The work

The work, with the numbers attached.

One account in full, the rest in brief. No client name ever sits on the same line as a revenue figure, so each story names the market and the category instead of the brand. The brands themselves are listed at the bottom, without numbers.

Case 01 · Hospitality · Montenegro
+423%
Revenue growth
in one year

I did not add a dirham. I moved the budget it already had.

Empty sun loungers by a hotel pool at dawn

The brief, and the wrong answer

A luxury hotel asked me to grow its direct bookings. Everyone assumed that meant a bigger budget.

Most of the property's business ran through the online travel agencies. That meant a commission on every room and almost no control over the guest. Direct bookings, the ones the hotel keeps in full, were flat.

When bookings are flat, the instinct is to spend more. But more budget on a broken funnel does not fix the funnel, it just drains faster. So before touching the budget I looked at where it was already going, and almost none of it was reaching the people who actually book a room like this.

Why hotel campaigns waste money

Most chase reach. They buy impressions from anyone who has ever looked at a beach photo, because reach is cheap and it feels like progress.

But a luxury room is not an impulse buy. The person who books it researches, compares and decides over days. Spread the budget thin across everyone, and the few people who were ready to book never see enough of you to trust you. You pay to be seen by people who will never book, and you underspend on the people who almost will.

What I changed, in order

Cut the broad awareness spend that was producing impressions and nothing else.
Rebuilt the targeting around the segments that had converted before: specific source markets, real intent signals, people already deep in the booking decision.
Shifted budget toward direct bookings, so every sale kept its full value instead of handing a cut to an agency.
Optimised every week rather than every month. Each week, money moved away from what was not converting and toward what was.

What came out of it

Revenue +423% Conversions +348% Transactions +113%

The two numbers I care about more than the headline are the second and third. Together they say the growth came from more people booking, not from a handful of large orders flattering the average.

The honest part

The 423% came off a low base. A jump that size is only possible when the starting point is small and the foundation is weak. A property already doing strong numbers will not repeat it. The method is the same at any size: find the budget being wasted, and move it to where it converts.

More of the work

Four more results, in short.

The short version of each. The figures, the sources and the screenshots are all here.

Supplement capsules arranged like a rising bar chart
Case 02 · Supplements · UAE
Up to 12x

Return on ad spend on the best ad, from a standing start

A supplements brand launching with no account history, no pixel data and no audience to retarget. Everything was built from zero: the tracking, the creative testing, the offer structure and the channel mix.

Source · Meta Ads · by ad
Shopify checkout conversion rate of 46.38% for July 2024
Case 03 · E-commerce · UAE
46%

Checkout conversion rate in one month

Traffic was never the problem. The money was being lost between the product page and the payment screen, which is where most stores in this region quietly leak the majority of their revenue.

Source · Shopify · one month
Google Analytics: revenue of €1,733,601 in 2022, up 71.41% on 2021
Case 04 · Hospitality · Seychelles
€1.7M+

Revenue from one booking platform in one year

A five-star resort that wanted direct bookings well above the year before. I planned and tuned the booking campaigns around the platforms and markets most likely to turn into a stay. Revenue rose 71% on the previous year, with 21% higher conversion and 41% more transactions.

Source · Google Analytics · 2022
Google Analytics: revenue of AED 1,160,629 in 2022
Case 05 · Hospitality · UAE
AED 1.16M

Revenue from one booking channel in one year

A five-star hotel in Dubai that wanted more direct revenue from one booking channel. I built campaigns for that channel alone, and put the budget on the audiences most likely to book direct.

Source · Google Analytics · 2022
What I actually do

Strategy and the hands-on work,
not one or the other.

I write the plan and then I go and build it in the account. That is unusual, and it is the reason the numbers on this site exist.

Paid media

Meta, Google, TikTok, Snapchat and LinkedIn. Account structure, audience strategy, creative testing and weekly budget decisions rather than monthly reports.

E-commerce

Shopify, Noon and Amazon. Product pages, checkout flow, cash on delivery and returns, and the profit per order that survives all of it.

Go-to-market

Entering the UAE or Saudi market from nothing. Positioning, pricing, channel mix and the launch calendar built around the region's real seasons.

Tracking and analytics

GA4, pixels, server-side events and UTM discipline. If the numbers cannot be trusted, nothing built on top of them can be either.

Creative and content

Campaigns that work in Arabic and English at the same time, written twice rather than translated once. Brief, direction and the testing loop.

Team and process

Briefing designers and media buyers, running the weekly review, and leaving behind a way of working that keeps running after I do.

The brands

Names only.
Figures live upstairs.

Every brand below is one I have run campaigns for, in-house or agency side. Which figure belongs to which name stays between me and them.

Lamborghini Hilton Mövenpick CZN Burak STORY Hospitality Dubai Miracle Garden Sharjah Film Festival Vellen Hair
Accounts run from Dubai, for
UAESaudi ArabiaEgyptMontenegro
Start here

Tell me what is leaking.

One email with your account, your market and the number that is bothering you. If I am not the right person, I will say so and point you at someone who is.

Asma Adel Farag
Performance Marketer · UAE & MENA
© Asma Adel Farag. All figures verified and available on request.