Everything you need to know about Google Hotel Ads
If you are an independent hotelier, one challenge you might face when you are still at your starting point is how you will compete with travel sites and agencies for you to generate hotel bookings. This is where Google hotel ads come in. Google is known to be one of the biggest and most used search engines that give its users an array of results to choose from.
Now let’s get to know more about Google Hotel ads, how they work, and how to set one up for your brand.
What is Google Hotel Ads?
Google hotel ads are simply a paid service that is designed for hotels to help them become more visible on the web and increase their direct bookings through the search engine. Sounds pretty interesting, right? Imagine competing with travel agencies and sites across the web and not getting much compared to the efforts you exert.
But what is more interesting about Google hotel ads is that they can compare hotel prices from different travel meta-search portals like Trivago and TripAdvisor. But this is only where things get compelling.
Now that we know what Google hotel ads are, let’s explore more about how they work and in what ways they help you increase not just your visibility on the web but also the number of direct bookings.
How do Google Hotel Ads work?
Let’s consider that you are a traveler who is looking for a hotel in a destination where you want to be. The first thing that you will normally do is access the internet and search. Now, this is where independent hoteliers are seen, and this is how Google hotel ads work.
Google Hotel Ads allows you to promote the prices and availability of your hotel in Google and Google Maps search results. For instance, when you search “hotels in Wan Chai, Hong Kong” or “hotels in Bali, Indonesia” in Google Maps, it will give you an array of results showing the prices of each hotel, and you can also directly input the target dates and the number of guests to see availabilities.
But the main purpose of Google hotel ads is to ensure direct bookings. By activating hotel advertising campaigns, a direct booking link from your website will appear.
How to set up google hotel ads?
Once you’ve already connected your booking engine or booking tool to your Google Ads account, you can now set up your first campaign. You probably still wonder where you should start. Here’s how you can do it step-by-step:
- On your google account, click the “+ new campaign” button
- Select a campaign with no goal guidance
- Click “hotel” ads and continue
After doing these, you will be directed to another page where you will fill out the;
- Campaign name
- Define the bidding strategy and the budget,
- Set the location, and this is where you can input a specific country by entering another location,
- Start and end date of the campaign
- Add the ad group name, and
- Bidding cost per click.
Now you are all good to go and this is how you can set up a google hotel ads campaign.
Use google Ads to generate more hotel bookings
You can now begin utilising this strategy to generate direct bookings to your main website. Now you have prior understanding of the purpose of setting up Google hotel ads and how it can help you as an independent hotelier. But this will require a lot of work and effort.
Not a digital marketing expert? Bambu specialises in setting up advertisements. We aim to drive sales and conversions and boost brand visibility across social media platforms, search engines, and marketplaces.