acquisition funnel
Reporting & optimisation
ongoing

Indicative schedule · anchors to kickoff · ongoing bars continue for the term of engagement

Inside V6 · The Booking Assistant

A concierge that never sleeps

Guests research late at night, on their phones, across time zones. A smart booking assistant answers the moment they ask, and turns curiosity into a booking while your team rests.

Hunter Valley Stays
● Online now
Do you have anything for 10 people with a pool, first weekend of March?
We do! Sage Creek in Pokolbin sleeps 10, has a pool and a fireplace, and it's available that weekend. It's a favourite for group celebrations. Would you like to see it?
Perfect. Is it cheaper to book direct?
Always, booking direct with us means the best rate and no platform fees. I can hold those dates for you right now if you'd like.
  • Answers instantly, around the clock

    No missed enquiry, no waiting until morning, the moment a guest asks, they get a helpful answer.

  • Knows the whole collection

    It matches guests to the right property by size, features and dates, then guides them toward booking direct.

  • Nudges every booking direct

    It gently reinforces the book-direct message on every conversation, protecting margin and the guest relationship.

  • Frees up your team

    It handles the repetitive questions so your people spend their time on the guests and moments that need a human touch.

Inside V4 · Social In Action

What your feed could look like.

A quick taste, using the kind of content the property films and a considered social plan would produce. On-brand, aspirational, and built to make a guest stop scrolling.

Illustrative concepts · imagery generated to show direction, captions indicative

08 · Deliverables, SLAs & KPIs

What you get, and how we hold ourselves to it

A clear picture of what lands each month, the service standards we commit to, and the numbers we'll both watch.

What we deliver

The ongoing work, and the cadence it arrives on
Monthly

Performance report & strategic review

A plain-English report tying spend to bookings, plus a working session on what's next.

Ongoing

SEO & content production

Technical fixes, new pages, structured data and regional authority content on a rolling schedule.

Ongoing

Paid campaign management

Build, optimisation and bid management across search and social, with spend paced to season.

Ongoing

Social media management

Scheduled posting across channels, community management support, and the property-film content engine.

Ongoing

Platform listing management

Listings created, optimised and kept consistent across the travel platforms.

As scoped

Platform & development work

Speed, structured data, booking journeys, chatbot and automation, delivered per the roadmap.

Deliverables & frequency

Everything we commit to, and how often it lands
DeliverableWhat it includesFrequency
Performance report & strategic reviewSpend-to-bookings report in plain English, plus a working session on prioritiesMonthly · by the 5th
Search rankings & visibility reportMovement across target keywords, locations and the map packMonthly
AI-search share-of-voice checkHow often, and how accurately, the answer engines name usMonthly
Paid campaign managementBuild, bid management and optimisation across search & socialOngoing · weekly touch
SEO & on-page contentTechnical fixes, new location pages, structured data, regional authority contentOngoing · rolling schedule
Social media postingScheduled posts across channels, drawn from the property-film libraryOngoing · per agreed cadence
Community management supportMonitoring and response guidance across social channelsOngoing · business days
Channel listing managementListings created, optimised and kept consistent across discovery platformsOngoing · monthly audit
Review generation & monitoringAutomated post-stay review requests and reputation trackingOngoing · automated
Platform & development workSpeed, structured data, booking journeys, chatbot, automationPer roadmap · scoped
Analytics & tracking upkeepBooking-value tracking kept accurate as campaigns changeOngoing
Quarterly strategic reviewDeeper reset of priorities against the numbers and the season aheadQuarterly

Our service commitments

The standards you can hold us to
Response timeSame business day

We reply to any request from your team within one business day, usually much faster.

ReportingMonthly, by the 5th

Your performance report and review land in the first week of every month, without fail.

Campaign issuesWithin 24 hours

Anything affecting live spend or bookings, a broken link, a paused campaign, is triaged same-day.

Strategic reviewsQuarterly

A deeper session every quarter to reset priorities against the numbers and the season ahead.

How we measure success

The KPIs that actually tie to bookings

Direct bookings

The number that matters most, bookings made with you, commission-free.

Organic visibility

Rankings and impressions across our target searches and locations.

AI share of voice

How often, and how accurately, the AI engines name us for key prompts.

Return on ad spend

Booking value generated for every dollar of media, tracked live.

Review volume & rating

Growth in reviews and average score across Google and beyond.

Agent & platform referrals

Visits and enquiries arriving from AI assistants and platform listings.

09 · Budget

Straightforward, and built to scale with results.

One management fee for the work, plus an ad-spend level you choose and can change any time. Ad spend goes straight to the platforms, we never mark it up.

Choose your media level

Start where you're comfortable, scale as the numbers prove out
Launch
$1,500/mo ad spend

For testing the waters and proving the model on the highest-intent searches first.

  • Search & brand-defence campaigns
  • Core remarketing
  • Foundational reporting
RecommendedGrowth
$3,000/mo ad spend

Our recommended starting point, enough budget to work several segments at once and generate real momentum.

  • Full search, social & remarketing
  • Seasonal budget pacing
  • Value-based bid optimisation
  • Priority optimisation cadence
Peak
$5,000/mo ad spend

For pushing hard into peak season, weddings and the group segment, and scaling what's working.

  • Everything in Growth
  • Aggressive segment expansion
  • Wedding & corporate lead campaigns
  • Advanced audience testing

Monthly management fee

Covers strategy, campaign management, SEO, social, listing management and reporting, everything in the plan except ad spend and any development scoped separately in the roadmap. Confirmed together at kickoff so it matches the scope you choose.

Ad spend billed separately · paid direct to platforms · no markup

Tailored
to your chosen scope
Questions

Things you might be wondering

How is this different from what we do now?

This brings every channel, search, AI, paid, social, platforms and the website itself, into one coordinated system with a single team accountable for it. No hand-offs between a marketing agency and separate developers, because we're both. Everything is measured against bookings, not vanity metrics.

What does the management fee cover, and what's extra?

The monthly management fee covers strategy, campaign management, SEO, social, reporting and the platform work scoped in the roadmap. Ad spend is separate and goes directly to the platforms with no markup, you only ever pay the media cost. Any development beyond the agreed scope is quoted transparently before we start.

How quickly will we see results?

Paid media and the platform quick wins can move within the first month or two. SEO and AI-search compound over three to six months and keep growing from there. The roadmap is deliberately sequenced so you see momentum early while the longer-term engine builds underneath it.

Do we have to leave the travel platforms to book direct?

Not at all, and that's the point. We list on them to capture the exposure they provide, then use the billboard effect and a better direct offer to convert those guests into direct, repeat relationships over time. The platforms become a discovery channel, not a toll you pay forever.

What about the AI-search work, is it proven?

The core mechanics, structured data, entity consistency, review corroboration, are how these systems demonstrably work today. Some of the newest tactics are first-mover bets that cost little to implement alongside the rest, and we measure AI referrals so you see the channel emerge in your own numbers rather than taking our word for it.

Who owns the assets and accounts?

You do, entirely. Every account, listing, piece of content and line of code we build is yours. There's no lock-in beyond the initial term, our aim is to earn the relationship every month, not trap it.

In Closing

Let's make sure they find you.

You've built a genuinely special collection in one of the best regions in the country. The only thing missing is making sure every guest searching for exactly that experience finds you first, and books direct. That's the work. We'd love to do it together.

Let's talk next steps →

Inventiva Creative Studio · david.v@inventiva.global · inventiva.global

In Closing

Let's make sure they find you.

You've built a genuinely special collection in one of the best regions in the country. The only thing missing is making sure every guest searching for exactly that experience finds you first, and books direct. That's the work. We'd love to do it together.

Let's talk next steps →

Inventiva Creative Studio · david.v@inventiva.global · inventiva.global