Recognition removes you from the price comparison
On a booking platform, every property is reduced to photos, a score, and a nightly rate. A traveler with no prior knowledge has almost nothing else to decide on, so price does the deciding.
A traveler who already recognizes your property is running a different comparison. They are checking whether the place they wanted is available, which is a far less price-sensitive question.
The second stay is where the profit lives
Acquiring a first-time guest through a platform costs a commission. Getting that same guest back through your own channel costs an email. The gap between those two numbers is most of your marketing performance.
Awareness work keeps you present between visits, which is the difference between a guest who returns to your property and one who simply returns to the app and sorts by price again.
Soft dates need demand built in advance
Shoulder season and midweek gaps cannot be fixed with bottom-funnel advertising alone, because the demand for those dates does not yet exist to capture.
It has to be created earlier, by giving people a reason to travel then. That is a months-ahead job, not something a discount campaign fixes three weeks out.