You met me at VRMA. Here is what I do, what it costs, and what you get.
I'm Sarah Stahl, founder of Market Movers. I've built this creator system three times in three years: for a resort, a multi-location hotel brand, and an OTA marketplace. Now I build and run it for property managers.
Built the same way three times: one to two creator pairings a week, every week, sustained for months at a stretch.
It usually goes like this. You offer a travel creator with a big following a free stay in exchange for a few posts. The content goes live. The views are good and the comments are enthusiastic. Then nothing happens.
| Views | Good |
|---|---|
| Comments | Enthusiastic |
| Bookings you can trace | None |
| Leads in your CRM | None |
| Did the stay pay for itself? | No way to know |
| What you concluded | "Creator marketing doesn't work." So you went back to paid ads. |
That was not creator marketing failing. It was the absence of a system.
Disappointing creator programs share the same gaps: no signed agreement or brief, no tracking code, no follow-up after checkout, and not enough time to compound. Trust does not build on a weekly reporting schedule, and most hosts pull the plug before it does.
Same creators, same stays. What changes is everything around them.
Most creator programs
The Creator System
A free stay for a few posts.
A signed agreement and a brief before arrival, with defined content deliverables.
A big following that may not trust you.
Creators vetted and matched to your guest profile.
Views are the scorecard.
A unique booking code in your PMS. Every redemption is tracked.
The relationship ends at checkout.
A follow-up sequence after every stay.
Judged after a few weeks.
A weekly cadence for six months, long enough to compound.
Content disappears from the feed in days.
A content library you can use across your marketing, with licensing permissions managed.
The first time was a resort: built from scratch on a $30,000 annual marketing budget, one to two creators a week, every week, for two years. Every stay had a signed agreement and a brief before arrival, a tracking code on every piece of content, and a follow-up sequence after checkout.
The result was 600 leads a month, a 34% conversion rate, and a shift from 100% OTA to 93% direct bookings. It worked not because the creators were exceptional but because the accountability built into the system made it impossible to fail quietly.
The second time was a multi-location hotel brand, applying the same architecture and lifting direct bookings 50%. The third was inside an OTA marketplace, where I built a two-sided version of the system that ran across national listings.
Same system, different ceiling.
A distinctive, experiential property raises what a creator engine can do. A multi-location brand compounds it across more inventory. An OTA marketplace tests it at a completely different scale. Same direction every time, different ceiling. On the strategy call I'll tell you where I think yours lands.
I set it up, launch it, and run it. After month six you can take it in-house or keep me on.
Priced per portfolio, not per property. To start: sign the service agreement and submit a 50% deposit ($6,000). The remaining half is due halfway through the project.
Sunday through Thursday stays only. No weekend stays are allowed under this program, so you never give up your best nights.
Creators cover the cleaning fee and taxes in exchange for delivering a defined set of content assets.
Six-month goal: a 10%+ increase in direct bookings.This is a target, not a guarantee. Every engagement so far has moved in the same direction, at different speeds.
Not ready for six months? Individual creator pairings and a $250 a month managed option are on my creator partnerships page.
What failed was the setup, not the creators. This program puts a signed agreement, a brief, a booking code, and a follow-up sequence around every stay, so you can see what each one produced. It also runs long enough to compound.
I've run this system at a distinctive resort, a multi-location hotel brand, and inside an OTA marketplace, and it moved the needle every time, just not by the same amount. Results depend on your properties, your market, and your weekday availability, and we will talk through where yours is likely to land on the strategy call.
Creators cover the cleaning fee and taxes and deliver a defined set of content assets in exchange for the stay. Stays run Sunday through Thursday only. No weekend stays are allowed under this program.
I set up unique booking codes in your PMS, for example in Hostaway, and track every code redemption. You get a monthly report covering bookings, content, and ROI.
I write the creator agreement for you, including the content usage terms, so you know exactly what you can do with every piece a creator delivers. The program builds a content library for your marketing channels, and I manage the folder and its licensing permissions.
You can take operations in-house with handoff training at $150 an hour, which includes SOP creation, a tool walkthrough, live team training, and a final audit. Or you can keep monthly management at the existing rate, using the templates, tools, and SOPs already built in Notion.
The Creator System is priced per portfolio, not per property. The prices above are for one portfolio.
Every few weeks I share a short observation from inside hospitality marketing.
Six months. $12,000. Every booking traced to a code, and a system your team can keep.