How much to spend on Meta Ads if you run a small hotel

There is no universal number. But there is a calculation you can run today with two figures you already have: your average booking value and how many rooms you need to fill.

The maths, step by step

Say a hotel with an average booking of COP $600,000 that wants 15 extra bookings a month from digital channels.

1. Decide what you can pay per booking. At a 40 % margin you have $240,000. Spending 15 % of revenue on ads is reasonable: $90,000 per booking.
2. Multiply by the bookings you want. 15 × $90,000 = COP $1,350,000 a month on Meta.
3. Translate into conversations. If one in six conversations becomes a booking, you need 90 conversations. At a typical COP $3,000–$6,000 per conversation started, the maths works.

If the number looks absurd, the problem is not the ads: it is the margin, the rate or the closing ratio.

The floor below which it is not worth it

In Colombia, below roughly COP $400,000 a month the algorithm never leaves the learning phase and you overpay for every result. If that is your ceiling, invest first in your Google listing and in replying fast.

How to split it: three objectives, not one

The most common mistake is putting 100 % into message campaigns and wondering why costs rise every month. This is how we split it:

• 60 % sales. Click-to-WhatsApp aimed at people who already know you or visited your site.
• 25 % awareness. Short video showing the destination to new audiences. It feeds next month’s 60 %.
• 15 % engagement and remarketing. To people who watched the video or wrote and did not close.

An audience that has never seen you costs far more to convert than one that already watched three of your reels. Awareness is not a luxury: it is what makes sales cheaper.

How the budget splits month by month

How much you spend is one thing; how you split it is another. For a small hotel with COP $1,350,000 a month, the budget looks like this in practice:

Three rules to make that split work:

• At least COP $10,000 a day per ad set. Below that the algorithm never leaves learning and cost per result spikes.
• No more than three or four active campaigns. Splitting $1,350,000 across eight campaigns means having no budget anywhere.
• Budget changes of 20 % at most every three days. Raising it all at once resets learning and you lose what it learned.

Which part is fees and which part is ad spend

They are two different pockets and it pays to separate them from day one: ad spend goes to Meta from your card and your ad account; fees go to whoever manages it. An agency that merges both into a single invoice is hiding how much actually reaches the ads.

As a reference, in small hotels management usually costs 20 % to 40 % of ad spend when the investment is low, and the percentage drops as the budget grows. If you spend $1,350,000 and get charged $2,000,000 in fees, you are paying more to administer than to buy audience.

When to raise the budget

Only when all three happen at once: cost per conversation has been stable for two weeks, the closing rate does not drop as volume rises, and there are rooms to fill on those dates. If the team can no longer keep up with replies, raising the budget just buys conversations you will lose.

What to have before spending the first peso

• Pixel and Conversions API installed and measuring.
• WhatsApp answering in minutes, not hours.
• At least six creatives: fatigue arrives sooner than you think.
• Clear price and availability. Ads do not fix a confusing offer.

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What to expect in month one (and what not to)

The first two weeks the algorithm is learning: cost per conversation starts high and comes down. Judging a campaign after five days is the fastest way to waste the budget, because you switch off exactly what was about to stabilise.

• Weeks 1–2: learning. High cost per conversation, many tyre-kickers.
• Weeks 3–4: it settles. Now you see the real cost.
• Month 2: with the pixel fed and remarketing running, cost drops.
• Month 3: lookalike audiences start working and you can scale.

Season: where to put the money

In tourism the budget is not flat across the year. Our rule: spend heavily four to six weeks before the season, not during it. For Easter you start in February; for December, in October. In high season you cut awareness and raise remarketing, which is cheaper and closes better.

In low season you do not switch everything off: keep a small awareness budget so you are not starting from zero when demand returns.

Signs you are spending badly

• Cost per conversation rising month over month with the same creatives: fatigue. Refresh the assets.
• Many conversations, few bookings: the problem is your reply or your price, not the ads.
• All budget on a single ad: when it burns out you have nothing to fall back on.
• “Engagement” as the main objective: it brings likes, not guests.

If you want us to run the numbers with your data, that is part of the Meta Ads service.