How it All Started

You know instinctively that many of your guests start their search for your hotel, or a hotel in your area on Google, and it pains you to see that all the OTA's (Online Travel Agents) are advertising your rooms rates on Google.....but not your own website. NOT ANYMORE!!

You can now have rates from your own (GuestDiary) website displayed alongside the OTA's, potentially pulling business direct onto your own website, saving costly commissions and helping your hotels profitability.

Google are becoming a direct active player in Hotel Distribution.

What is Google Hotel Ads? 

GHA is a Metasearch engine, just like Tripadvisor, Trivago and Hotelscombined that groups together hotel rates coming from different sources, so that users searching for a particular hotel can compare and choose what the best deal is for their upcoming trip.

Since starting 2019, before and even more so during and after Covid, Google Hotel Ads is by far the fastest-growing metasearch engine across all regions. No surprises there! Therefore as a hotelier, participating in Google Hotel Ads should be a must!

How to Get Started?

3 things are required in order to have your hotel up and running in Google Hotel Ads:

1. An account Google My Business

2. An account Google Ads

3. A connectivity partner

Like most things, nothing is for free. Google Hotel Ads allow you to choose from the following 3 options:

• Pay-per-conversion: You pay only when a traveller books your hotel.

• Pay-per-stay: You pay when a traveller completes a stay. Google introduced this option after Covid to help hoteliers deal with a challenging and uncertain situation.

• Cost per click (fixed or per cent): You pay when a traveller clicks on your ad, regardless of whether you’ll get the booking.

You can decide how much commission you want to pay, i.e. 10% (which is typically 5% less than anything the OTA's charge), BUT because the booking is routed through your Booking Engine there may be a Booking Engine commission to pay also.

Top Tips to Get The Most Out of your Google Hotel Ads

1. Show Multiple Room Options

Don’t  just settle for the cheapest room offering. Google Hotel Ads is your best chance to compete with the OTAs: not only will you offer more options to your guests, but you will also occupy more space at the expense of other OTAs, therefore being more relevant and prominent.

2. Display Your Room Pictures

People first see and then read. Meaning visuals have a quicker impact on people’s minds and, by showing your room pictures, your direct channel will visually stand out from all other channels.

3. Show Reasons to Book Direct

All the different pricing options available from the OTAs you are connected to are all displayed in the same way, so you need your brand website to stand out from the crowd!

A slightly more flexible cancellation policy will perfectly do the job.

4. Always Have a Free Cancellation Rate Available

Speaking of cancellation policies, the level of uncertainty generated by the pandemic has created the need to work more intensively with flexible cancellation rates and avoid non-refundable options. Make sure you always show up with at least one pricing option when users turn on the filter “Free Cancellation only”.

5. Bring Marketing and Revenue together.

Marketing would have been the main priority for any advertising platform (Google, Facebook, Bing, etc) in the past. Variables should as location, language, source – these are typically marketing-only dimensions.

Google Hotel Ads have started to incorporate Revenue related dimensions in bidding such as; Length of Stay, you might decide to increase your bid for searches of 3 or more nights, whilst keeping your budget low for searches of 1 or 2 nights.