Case study · Málaga Football Tours, Spain
From €0 to €8,575 in direct website bookings in 60 days
Málaga Football Tours runs hosted Málaga CF matchday experiences: tapas, a match ticket, a scarf and local hosts. Customers mainly booked through third-party marketplaces that took a commission on every sale and controlled the customer relationship, and the old website could not take bookings directly. ShiftedLabs relaunched the site at the start of August 2026 with direct booking and payment, content that answers the questions visitors ask Google and AI assistants, and weekly reporting. In the first 60 days after the relaunch, direct website bookings went from zero to €8,575 in booking value.
- Client
- Málaga Football Tours, Spain
- Sector
- Tourism and experiences
- What we built
- Four-language booking website with direct online payment, fixture pages, ticket guides, a seat-availability watcher and weekly growth reporting
- Live at
- malagafootballtours.com
Results · First 60 days after relaunch · 2 Aug – 30 Sep 2026
- direct booking value
- €0 → €8,575
- Google Search impressions
- 51,028
- website sessions
- 1,128
Before the relaunch the website had no direct online booking. Direct booking value is the full value of 8 bookings made and paid on the new website — some by deposit, with the balance due before the match — so it is booking value, not cash fully collected. It excludes marketplace, WhatsApp and offline bookings. Impressions and sessions are totals for the same 60 days (Google Search Console; Google Analytics 4).
The business challenge
The business had a great product and five-star reviews, but its own website could not take bookings. Customers booked mainly through marketplaces, which controlled how the product was displayed, owned the customer relationship and kept a commission on every sale.
Visitors also struggle with one question above all: how to get Málaga CF tickets, especially seats together. Nobody was answering it well — which was an opportunity.
What ShiftedLabs delivered
We relaunched the website at the start of August 2026, built around one goal: let customers find the business and book directly.
A booking site in four languages. English, Spanish, German and Dutch, matching where visitors come from. Guests pick a match, choose numbers and pay by card, with WhatsApp for anyone who would rather talk first.
A page for every home game. Each fixture has its own page in every language, with kick-off time, ticket status and availability. Once a match is over, the page points to the next home games instead of a dead end.
Content that answers the real question. Honest guides on getting tickets, when they go on sale, where to sit and bringing children. The rules are strict: never hide that buying direct from the club is cheaper, never call a match sold out when tickets simply aren’t on sale yet, never imply a link to the club. That honesty is what makes search engines and AI assistants trust and cite the pages.
A seat watcher. A small service monitors availability for blocks of seats together and alerts the team.
Growth reporting. An automated weekly report flags opportunities and records every change as an experiment with a review date.
The first 60 days
In the 60 days after the relaunch (2 August – 30 September 2026), the new website took €8,575 in direct bookings — from a starting point of zero, because the old site had no direct booking at all. That is the total booking value of eight bookings made and paid on the website; some were paid by deposit with the balance due before the match, so it is booking value rather than cash fully collected by the end of the period. Over the same 60 days the site earned 51,028 Google Search impressions and 1,128 website sessions.
Every one of those bookings is a sale the business owns outright, with the customer relationship — and no marketplace commission.
How it works, in business terms
The pattern is simple: own the destination, answer the question the customer is actually asking, and let them complete the purchase on your site. Search and AI assistants bring the visitor, the content earns their trust, and direct booking keeps the sale — and the customer — in the business.
The same approach applies to any business paying a marketplace, agent or platform for customers it could reach directly.
What changed for the business
-
A direct sales channel the business owns
Customers book and pay on the company's own site, so the business keeps the customer relationship — and the margin a marketplace would take.
-
Found by search engines and AI assistants
Honest, specific guides now bring in visitors from Google and from ChatGPT, reducing reliance on marketplaces to be discovered.
-
Group bookings promised with confidence
An automated watcher alerts the team when blocks of seats together become available, so they sell what actually exists.
-
Decisions made on evidence
A weekly report combines traffic and search data and logs every change as an experiment, so effort goes where it pays.
Before and after
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| No way to book and pay on the company's own website | Direct booking and card payment in four languages — €8,575 in the first 60 days |
| Discovery and sales owned by marketplaces | Customers arriving from Google and ChatGPT and booking direct |
| Little content answering what visitors actually search for | A page for every home fixture, plus ticket and seating guides |
| Guesswork about what drives bookings | Weekly reporting, with every change tracked as an experiment |
In the client’s words
ShiftedLabs turned our online presence into a proper direct-booking business. Customers now find us through Google and ChatGPT, book with us directly, and we can see what’s working and keep improving it.
Martin Clark Málaga Football Tours Capabilities delivered
- Booking and payment system
- Multilingual website
- Search and AI-assistant visibility
- Automated availability alerts
- Conversion and growth reporting
- Customer chat assistant
Related services
- Customer portals and booking platforms Businesses where customers must call or email to book, check, change or retrieve something that software could handle — and businesses paying marketplaces or agents for customers they could reach directly.
- New product development Founders and established companies taking a new digital product to market, who need a team that has shipped and operated products rather than only built them.
Related guides
- How to build a booking website and reduce marketplace commission How tour operators, venues and service businesses can build a direct booking channel alongside marketplaces, what it takes, and how to win customers without paying commission on every sale.
- Which tasks should an established business use AI for? A task-by-task test for where AI earns its place in an established business: the shape of work it handles well, and why the boring applications pay best.
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