Black Friday Hotel Deals: Are You Giving Away Too Much?

I’ve been running Black Friday hotel deals since 2013. I’ll never forget that 72 hour sale that drove $100,000 in revenue over 72 hours, nor the three emails we created to drive that business. I’ve been taking about Black Friday sales ever since, but over the years, the strategy has shifted. Here’s what I’ve learned, how we’ve evolved, and what I recommend.

Almost a decade ago, in 2017, I wrote that one of the advantages hotels had over vacation rentals was their ability to offer deals. I encouraged travelers to join hotel email lists to get access to “major discounts around Black Friday and other major holidays.”

Even then, there was an important caveat: hotels could use those offers to fill actual need periods, from last-minute room nights to shoulder season stays, not just give the house away.

To this day, I continue to urge hotels to participate in Black Friday, but many are doing it wrong.

The Deal Economy

By 2019, I was starting to question our collective obsession with getting a deal.

I wrote an entire article called Is the Deal Economy Ruining the Guest Experience? about the relationship between hotels, OTAs, and increasingly price-conscious travelers.

Hotels were discounting rooms to fill gaps in occupancy. OTAs were training travelers to shop by price. Guests were understandably expecting the same experience regardless of what they’d paid or where they’d booked.

The problem wasn’t discounting, it was what indiscriminate discounting could do to the relationship between hotel and guest.

I argued then that hotels should use their own databases to offer private sales and incentives that encouraged travelers to book directly.

I had already experienced the other side of that transaction myself.

You Got The Deal, But At What Cost?

We’ve been the hotel marketing team trying to fill a need period, and I’ve personally been the traveler chasing the deal.

In that 2019 article, I wrote about scrambling to find a last-minute hotel on Kauai after mixing up our arrival date. I found a room at Hanalei Bay Resort for $375 through HotelTonight.

They say you get what you pay for, and I know all too well the way hotels fence OTA deals to their worst rooms, knowing the customer on the end is loyal only to the mighty dollar.

We were relegated to a room near the dumpsters and loading docks, down two flights of sticky stairs. The room itself had a bed and bathroom, and chickens congregated on our patio to wake us from the travel nightmare the next morning.

The experience illustrated something I'd been talking about for years: a guest can score a deal at a high-end hotel and still walk away disappointed when the experience they receive doesn't match the experience the hotel markets.

I actually talked about this with The Washington Post back in 2017:

“So, despite getting a deal on a resort experience, the customer is then relegated to the lowest possible room type, regardless of occupancy.”

Then there was Madrid.

Years earlier, I was looking at Posada del Dragón, an independent hotel in La Latina. Tripadvisor was showing a rate of $100 per night. Instead of booking it, I went to the hotel's website and found a direct rate of just $67.

I wrote about that experience in A Madrid Moment and gave travelers the advice I've been giving ever since: check the hotel website before booking through an OTA.

You see, price is only one part of the booking strategy. Where the guest books, what they're promised, what they're worth long term, and what experience they ultimately receive, matter just as much.

Which is why a Black Friday strategy that begins and ends with 30% OFF misses the mark.

Then Everything Changed

In October 2020, I joined Sarah Dandashy on the Say Yes to Travel podcast and shared something that would have sounded strange coming from the person telling travelers to hunt for Black Friday hotel deals three years earlier:

Deals weren't driving traffic. The pandemic was a major turning point in our industry.

Travelers cared about cleanliness, safety, flexibility and knowing what their experience would actually look like when they arrived. They wanted to hear from the people behind the hotel. They’d even pay more for it.

A discount wasn't reassuring, in fact, the opposite was true. As consumers, our brains were being rewired.

Around the same time, I interviewed e-commerce expert Sagar Bhakta for my own How to Share podcast about driving hotel revenue. One of my biggest takeaways from that conversation was simple:

“You don't need to sacrifice rate to get heads in beds.”

In How to Drive More Revenue, we talked about increasing website conversion, geo targeting, metasearch and using what Sagar called the “billboard effect” of the OTAs to generate more direct traffic.

In other words, the answer wasn't a lower rate, it was more comprehensive marketing.

Finding the Right Guest

By 2021, instead of telling hotels to blast an offer to every email address they had, I was talking about lifecycle marketing and guest segmentation.

In an episode of How to Share called 5 Hotel Marketing Trends for Fall, I recommended that hotels with soft fall dates look at guests who’d stayed during September and October in previous years, remove the people who had already rebooked, and re-engage the remaining guests with an email.

“Lifecycle messages don't require an offer when there's a ‘we're thinking about you’ message and the timing is right.”

Black Friday has been around since the 1950s, doorbuster since the early 2000s, and online deals have been going strong for 20 years. “Cyber Monday” was coined in 2005. It’s safe to say we’ve conditioned our guests to wait for a deal, and to be ready to buy between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

We know they’re ready to book. So, instead of determining how low you can go, ask who are we trying to reach, and when do we need them to stay with us?

How could a Black Friday guest become a repeat guest in the future?

Black Friday 2026

The data says it all: in a 2026 analysis published by Hospitality Net, 1982 hotels were studied during the two weeks leading up to and including Black Friday 2025.

Hotels running dedicated Black Friday campaigns on their own websites increased direct bookings by 30.8%. Hotels without a campaign increased bookings by just 2.8%. Direct revenue increased 60.5% for participating hotels compared with 4.4% for hotels without a campaign.

The takeaway: your future guests will be looking to book, give them a reason without sacrificing rate. Beyond this data, here’s what else I’ve learned:

Tease a sale, win subscribers: this has been our mantra in 2026, and it’s grown our database lists from 100% up to 1000% in just nine months. As we prep for Black Friday, we’re pushing out another tease to grow our list in anticipation of the upcoming sale.

Fencing is key: don’t give away Christmas Eve or Spring Break, do limit the booking window to your need period.

Don’t blast everyone: ensure your future guests are excluded from the campaign, otherwise you risk downgrading business already booked at BAR.

Create urgency: a sale that goes on for weeks or months won’t have the same, immediate impact as a short-term 72 hour or 7 day sale. Don’t give your guests enough time to shop around. 

Create scarcity: something we can learn from retail, limit the quantity so future guests get the deal before it’s gone.

Create value or an incentive: the first 100 people to book get X; or buy a gift card and we’ll throw in an extra $50 just for you. These little nuggets go a long way.

Should Your Hotel Run a Black Friday Sale in 2026?

Absolutely. Black Friday is a moment when consumers are ready to buy. For hotels, the opportunity isn't necessarily convincing thousands of strangers they need a vacation. It's converting the people who already know you: past guests, email subscribers, social followers, and travelers who have been eyeing your destination but haven't booked yet.

Don’t put every room, every date, and every guest at 30% off.

Start with the need period, then build a reasonable offer around it.

Black Friday FAQs for Hotels

How much should a hotel discount for Black Friday?

There's no magic percentage. Look at the dates you need to fill, then determine what it will take to sell rooms. Don't assume it has to be a discount. Value adds and upgrades are great ways to protect your ADR.

What dates should a Black Friday hotel offer include?

Your stay window should follow your need periods. For many hotels we work with, it’s January - April; but for island resorts, this is peak season. Maybe you need Sunday through Thursday occupancy because group business is down, or maybe all you do is group business, and you’d like to find transient guests to fill the weekends. Build the offer based on your need.

Don't discount dates you're likely to sell, which means excluding or blacking out holidays at the very least.

Who should hotels target for Black Friday?

Start with the people who know you: past guests, email subscribers, website visitors, and social audiences.

In my 2025 Hotel Marketing Predictions, I wrote that email should be “short, sharp, and revenue-driven.” Black Friday requires exactly that, skip the newsletter formats and make your Black Friday sale succinct.

Be sure to segment your list. Give past guests early access via email before posting to social media. Retarget website visitors with Google or Meta ads.

How early should hotels start marketing Black Friday?

You haven’t already started? Just kidding. But one to two weeks before Black Friday is a good time to start. Tease the offer to your database and social audience, grant early access for past guests, and make sure everything is working before you push it live (website, booking engine, paid ads).

Market the offer across email, your website, organic social, paid social, and Google ads.