Google Hotel Ads Setup Guide

Google Hotel Ads (GHA) is widely regarded as one of the best solutions to efficiently advertise your hotel/serviced apartment, appear in search results, and garner more direct bookings in turn. It’s an innovative system of paid advertisements where you can display your room availability, prices, and other details to potential customers looking for accommodation on various Google Platforms (Search, Google Travel, and Maps). So, what it basically does is enable higher visibility for your hospitality brand and facilitates direct bookings by driving more traffic to your website.

A Little More About Google Hotel Ads and Its Benefits

Google Hotel Ads is a metasearch advertising solution where you can bid on keywords to be shown in the hotel booking module with your name, pricing, amenities, photos, etc. It will happen whenever any user searches for a hotel online. You can thus reach a bigger audience, get more visibility and direct bookings (which also translate to higher revenues), and appear more prominently in online search results.

At the same time, GHA campaigns will also enable hotels to target particular dates, locations, and traveler types. Whenever a user clicks on any Google Hotel Ad, he/she will be taken to the website of your hotel for direct bookings. This system has plenty of room for dynamic pricing, detailed customer targeting, and integration with other Google platforms such as Travel and Maps. What else do you gain? Of course, you can increase your direct booking numbers and lower your dependence on traditional OTAs. It will automatically help you scale up profit margins, since you don’t have to pay Google Hotel Ads commissions for each Google Hotels booking.

Also, by leveraging Google Hotel Ads, you get to stay in control over your branding and presentation, while also communicating directly with customers and managing bookings yourself. It helps you implement customer loyalty and rewards programs better, while building relationships and targeting specific keywords/location/based searching for growth. Sounds interesting right? It is, provided you have the right booking engine integrated with your website and can ensure a user-friendly experience for your customers.

How Much Does Google Hotel Ads Cost?

Cost-per-click (CPC) or commission-based (CPA) pricing models.
Flexible budgets – you control how much you spend.
Common options:
- CPC: Pay when someone clicks your ad.
- CPA: Pay a Google Hotel Ads commission only when a booking is made.

How to Setup Google Hotel Ads

The basic process involves linking your Hotel Center account with your Google Ads account. You can then create your Hotel campaign in Google Ads and also make sure that your pricing and inventory are linked to Google suitably. It can be through an integration partner or even directly.

Here’s how the process works:

Create your Hotel Center account in case you don’t have one. You can then directly integrate your hotel details or use an integration partner for this purpose.
The next step is setting up your Google Ads account for managing all Hotel campaigns. In case you don’t have this one as well, setting it up is the next part of the process.
Now comes the linking part. You can follow Google’s instructions to link both these accounts together seamlessly.
You can now create a new campaign, choosing Hotel as the campaign type. Select your linked Hotel Center when you are prompted and then define the campaign settings carefully. These include the name of the campaign, budget, bidding strategy, targeting preferences (devices, networks, etc.), and so on.
Determine how much you wish to bid on your ads (automated or manual bidding) and organize your ads depending on the location, room type, and other criteria.
Keep tracking ad performance regularly, while adjusting your targeting and bidding as per your specific requirements.
Always remember to set up landing pages on your website where users will be directed whenever they click on your hotel ads.
Keep your hotel data (availability, prices, etc.) updated regularly in the Hotel Center to ensure more accurate ads for guests.
Consider using an integration partner/channel manager for simplifying the entire process of linking your hotel data to Google and subsequent campaign management

Final Thoughts

Setting up Google Hotel Ads is a streamlined process, where you just have to follow a few instructions to get the job done. Consider integrating GHA into your hotel sales/revenue strategy, since you can garner a higher share of direct bookings through the same. At the same time, while you cannot really junk OTAs, you can gradually reduce your dependence on them by wisely leveraging Google Hotel Ads.

Ready to increase your hotel’s direct bookings with Google Hotel Ads? Download the free Google Hotel Ads setup guide now.