Google Hotel Ads Boost online bookings
adchieve.com p. 1 A higher Return with Google Hotel Ads
Before they embark on a trip, millions of consumers The commission that you pay is often lower than the and business travelers use Google to search for the commission on booking platforms such as Booking. perfect accommodation at the best price. Google com and Trivago. therefore offers the possibility to advertise on its Moreover, as an advertiser you remain the owner of website through Google Hotel Ads. the customer data and you can do the cross-selling yourself. This white paper gives more background As an advertiser you can realize extra bookings via information about Hotel Ads, the possibilities that it Google Hotel Ads at attractive conditions. offers and tips for using and optimizing the ads.
adchieve.com p. 2 Which accommodations are eligible?
To be eligible to be shown within Google Hotel Ads, Although the name suggests otherwise, the ads don’t accommodations must meet a number of criteria. necessarily have to relate to hotels. Vacation resorts or vacation homes may also be eligible. • Basically it must concern a room where a guest can spend the night. Accommodations that do not qualify include, for • The space has to have solid walls and offer example, campsite pitches for tents. Because Google sanitary facilities. itself uses the name Hotel Ads in a broad sense, we’ll • There must also be a reception that is open also consistently use the words Hotel Center and during normal business hours. Hotel Ads in this white paper. • The minimum booking period accepted should With these terms we also refer to other types of be no greater than 7 days. accommodation that can be advertised on Google via Hotel Ads.
adchieve.com p. 3 The history of
Google Hotel Ads That’s why Google has been studying and experimenting since 2010 how hotels can be shown on Google in a different way. In 2010, this process started with an integration within Google Maps, enabling you to search for hotel prices in Google Maps using Google’s Hotel Finder. Since the rise of Google, people have been using its website to search for hotels. As a hotel, you could Hotels were also given the opportunity to position try to achieve a high ranking on Google on your own. themselves on Google using what we now call Google However, Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) quickly My Business. Subsequently, the Google Hotel Center surfaced, directing visitors to their own platforms was created. This environment enabled hotel owners where hotel accommodation could be booked. to manage their hotels and OTAs to manage their Parties such as Booking.com and Expedia managed offering, as well as create ads for Google. to build up a very successful business based on that approach. The most recent development is the transfer of hotel advertising to the Google Ads environment. This is The OTAs advertised (and are still advertising) a lot the advertising environment where advertisers can on Google. For Google, the advertising revenues from create text ads as well, and it’s also the environment OTAs are an attractive source of income. The OTAs that is familiar ground to many online marketers and ranked among Google’s largest advertisers worldwide. marketing agencies. However, Google also calculated that it only managed The management of the accommodations remains to retain a small part of the revenues in the entire part of the Hotel Ad Center. In addition, Google My hotel booking chain for itself. Business remains an important element and also the environment where extra information about a hotel can be registered. Moreover, it’s the environment where you can manage reviews coming in through Google.
adchieve.com p. 4 Hotel Ads & the Customer Journey
Searching by city name
In Google Travel’s hotel environment, people can As a user you can encounter Hotel Ads from Google search by city name in combination with an arrival in various places. and departure date and the number of people. After running the search you’ll get to see the • Google Travel page; accommodation overview for that city. • Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP); • Google My Business Listings; • Google Maps; • Google Assistant.
Exactly which accommodations you get to see as a traveler and where you get to see them, is best explained by starting with Google Travel. Google Travel is the environment where people can search for complete trips, airline tickets and hotels.
Accommodation overview at city level within Google Travel
adchieve.com p. 5 If you click on a certain accommodation you’ll end up A lot of people won’t start their search on Google on the accommodation details page. The details page Travel, though, but in the Google search engine. In contains multiple tabs presenting accommodation that case, Google integrates the accommodation information, prices and reviews, for example. overview in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). The number of hotels shown is limited and there are Usually, Google will first show the overview tab on no sponsored results at the top of the page. the details page. However, Google will also display sponsored results at the top of the accommodation If you click on “view all hotels” you’ll be redirected to overview. Clicking on these sponsored Google Travel, which presents the total overview of accommodations will take you to the accommodation hotels with the sponsored results at the top. If you details page too, but in that case you’ll wind up on don’t click on “more hotels” but click on a specific an additional “sponsored” tab. This sponsored tab hotel instead, you’ll also land on the accommodation highlights a specific provider of the accommodation details page and within that page on the overview in question. tab.
When it comes to searching for cities, there are some differences between the Google Search environment and the Google Travel environment:
• In Google Travel you start your search by specifying a city name, a date and the number of people for whom you’re looking for accommodation. Once you’ve entered this information you can refine your search and Result for city indicate that you’re looking for a hotel, for based search on example. In Google Search you do a free text Google’s SERP search and Google uses default values for the arrival and departure dates and for the number of people (2). adchieve.com p. 6 Google will know right away that when someone When someone searches directly for a specific hotel, searches for a “hotel in Florida” it should only show he or she will get to see an extensive overview with hotels and not include vacation resorts, for example. information about that hotel. So there’s no need for you to set additional filters. Basically it’s a listing of Google My Business that is integrated within Google’s SERP. In addition to the • An noteworthy detail is that if you’re on the providers and their starting prices, the Google My SERP and click on a price on the map of Google Business result also includes other information about Maps, you’ll be redirected to the accommodation the hotel. overview of the city that you’re looking for. As a user you’ll see, amongst other things, address However, if you’re in an accommodation overview details, a link to the accommodation’s website, on Google Travel and you click on a price on a listing of important facilities offered by the the map of Google Maps you’ll wind up on the accommodation and an overview of reviews. accommodation details page.
Searching for a specific hotel
Users who are further along in their customer journey may already have a specific hotel in mind where they want to go. Within Google Travel you cannot search for a specific hotel! Only searching for cities is Integration of Hotel Ads in supported. Google’s SERP for a hotel specific search Once again, many users will turn to the Google search engine to do a hotel search. Obviously, in that case you can search for a specific hotel.
adchieve.com p. 7 Connecting your
From the Google My Business result, a visitor can offering to the also click through to a specific provider via the price that is displayed. You can also click through to the accommodation details page first via “book a room” Google Hotel or “view more prices”. In those cases you’ll wind up at the accommodation details page, on the prices tab with the starting prices of all providers.
In addition to the Google My Business result, Google also integrates an overview with dates and starting As a hotel owner or an OTA, how can you get listed prices for the accommodation in the SERP. As a among Google’s Hotel Ads? Before you can start consumer you can see the prices for the hotel for creating ads, which we’ll address later in more detail, about the coming two months. step one is connecting your offering to Google. This See the accompanying example. From there you’ll information is stored in the Hotel Center. also wind up on the accommodation details page and within that page on the tab with prices. Creating a connection with Google is something that must always be done in collaboration with a Google connection partner, such as Adchieve. Once the connection is established, Google wants to receive the following information:
• a list of accommodations • a list of landing pages • the current prices and availability
Integration from Hotel Ads of prices in Google’s SERP for a hotel specific search
adchieve.com p. 8 List of accommodations
The list of accommodations (the feed) should contain In addition to the mandatory fields, additional the following fields: information can be included in the feed, such as the category to which the accommodation belongs (e.g. 1. hotel id bed and breakfast), the brand name of the chain to 2. the name of the hotel which the accommodation belongs and the number 3. the address of stars (star rating). There are also five custom fields 4. the phone number that can be used to send extra information. This 5. the longitude and latitude defining the hotel’s option can come in handy when creating campaigns exact location in Google Ads. 6. category 7. image URL Landing page 8. image type 9. image width Google must receive a list that shows on which page 10. image height of the provider’s website the prices of a hotel can be 11. image date - day found. 12. image date - month This list must contain the ID of the accommodation 13. image date - year concerned. Google then needs to know how the URL is built up that matches the The entire address can be written in full in one field check-in day, month and year, and the length of the of the feed or the street, city, province, zip code and stay. Google itself can enter those variables in the country can each be supplied separately. URL. The phone number, latitude and longitude from the feed are matched with data in Google My Business for verification and therefore must match.
As a basis, Google wants to know the starting price for 2 people for each accommodation, preferably starting with today as the arrival date and up to 330 days in advance.
adchieve.com p. 10 Google can quickly show the prices that it has stored to Google users. In the case of deviating searches, additional prices must be requested live at the moment when a user is searching. For Google it’s therefore extremely important that price requests can be processed quickly. That’s why Google sets requirements for the speed at which the prices are supplied to Google.
In addition to price coverage and price speed there’s Example of approved and disapproved pricing on the landing a third important KPI, namely price accuracy. Google page therefore checks the price on a number of points:
1. Whether the correct price is specified, i.e. including taxes and additional fees. The price coverage, price speed and price accuracy 2. Whether the price supplied via the API matches play an important role in the Google rankings. You’ll the price on the landing page that is specified in read more about it in the section about campaign the landing page feed. In particular when a lower management. price is supplied than the actual price, this is seen as a violation. 3. Whether the price is included correctly in the website. The price must be clearly recognizable and most prominent among any other prices that may be shown.
adchieve.com p. 11 Creating campaigns Setting up measurement tools A second preparatory step is ensuring the accurate measurement of the booking value that you achieve with your campaigns. Without that insight, it will be difficult to optimize Ads for Google Hotel Ads can be created in Google your campaigns at a later stage. To this aim you’ll Ads. Previously, ads were created in the Hotel Ad need to include 1) the Hotel Ads conversion pixel Center itself, but the management of hotel data and and 2) the Google Ads global site tag in your website. the creation of ads have now been separated. Technical details can be found in the Google Help Center. Creating an account Start building campaigns Therefore, step 1 - if you don’t have an account yet - is to create a Google Ads account. When creating Within Google Ads you can create your own a Google Ads account you enter a number of basic structure. You can create one or more campaigns and data, such as the billing address and payment data. within those campaigns, you can create one or more ads. Within each ad you can then create one or more I you haven’t advertised on Google Ads before, you hotel groups, with a hotel group consisting of one can get a discount code for your first ads. Once you hotel or a collection of hotels. have created a Google Ads account, it can be linked Those who are familiar with creating and managing to the Hotel Ad Center. product ads within Google Shopping will quickly recognize the similarities with that process. Also in Google Shopping the products are managed separately, i.e. in the Google Merchant Center (the counterpart of the Hotel Center), and the ads are created in Google Ads. adchieve.com p. 12 When you start creating campaigns it’s important to The start and end date need no further clarification. carefully consider its exact structure. You can group For the location that you target you specify what hotels and campaigns in a well-organized manner visitors from which country or region within a country through the structure. you want to reach. You can specify multiple countries The structure also determines how you can and/or regions per campaign. advertise, though, and which optimization options you’ll ultimately have. That’s because at each level The budget is the amount that you want to spend per (campaign, ad, hotel group) you can set different day. Please note: Google averages your daily budget variables. across the month. This means that you won’t spend more in one month than the number of days in the month times your daily budget, but that you can Campaign settings spend more or less than the specified daily budget on a particular day. You can create one or more campaigns within a Google Ads account. It’s important which settings you With Google Hotel Ads you can choose from different can or should make at the campaign level. Settings at bidding methods: the campaign level are: 1. The first option is to set a commission rate. The 1. the start and end date of the campaign commission amount is the percentage of the total 2. the location that you want to target booking amount that you’re willing to pay. Google 3. the campaign budget will then try - given the commission amount and 4. the bidding method the competition on Google - to set the highest a. commission basis possible booking value. b. manual CPC c. percentage CPC 2. With bidding via “Manual CPC” you can set the maximum cost per click (CPC) for ads yourself. Every time someone clicks through to your website you pay a price per click, the maximum price being the set click price. adchieve.com p. 13 3. A third option is also based on a CPC, but in this 7. The ad schedule in which you indicate at what case the maximum price per click that you’ll pay times ads may or may not be shown or the bid is a percentage of the booking amount. If you adjustments for those times set a percentage of 0.10%, for example, and the 8. Bid adjustments for devices (mobile, desktop, booking value is € 500, you’ll pay a maximum of tablet) € 0.50 per click. For ads with a booking value of € 300 it will be € 0.30. Let’s assume that one in Each highlight extension consists of a maximum of every 30 people who click on your ad actually 25 characters that you can enter yourself. They’re book a room. Then you’ll pay a total of € 15.00 for an additional promotional tool to put the spotlights each booking with a value of € 500 and € 9.00 for on the hotel or on yourself as a provider of a € 300 booking. accommodation in this hotel. Although always only one will be shown, you can enter multiple highlight The above settings are set immediately when creating extensions and test automatically which one works a campaign and can be adjusted later. After creating a best. The extension can be specified per language, campaign you can implement a number of additional so that you’ll show up in each language area with refinements at the campaign level, namely: the correct extensions (in case you target multiple language areas with one campaign). 5. Highlight extensions at the campaign level 6. Target groups that you want to reach and bid For making adjustments to your bids for target adjustments for those groups groups, ad planning and devices, you can use bid • Target groups based on previous modifiers within Google Ads. With a bid modifier you website visits indicate through a percentage how much more or less • Comparable target groups you’re willing to pay than the base CPC price. Multiple bid modifiers can strengthen each other. If you offer 20% more at a certain time of day and standard 20% more for visitors who use their mobile device, the price will increase by (1.44 or 1.4) at that specific time for a visitor who performs a search using a mobile device. adchieve.com p. 14 Ad settings
Within a campaign, one or more ad groups can be Subsequently, you can make settings at the ad level created. For each ad group, the following settings are for highlight extensions, target groups and devices. If possible: you set these settings at the ad level, those settings will apply. If nothing is entered, the settings of the 1. Bids campaign to which the ad belongs will apply. 2. Highlight extensions 3. Target groups In addition, some interesting additional settings 4. Devices can be made at the ad level that cannot be done at 5. Itinerary (bid modifiers) the campaign level. If you want to adjust the bids a. Day of departure for certain departure days, the length of the stay or b. Length of stay (number of days) the number of days that someone wants to book in c. How far ahead someone makes a advance, you can apply bid modifiers at the ad group booking level. 6. Dates set by the traveler or not Bid modifiers can also be used for situations in which a) people enter their arrival and departure dates You can set bids at the ad group level. There’s themselves or b) people search based on an arrival something to keep in mind in this regard, though. and departure date filled out in advance by Google. With regular text ads, the bid will then apply to this In general, people who enter the dates themselves ad group. With Hotel Ads, it serves no purpose to set are further along in the booking process (they know bids at the ad level. Bids must be set per hotel group when they want to arrive and leave) and are therefore (see the next section). usually more valuable. This warrants a higher bid, which can be set using that specific bid modifier.
adchieve.com p. 15 Creating hotel groups
Within an ad group you can specify one or more hotel groups. In each hotel group you can then place one or more hotels. For example, you can choose to combine all hotels that are in the same area in one group, or to group all luxury hotels or budget hotels. You set the bid price at the hotel group level - that is, if you have selected manual or percentage CPC as the bidding option. If you have opted for a commission rate, you won’t have to enter your own CPC bids.
adchieve.com p. 16 Bidding options
and campaign 1. Are there any target groups that are more valuable, and which target groups spend extra money on extras such as drinks, food and structure excursions in addition to their booking? • Are there any guests from a certain country, area or region who spend more or less money or who What are you willing to pay for bookings that you will plan their vacation in different periods? receive through Google Hotel Ads? When is a booking • Is the reason for their stay business or pleasure? valuable and which bookings are more profitable for • Are there any guests who have booked previously you than others? and whose spending habits you know?
It’s wise to first know the answer to these types of questions before you start setting up a campaign. After all, the campaign structure will determine to 2. Are there certain periods for which it’s more a great extent how you can distinguish between valuable for you to receive bookings than others? bids for different target groups, periods and • Does it concern people who are searching using accommodations. Here are some questions to Google’s standard period settings or do they set consider before setting up a campaign: the dates themselves? • Are there any periods in which you won’t have any trouble to get your accommodation fully booked anyway, so that you would want to spend less or nothing on commission fees, versus periods in which it’s hard to fill your accommodation?
adchieve.com p. 17 3. Do you set up campaigns for a single Simple commission driven accommodation or advertise for multiple campaign accommodations at the same time? • Does it concern similar accommodations within The easiest option is a setup where you pay a the same region or area? commission rate for each booking. And where all • Do bookings for the various accommodations hotels are included in one campaign, in one ad group have a different (relative) value for you? and within a hotel group. • Are you dealing with different target groups that A campaign like that is relatively easy to create and you want to reach for each accommodation, with requires little maintenance. The disadvantage is that different booking windows (for example because you have few options to optimize the campaign of different vacations periods)? specifically for your situation.
4. What are your considerations from a business perspective? Differentiated commission driven • How important are Google Hotel Ads to you and campaigns how much time are you able and willing to spend on them? This option goes a little further and offers you the • Do you have sufficient in-house knowledge possibility to differentiate the commission per hotel and enough time to apply advanced bidding or based on the origin of the bookings. strategies? • Is your website user-friendly enough and can Commission rates can only be set at the campaign visitors easily book through your site? level. So if you want to differentiate commission rates you’ll have to set up separate campaigns and ensure Have you been able to answer these questions? that the right accommodations, target groups or, for Then you can start creating the campaign structure example, countries that you target, are allocated to and set and manage your bids. Obviously, what’s the the right campaign. best structure for you will depend on your situation. Below we’ll discuss a number of options and the possibilities that they offer. adchieve.com p. 18 In the case of a commission driven campaign it’s After all, bid modifiers can be set per ad group and important that Google can build up sufficient data using this structure you can therefore set for each in order to reach sound conclusions. According individual hotel whether you want to change your to Google you’ll need a minimum of 20 bookings bids for: per campaign in order to be able to draw solid a. The day of departure conclusions. b. The duration of the stay (number of days) Therefore, if you split up your campaigns too much c. How far ahead someone makes a booking you’ll run the risk that Google won’t arrive at the right d. Whether or not it concerns booking dates that conclusions. Also, the algorithm that Google uses were set by the traveler doesn’t like too many changes. The algorithm needs e. The device used by the user (mobile, desktop, time to optimize itself and too many changes are tablet) disadvantageous to that process. f. Target groups defined in the campaign g. The time of day Granular campaign structure with percentage CPC The disadvantage of widely split up, granular Granular means that you create insight at a detailed campaigns is that it takes a lot of work to set them up level with the setup of your structure. The advantage and to build up insights at an overall level. of granular data is that you can easily build up Therefore, automation is certainly recommended insights at the general level, but can also drill down to when you’re dealing with a larger number of a more detailed level. accommodations. With a structure featuring one campaign and all hotels in one ad group and hotel group, you don’t An additional advantage of granular data, however, is have that option. However, if you place each hotel in that it’s also easier to link your own advanced bidding one ad group and the hotel group consists of a single algorithms to them. These algorithms can combine hotel, it’s possible to generate maximum insight for the data in different ways and then implement the each hotel and specifically manage the campaign per results at the most detailed level. When using the hotel. percentage CPC in such an algorithm, the potential booking amount can also be taken into account. adchieve.com p. 19 Ranking and Combined structures display It’s also possible to make combinations of the above structures. For example, a separate campaign can be set up for each area, region or country, enabling you to target your campaigns at those levels. Within each campaign every hotel can then have its In general, the higher the bid the higher your offering own ad group to ensure optimal management per will show up on the Google results page. The height hotel. of the bid is not the only deciding factor, though.
Google also looks at how much they can ultimately earn from someone who does a Google search, and whether someone has a good experience with booking through Hotel Ads. After all, someone with a good experience will be more likely to make another booking through Hotel Ads in the future. Google therefore includes these types of factors in the ranking as well.
Google won’t reveal exactly how the ranking is created. Based on our overall experience with Google Ads and what we know specifically about Google Hotels, the following are important factors that play a role in determining the ranking in addition to the bids:
• The accuracy of prices. By this we mean to what extent the prices that a traveler will get to see on your website correspond to the price that have you submitted to Google. adchieve.com p. 20 Google checks this on a regular basis and calculates a • The click-through ratios of ads. The higher the “price accuracy” based on the results of these checks. Click Through Ratio (CTR), the more attractive Google thus wants to prevent travelers from being travelers seem to find the offer. This could be unpleasantly surprised because they encounter because your price is lower than that of your different prices than they have seen on Google. competitors or because your brand name is better known than that of other providers. If your account has a poor price accuracy, it can Typically, an ad that ranks higher within the even be suspended. Since multiple providers can Google results will have a higher CTR anyway. be present in a Hotel Center of Google connection However, Google corrects the CTR for the position partners, this can lead to a lower price accuracy to determine an objective - position independent for you as an advertiser, without you having any - CTR. influence on it.
When choosing a partner to provide the connection, • The quality of the website. The speed and ease you should therefore take into account the quality with which travelers can find their way on your measures that this partner has implemented. website is important for the customer experience. If travelers land on a slow website that isn’t working very well, this will also reflect poorly • The relative price level. People who want to on Google and people will be less likely to use make a booking will usually prefer a lower price. Google again. A bad user experience with your Therefore, Google will generally give providers website will therefore not only lead to fewer with a lower price a higher ranking than those that bookings directly because people drop out, but list a higher price. it will also result in a lower quality score and therefore a lower ranking on Google.
adchieve.com p. 21 Boost online bookings
Are you looking to make more direct sales at lower costs and attract more new customers? Then it’s a great idea to start with Google Hotel Ads.
To ensure the correct communication of current prices and availability in Google Hotel Ads, Google recommends working with an official integration partner.
As an official integration partner of Google Hotel Ads, ADchieve is happy to help you with the integration Rudolph Dekker and set-up of your Google Hotel Ads campaigns. Strategic Account Manager Travel
Want to get started right away? Contact E: [email protected] Rudolph Dekker, Strategic Account Manager Travel. T: 06 41 02 18 80
adchieve.com p. 22 Automation in the travel industry
ADchieve is the number one Scalable campaigns automation solution for PPC campaigns specifically tailored to With ADchieve it’s easy to create and maintain the travel industry. campaigns. Campaigns for every destination or each accommodation? With ADchieve it’s no problem at ADchieve helps organizations in the travel industry all! ADchieve creates all campaigns and ad groups with automated advertising in search engines such as and automatically adds new destinations and Google and Bing. accommodations. Using ADchieve it’s possible to We optimize both paid text ads and Google Hotel extensively scale up your campaigns. ADchieve offers Ads, and make it easy to manage them. Our custom options for managing multiple accounts at the same made bidding algorithm ensures the right price time. proposition compared to your competitors and takes Moreover, all of those accounts and campaigns are into account specific customer objectives. easy to maintain. Changes to ads, whether they’re temporary or not, can be quickly implemented on a large scale. Unique solution
• Official Google Hotel Ads integration partner and Google Premier Partner • Advertise your entire travel offer in a scalable manner in Google and Bing • Build relevant ad texts with high click-through rates in no time • Apply extensions that perfectly match each unique travel offer • Easily communicate sales and last-minute promotions • Improve margins thanks to bid management tailored to the travel industry • Save time by automating routine campaign management tasks • Apply cross-channel feed management for all travel channels in addition to Google and Bing adchieve.com • Exchange ideas with experienced Google Ads and [email protected] Data Science Consultants + 31 (0)73 612 47 52