Palazzo Durazzo Suites

The starting point

When I took over in April 2026, a five-star Lusso hotel in one of Genova’s Rolli palaces stood 66th of 97 in the city on TripAdvisor, with a rating of 3.0 on just fourteen reviews — too few to absorb a single bad stay. More than forty rates were live, with no hierarchy a guest could read.

Reputation

Every review was answered, in the guest’s own language — English, Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch and German — and logged with the angle taken, under sixteen written house principles: from which language to reply in to how to correct a guest’s factual mistake without arguing. Departing guests were asked for a review in person, not by an automated email.

In five months TripAdvisor went from 3.0 to 4.3, and from 66th to 46th place. Booking.com rose from 9.1 to 9.2, with a Guests’ Choice award and 8th place of 96 in the city. On a base of fourteen reviews that is not statistical drift: it takes a steady run of top scores.

The direct channel

Forty-odd rates became four, each with a distinct job: best available rate, early booking, last minute, and a return-guest rate kept for direct bookings — offered in every post-stay email, with an upgrade as the rule for guests who book direct.

From May, the direct share of bookings rose against the same month a year earlier in four months out of four, by between 14 and 18 points. The weakest month of the new pattern matched the best of the fourteen before it. With OTA commission at 15–18%, fifteen points moved to the direct channel is worth roughly 2.5% of room revenue — every year it holds.

The restaurant

Il Capriccio, the hotel’s restaurant, had been a recurring complaint. A plan for the guests already in the house — dinner mentioned before arrival, offered at check-in, with the aperitivo as the way in — turned it round: guests now name dinner and breakfast, unprompted, as reasons for their score.

Search, content and partners

An audit of paid search found the account optimising for the wrong signal — interactions with the map counted as bookings — while Booking.com outranked the hotel in more than half of the auctions for its own name. I wrote the missing English history page, suite descriptions and press-page metadata, and rebuilt the booking confirmation and cancellation emails.

A three-month commercial plan was built around the twentieth anniversary of the Rolli palaces’ UNESCO listing, with a competitor-rate monitor across seven hotels and eleven arrival dates. Trade relationships were opened with Secretplaces, Essence of Italy, Trading Places and others, and Forbes featured the hotel in June 2026.