72% of travelers use metasearch engines in their booking journey! Google Hotel Ads (GHA) is a powerful metasearch solution for hoteliers looking to attract more guests and elevate their direct bookings and visibility.
Whether you're a seasoned hotelier looking to enhance your direct bookings or a newcomer to the world of digital marketing, this guide will provide you with the knowledge and insights needed to navigate Google Hotel Ads effectively – including its unique features, benefits, and the strategies that can help you harness the full potential of this solution.
In addition to Google Hotel Ads, we’ll take a detailed look at what metasearch engines are, the bidding strategies available, and the benefits they offer hotels as well as how Cendyn can help you make the most of this tool with our innovative digital ads management solution, Cendyn Digital Marketing Platform.
What is Google Hotel Ads?
Google Hotel Ads (GHA) is a metasearch engine, which means it aggregates information on hotel availability and prices from different sources. It allows hoteliers to showcase their property rates directly to travelers, promote their properties and reach potential guests across Google’s network platforms, including Search results, Google Maps, and Google Travel. Google Hotel Ads campaigns are linked to your Google Business Profile and Google Maps. You can reach a wide audience of potential guests who are actively searching for (your) hotels, making it a valuable solution for driving direct bookings and increasing visibility.
With Google Hotel Ads, hotels can display essential information, such as property details, room rates, availability, photos, and guest reviews on their metasearch hotel page, and on Google Maps. When users click on a listing, they are redirected to the hotel's booking page, either on the hotel's website or through an online travel agency (OTA).
In short, GHA is a metasearch advertising channel that allows hotels to tap into Google's vast user base to promote their properties to ready-to-book travelers. It's a powerful tool for you to increase direct bookings, enhance your online presence, and effectively compete in the digital hospitality landscape.
The difference with Google Ads
While Google Hotel Ads campaigns are specifically designed for the hotel industry to attract travelers looking for accommodations, Google Ads campaigns can be more general and include a variety of ad categories. Google Ads and Google Hotel Ads are both advertising platforms offered by Google, but they have different focuses and functionalities tailored to specific industries.
Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is a versatile online advertising platform that allows businesses to create a variety of ad formats, including text ads, display ads, video ads, shopping ads, and app promotion ads, among others.
It covers a wide range of objectives, from promoting products and services to driving website traffic and generating leads. It can be used by a wide array of businesses across different industries, targeting various audiences based on keywords, demographics, interests, and behaviors.
How does Google Hotel Ads work?
How is it linked to your Google Business Profile?
Google Hotel Ads work by using data from your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), where you can provide essential information on your hotel such as rates, availability, images and establishment descriptions.
Optimizing your Google Business Profile is crucial to improving the visibility and attractiveness of your hotel ads. A well-completed and up-to-date listing increases the chances of Google Hotel Ads appearing in relevant user searches. The goal is to attract potential travelers and encourage them to make a booking directly on your offcial website.
Also, as your Google Business Profile is integrated with Google Hotel Ads, it enables rates and availability to update automatically, ensuring that the information presented in ads is always up to date.
Where do your official hotel rates appear?
GHA enables you to target an audience interested in your hotel or destination (Google Property Promotion Ads). You can set criteria such as users location or dates of stay to reach travelers who are more likely to be interested in your property. By targeting a relevant audience, you increase your chances of generating direct bookings with high return of investment, as you reach people who are actively looking for your hotel.
When advertising your hotel’s direct rates on Google Hotel Ads, your ads will appear in your Google Business Profile (on Google Search), in Google Maps, and in Google Travel. By setting up GHA campaigns, you allow more potential guests to book directly with your website.
Why showcase your more competitive rates?
One of the main reasons travelers use Google Hotel Ads is to compare rates: they often look for the best deals when booking a hotel. To attract customers to book directly with you, offer competitive rates and exclusive offers. On GHA, your rates are shown in real time, which is especially helpful for travelers comparing prices. By doing this, you encourage:
· Customer loyalty: If they have had a positive experience with your affordable rates, then they will be more likely to return on future trips and recommend your property to their friends and family.
· Improved perception of value: Competitive rates can reinforce the perception of value that customers have of your property. Guests may consider that they are receiving excellent value for money by booking with you instead of your competitors.
· Advance bookings: By highlighting competitive rates for advance bookings, you encourage customers to plan their stays well ahead of their travel dates. This allows you to guarantee a certain level of occupancy in advance and better manage your inventory.
Along with competitive rates, offer additional benefits for direct bookings, such as free breakfast, or discounts on spa services. Highlight these special offers in your Google Business Profile and make sure they are clearly visible on the reservations page.
What bidding models are available on Google Hotel Ads?
Google Hotel Ads offers several bidding models that you can choose and/or combine. These bidding models help determine when and how often your ads are displayed, as well as how much you'll pay for each click or conversion.
In the ever-evolving landscape of online advertising, staying ahead of the curve is paramount for businesses looking to maximize their revenue while also adapting to changes in user privacy expectations.
With Google’s recent announcement regarding updates to its Hotel Ads bidding models, hoteliers face a pivotal moment in their metasearch advertising strategies. The changes taking effect on April 30, 2024, mark a significant shift away from commission-based bid strategies in Google Hotel Ads campaigns.
Indeed, bid models based on commission per stay and commission per conversion will no longer be available for new campaigns and will be replaced by Target return on ad spend and Enhanced cost-per-click.
Cost per click (CPC)
With CPC, every click results in a cost for your hotel, and you only pay for the traffic generated by the ad on the price comparison site. The more you bid, the higher your ads will be displayed at the top of the purchase paths suggested to travelers.
When it comes to activating bids, you have two choices: a fixed bid per night or a percentage of your room price. To fine tune your bidding strategy, Google offers the Bid Multiplier, allowing you to adjust your bids based on various factors such as the platform, length of stay, and check-in date.
Furthermore, on Google Hotel Ads, you have the flexibility to manage your auction settings by market, such as France, USA, Spain, Canada, and more.
Target return on ad spend (tROAS)
You can shift your campaigns’ bid strategies to tROAS which leverages Google’s AI to assess the potential value of conversions whenever a user searches for your hotel. Your bids are automatically adjusted for these searches to maximize your return on investment.
So, if the bidding strategy anticipates a search to yield a valuable conversion, tROAS will place a higher bid. For searches with lower potential value conversions, it will bid lower. This adaptive approach allows you to customize bids for each auction, optimizing your bidding strategy in real time with Google’s AI technology.
You can also leverage tROAS within Performance Max for travel goals, which now includes Hotel Ads inventory running hotel campaigns inventory with a unified performance strategy.
Enhanced cost-per-click (ECPC)
You can also shift your campaigns’ bid strategies to ECPC, which offers a streamlined approach to manual bidding to boost conversions. Your manual bids are automatically adjusted based on the likelihood of clicks leading to a booking on your website. ECPC tries to keep your average CPC below the max CPC you’ve set, including bid adjustments, when optimizing for conversions.
In GHA campaigns, ECPC serves to amplify conversions while trying to maintain your cost-per-conversion at a level similar to what you’d achieve through manual bidding. Additionally, ECPC provides the flexibility to optimize for conversion value, enabling you to prioritize high-value conversions and accurately assess the value of various conversion actions.
Gain free bookings with Free Booking Links (FBL)
In 2021, Google introduced the Free Booking Links, which are completely free of charge. These links now account for approximately 15-16% of Google Hotel Ads traffic. However, it’s worth noting that the conversion rate for these Free Booking Links is 60% lower compared to other options. We recommend that you activate them anyway, as they can be launched in parallel with paid campaigns and is a free extra channel to drive direct bookings.
Finally, you can combine bidding methods according to your revenue goals, per market, per hotel, and/or per season to reflect your business and adjust your campaigns to your needs.
What are Google Hotel Ads benefits for my hotel?
Google Hotel Ads offers numerous benefits to hotels, including increased direct bookings, improved online visibility, greater independence from OTAs, and greater control over their brand image. Thanks to increased visibility on hotel-related searches, hoteliers can also attract more qualified customers, which often translates into higher conversion rates.
Google Hotel Ads also offers several benefits to hoteliers, including:
· Targeting the right audience: Google Hotel Ads allows you to target your ads to specific geographic locations, devices, dates, length of stay, etc. This targeting capability ensures that hotel ads are shown at the right time to users who are already interested in your property, increasing the effectiveness of your advertising efforts.
· Capturing ready-to-book travelers: with metasearch advertising campaigns on GHA, hoteliers can bid for their hotel to appear in the hotel search results on Google for both desktop and mobile devices.
· Driving direct bookings: Google Hotel Ads allows users to book directly with the hotel, bypassing third-party websites or online travel agencies.
· Staying competitive: Hotels can showcase their best rates and deals alongside competitors to highlight their value proposition.
· Mobile-friendly functionality: As 65% of users now use smartphones for travel research, having mobile-friendly GHA ads ensures a seamless user experience and maximizes the chances of conversion.
· Tracking your performance: Google Hotel Ads provides data and insights to better track hotel campaigns performance and measure return on investment (ROI).
How to drive more direct bookings with Google Hotel Ads?
We’ve outlined some successful strategies and best practices below that can help increase your direct bookings by leveraging Google Hotel Ads and other channels:
1. Optimize your Google Hotel Ads campaigns:
· Highlight unique selling points, such as exclusive offers, amenities, and/or promotions.
· Include competitive pricing information to attract price-conscious travelers.
· Leverage ad extensions, such as callouts or structured snippets, to provide additional information and entice users.
2. Optimize your hotel’s website:
· Ensure your website is user-friendly, visually appealing, and mobile-responsive.
· Streamline the booking process to make it quick and easy for users to complete their reservations.
· Display clear and transparent pricing and availability information.
· Provide a seamless user experience from the ad to the booking process.
3. Leverage special offers and promotions:
· Create exclusive offers and promotions for direct bookings, such as discounted rates, free upgrades, or value-added packages.
· Highlight these special offers in your Google Hotel Ads to incentivize users to book directly with your hotel.
4. Monitor and optimize performance:
· Regularly analyze the performance of your Google Hotel Ads campaigns.
· Track metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and return on ad spend (ROAS).
· Use the insights gained to optimize your campaign, adjusting bids, ad placements, or targeting to improve performance.
5. Utilize remarketing:
· Implement remarketing campaigns to target users who have previously shown interest in your hotel.
· Show personalized ads to these users as they continue browsing the web, reminding them to book directly with your hotel.
Remember to regularly evaluate and adjust your strategies based on performance data and user feedback. By continually optimizing your Google Hotel Ads campaign and providing a compelling booking experience, you can increase the likelihood of driving more direct bookings to your hotel.
How can Cendyn help you with Google Hotel Ads?
Cendyn offers an innovative solution, Cendyn Digital Marketing Platform (DMP), which simplifies hoteliers' access to Google Hotel Ads. Thanks to this platform, you can efficiently manage your advertising campaigns and optimize your presence on Google Hotel Ads without having to worry about the technical aspects.
Cendyn Digital Marketing Platform offers a user-friendly, intuitive interface, enabling hoteliers to track campaign performance, analyze data, and make informed decisions to improve their marketing strategy.
Using the DMP, hoteliers can also access advanced bid management features, enabling them to maximize their return on investment (ROI). The platform offers flexibility in bidding strategies, allowing hotels to combine or choose the options that best suit their objectives and budget. In addition, the platform integrates bid optimization features, helping hoteliers adjust their bids based on past performance and market trends.
Another key feature of Cendyn Digital Marketing Platform is its detailed conversion tracking. Cendyn enables hôteliers to accurately measure the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns, notably through the Reporting Center. This traceability of conversions is crucial for evaluating the ROI of each campaign, and making informed decisions to optimize future performance.
Key takeaways
Google Hotel Ads are an essential advertising strategy for hotels wishing to attract more direct customers, increase their online visibility, and optimize their profitability. By leveraging the advanced features of Google Hotel Ads and combining the right bidding strategies, hoteliers can gain a competitive edge in the highly competitive hotel industry.
Thanks to partners such as Cendyn and its Digital Marketing Platform, you can simplify the management of your metasearch advertising campaigns, improve your return on investment, and focus your efforts on optimizing your overall marketing strategy.
By leveraging Google Hotel Ads effectively, you can establish a strong presence in the online marketplace, attract more leads, and increase direct bookings, helping your establishement to thrive in the ever-changing hospitality landscape.
