A winter marketing calendar for a seasonal business on the Dalmatian coast is a five-month plan, October to February, that closes one season with data and opens the next with ads, content and email already live. The point is timing: the guests who search in winter are the ones who book ahead, and their clicks cost less.
Why is the season won in February?
Germany alone produced 22.3 million overnights in Croatia in 2025. Austria 8.2 million, Poland 7.3 million, Czechia 4.9 million (Croatian National Tourist Board, January 2026). These are driving markets. A family in Munich or Kraków decides in winter, around the school calendar, and books the apartment, the car and often the boat trip within the same few weeks.
Someone typing "apartment Makarska July" in February is a planner with a budget. Someone typing it in July is looking for what is left. Fewer businesses advertise in February, so the click costs less and the enquiry is more likely to become a booking.
The account we have run for our client Malduk Adventures in Omiš has followed this calendar for three years. Day-tour bookings went from 2–3 a week to 10–15 a day, and cost per acquisition is down about 20% year on year. The campaigns did not get cleverer. They started earlier, on the previous season's data.
What should I do in October?
October is for closing the season with data, while the numbers and the guests are still fresh.
| Job | Time it takes | Cost | Why now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Export every booking by product, month and source (platform, direct, phone, partner) | 2 hours | €0 | December's page and campaign decisions need this file. |
| List what sold out and when | 1 hour | €0 | Sold-out dates are your highest-margin dates. Advertise them first next year. |
| Note where guests came from: country, and city if you have it | 1 hour | €0 | This decides your languages and your ad markets. |
| Ask every autumn guest for a review within a week of departure | 15 minutes a week | €0 | A request in March is ignored. One while the photos are still on their phone is answered. |
| Answer every review, including last year's unanswered ones | 2–3 hours | €0 | Google and assistants read replies too. An unanswered one-star sits there all winter. |
How to close the season with data
- Export or copy every booking from March to October, from every extranet, your direct booking tool and your WhatsApp log, into one spreadsheet.
- Add four columns: product, month of stay, month of booking, source. The gap between booking and stay is your lead time, per market.
- Add the guest's country. Platform bookings alone are enough to rank your top three markets.
- Mark every date that sold out and every date you discounted to fill. Advertise the first list. Fix the second with pricing, not ads.
- Send review requests to every guest from the last six weeks, then reply to every review on Google, Booking.com, Airbnb and TripAdvisor. Save the sheet for December.
What should I fix in November?
November is for foundations. Nothing here brings a booking on its own, but every ad and page you build later stands on it.
| Job | Time it takes | Cost | Why now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile: hours (including winter closure), categories, products with prices, 20 or more photos from this season, Q&A with the five questions guests ask most | Half a day | €0 | It is the first thing Google and assistants check, it is free, and most competitors leave it half-filled. |
| Website speed and the mobile booking path: open your site on a phone on mobile data and count the taps from home page to "book" | One afternoon to test; fixes vary | €0 to test; small fixes are a few hours of a developer's time | Planners compare five sites in a row. A slow site or a hidden booking button loses them. |
| Entity consistency: the same name, address, phone, description and category on Google, Booking.com, Airbnb, TripAdvisor, Facebook and Instagram | 2–3 hours | €0 | Brands are about 6.5 times more likely to be cited via third-party sources than their own site (Princeton GEO study, KDD 2024), so those sources must match. Details in our guide on getting an apartment recommended by ChatGPT. |
| Photos from the season sorted by product, renamed and captioned | One evening | €0, or a photographer's day rate if this season's photos are not usable | Every page, ad and email from December on needs them. If they are weak, we will usually tell you to spend on photos instead of ads. |
What should I write in December?
December is for content an assistant can quote. Not "the magic of Dalmatia". Pages with facts.
| Job | Time it takes | Cost | Why now |
|---|---|---|---|
| One page per product: price, duration, what is included, meeting point or address, season dates, occupancy or group limit, cancellation terms | 2–4 hours per page | €0 if you write it | Assistants quote checkable facts. Adding statistics with a named source lifts citation likelihood about 37–40%, quotes about 30% (Princeton GEO study, KDD 2024). |
| A short FAQ on each page (5–7 questions) and schema markup: FAQPage, Product or Offer, LocalBusiness, TouristTrip for tours | 1 hour per page | €0 with a schema plugin | The FAQ answers what people type into ChatGPT. The schema tells Google what the page is. |
| One comparison page: "apartment vs hotel in Trogir", "rafting vs canyoning on the Cetina", "transfer vs rent-a-car from Split airport" | 3 hours | €0 | Comparison content earns about a third of AI citations, and it is what an undecided planner reads. |
| Croatian version plus German or English, based on your October country data | A few hours per page | €0 to a translator's fee | Your top market searches in its own language. Published in December, indexed when they plan in February. |
| Tracking: GA4, Meta pixel, Conversions API, and a conversion event for booking, enquiry and phone call | Half a day | €0 | Without this, February's campaigns cannot learn which clicks become bookings. |
Publish in December. Our benchmark is that AI citation gains take 6–10 weeks where content exists, and a quarter or more where new content or third-party corroboration is needed. A page published in December is citable in February or March. Published in April, it is cited in July, after the planners have booked. Google AI Overviews appear on roughly 45% of searches, so this is no longer a niche channel. If you want us to build it, that is the AEO and AI SEO service.
What should I build in January?
January is for the accounts. Nothing goes live yet. Build now so that February is one switch, not three weeks of setup.
| Job | Time it takes | Cost | Why now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search campaigns, one per product, ad groups by market and language, landing on the December product pages | 1–2 days | Your ad budget, set by you; management from €300 a month if we do it | Built in January, February's first two weeks go to removing wasted spend, not fixing structure. Structure is in our guide on Google Ads for boat tours and excursions; prices on the Google Ads management page. |
| Meta: a retargeting audience of site visitors and a lookalike audience built from last year's guest list | Half a day | €0 to build | Lookalikes need a seed list. Your October export is that list. See Meta ads management. |
| Email to last year's guests with an early-booking offer, sent in the first two weeks of January | 2 hours | €0 with a free email tool | Repeat guests are the cheapest direct bookings you will get. A direct booking saves the 15–20% a platform takes; Booking.com's global average is about 15% (Houst, 2026). The maths is in our guide on Booking.com commission vs direct bookings. |
| Agree what a booking is worth after commission; set conversion values and budgets from it | 1 hour | €0 | Every bid in February follows from this number. Without it, the platform optimises for clicks. |
What goes live in February?
February is the switch. Four months of work go live, and measurement starts.
| Job | Time it takes | Cost | Why now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads live by the first week of February for Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechia | 1 hour, then 2–3 hours a week | Your ad budget | These markets produced 22.3, 8.2, 7.3 and 4.9 million overnights in 2025 (Croatian National Tourist Board) and plan early. Wasted spend is out in 2 weeks; enquiries move within a month. |
| First AI-visibility check: ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the ten questions your guests ask; note whether you appear, who does, and which sources are cited. Repeat monthly | 1 hour | €0 | This is your baseline. For our client Malduk Adventures, AI-driven results rose 48% in two months after visibility work, with over 100 bookings attributed to assistants. Method in our guide on getting recommended by ChatGPT. |
| Decide on ChatGPT ads | 30 minutes | Nothing yet, for most owners | ChatGPT ads reached Croatia in late August 2026, but are sold on CPM through OpenAI's sales team or partners; US beta CPMs were reported around $60 with pilots near $200,000 (Search Engine Land, 19 Aug 2026; Euronews, 21 Aug 2026). Self-serve is not confirmed for Croatia. Revisit when it is: see our guide on ChatGPT ads in Croatia and the ChatGPT ads management page. |
| Follow up the January email: call or message everyone who replied but did not book | 2 hours | €0 | A reply is an intention. A call in February converts it before they open Booking.com. |
When do guests in my city actually book?
The calendar is the same for everyone. The timing of the switch is not. This is what we see across the coast in our clients' accounts.
| City | Who books and how | When they book | What must be live |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zadar, Biograd | Driving markets: Germany, Austria, Czechia, Poland, Slovenia. Zadar County: 15.5 million overnights in 2025 (Croatian National Tourist Board) | Earliest on the coast, from late January | German Google Ads by the first week of February. Content indexed in January. |
| Šibenik, Primošten | Driving markets, mostly families with cars. Šibenik-Knin County: 6.6 million overnights | Late January to March | Same as Zadar. German pages first, then English. |
| Trogir, Kaštela, Split | Mixed: driving markets plus fly-in guests from the UK (4.1 million overnights nationally) and beyond. Split-Dalmatia County: 20.9 million overnights | February to April, following flight schedules | Google Ads from February, budget held through April. English pages matter as much as German. |
| Omiš, Makarska | Families, many of them repeat guests, driving from Central Europe | January, when last year's email lands, then February | The early-booking email in the first two weeks of January. Ads from February for new guests. |
| Korčula, Dubrovnik | Fly-in markets, longer lead time, higher spend per guest. Dubrovnik-Neretva County: 9.3 million overnights | February to April | English content and ads from February. The AI-visibility check matters most here. |
Why does starting in January beat starting in May?
Because the work takes the same number of weeks whenever you start. Count forward using our benchmarks: wasted spend out in 2 weeks, enquiries moving within a month, AI citations in 6–10 weeks.
| Milestone | Start in January | Start in May |
|---|---|---|
| Campaigns built and tracking working | End of January | End of May |
| Wasted spend removed | Mid-February | Mid-June |
| Enquiries visibly moving | Early March | Early July |
| AI assistants citing your pages | Mid-March to early April | Mid-July to early August |
| Who is searching | Planners booking July and August | People filling gaps next week |
| Cost per click | Lower: fewer advertisers, higher-intent searches | Higher: every competitor is live |
Start in May and you pay summer click prices to fill dates that did not sell in winter. Same work, different result.
What does this cost if we do it for you?
Most of the calendar costs time, not money. Every €0 above is genuinely €0 if you do it yourself, and many owners do. If we do it: from €300 a month, first month with no contract, then 90-day terms. You own every account, pixel, page and piece of data. One-page monthly report in euros, counted after commission. Reply within one business day. If your photos are the problem, we will say so. Landing pages and follow-up are part of marketing funnel creation.
The one-page checklist
Print this. Three jobs a month, stuck next to the calendar.
| Month | Job 1 | Job 2 | Job 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| October | Export bookings, sources and sold-out dates | Ask every autumn guest for a review | Answer every review |
| November | Complete Google Business Profile | Test speed and mobile booking path | Same name, address, phone everywhere; sort photos |
| December | One fact page per product, with FAQ and schema | Croatian plus German or English versions, published | GA4, pixel and Conversions API working |
| January | Build Google Search campaigns per product and market | Build Meta retargeting and lookalikes | Send the early-booking email to last year's guests |
| February | Google Ads live for DE, AT, PL, CZ | First AI-visibility check, then monthly | Follow up email replies; decide on ChatGPT ads |
To see where you stand before October, the free visibility check shows what Google and the assistants currently say about your business. A few minutes, no obligation.