Every booking comes with its source written on it
Investing in Instagram without knowing how many bookings it brings is decorating blindfolded. etlas records the source of every visit and every booking — and shows you which channel is filling your dining room.
What not knowing costs
Say you spend €120 a month on Instagram. Your average ticket is €25 and the average table, two people. If that brings you nine bookings, you have put €450 through the dining room for €120. If it brings you two, you have put €100 through and you lose money every month.
Both sentences sound equally good at the bar. Only one is true, and telling them apart takes one figure: how many bookings came in that way. By default, that figure doesn’t exist. Instagram’s in-app browser and the button on your Google listing wipe out where the customer came from: that is why the answer to “where do my bookings come from?” is usually one fat block that says “Direct”.
How etlas records it
Two pieces, and the first one overrides the second.
The tag. Your booking link can carry one stuck on the end: ?src=instagram,
?src=google, ?src=hotelvecino. It travels inside the link: it doesn’t depend on any
browser passing anything on. utm_source and ref work just as well. And there are shortcuts that land in the
usual bucket: ig and insta are saved as Instagram; gmb and
maps, as Google; fb and wa, as Facebook and WhatsApp. They are for
hand-typed links: if you create the link in the panel, type the full word in src —
its counter looks for that exact word and with a shortcut it would stay at zero.
The referrer, if there is no tag. When the link arrives bare, we look at who sent it: Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google and TikTok are recognised automatically. Your own domain doesn’t count: going from your menu to your bookings is not an origin.
On top of that comes what gets rid of most of the “Direct” bookings: the origin is saved on the first touch and lasts the whole session, a couple of hours. Someone who comes in from Instagram, has a look at the menu and books twenty minutes later still counts as Instagram. The first touch is never overwritten: the door they came in through is the one that brought them.
You read it on three screens:
- Bookings → Statistics, the Where the link comes from block: your online bookings by origin, with their percentage.
- Bookings → Links & QR: each link with the bookings it brought from the last 30 days onwards — future ones count — and the total since you created it.
- Bookings → Web visits: visits to your booking page by location, and how many ended in a booking.
Ten minutes of links
- Go to Bookings → Links & QR.
- Under New link, type the Name. It is for you: “Instagram bio”, “Hotel next door”.
- Fill in src if you want to set the tag yourself. Left empty, it is taken from the name.
- Choose the Location. With a single venue it is set automatically. With several, give each link one: if you leave “Chosen when the link opens”, the customer goes through the choose-a-location screen first and the tag gets lost on the way.
- Pick the Channel: it only decides the icon in the list. There is no chip for Google — use Custom.
- Hit Create. One button copies the URL and another downloads the QR as a PNG, ready to print.
Which link goes where
| Where the link goes | Tag | Why that one |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram bio | src=instagram | Its browser wipes the referrer |
| Google listing | src=google | So does Google’s button |
| Reception at the hotel next door | src=hotelvecino | Its own name: you want to measure THAT deal |
| Window poster | src=cartel | The only way to measure paper |
One venue and a small budget: three links will do — Instagram, Google and poster. Several venues: every link with its location, so the QR at the hotel in the centre doesn’t inflate the bookings at the beach venue.
utm_source; the panel link carries src, which tags
the booking. To see the channel there too, add &utm_source= to the link with the
same word.
The usual mistakes
- One link for everything. If the same tag is in your bio, on the poster and on Google, what you have measured is called “the internet”.
- Changing the tag every month. Each
srcis a separate bucket: changing it splits your history into pieces that no longer add up. - Expecting history from a new link. It only counts its own: its origin, its location and from the day you created it. A brand-new Google link starts at zero even if you have been getting bookings from Google for years.
- Deciding after a week. Six bookings won’t justify moving a budget: give it a month.
Frequently asked questions
Why do almost all my bookings show up as “Direct”?
Because the link they came through had no tag: Instagram’s browser and the button on your Google listing don’t say where the customer came from, so there is nothing to record. Create one link per channel in Bookings → Links & QR and that block shrinks within days.
If someone comes in from Instagram, looks at the menu and books later, is the origin lost?
No. The origin is saved on the first touch and the booking inherits it, even if the customer browses the menu first. And the first touch wins: if they come back through another door, it is not overwritten.
Can I see which channel fills each location?
Yes. When you create the link you assign it a location and its bookings only count there. In Bookings → Web visits you filter visits by location and see how many ended in a booking.
If I delete a link, do I lose its bookings?
No. The bookings it brought keep their origin and still show up in the breakdown. What disappears is that link’s counter.