Summer is quickly approaching in many parts of the world, and travel planning is on the rise: search interest in “passport appointments” increased 300% over the first four months of 2022, and “luxury hotels near me” has over two times the search interest it had during the same period in 2019.
Our team attended Google Marketing Live last week to share our focus areas as we see travel searches rebounding. We showcased new products that will make it easier than ever before for our travel partners—both large and small—to capture new travel demand, including hotel rates on Google Business Profile, feedless onboarding for Hotel Ads, and Performance Max for travel goals.
Opening up access to free and paid booking links through easier onboarding
Getting accurate and timely rates and availability information for your hotel is crucial to finding and serving your prospective guests. We're making this easier in three ways:
First, we're actively supporting industry-standard protocols to bring hotel availability, rates, and inventory online. Talk to your technology providers to see if they are already able to connect your hotel information to Google.
Second, we've significantly simplified our onboarding process by offering the ability for hoteliers to add rates and availability to their Google Business Profile—bypassing technical spreadsheets and files. Individual hotels that meet eligibility requirements can directly input their rates through their Google Business Profile to participate in free hotel booking links. Visit our Help Center article for more information.
Additionally, we're opening up access to Hotel Ads by enabling advertisers to create Hotel campaigns without needing a Hotel Center account in the coming months. This means that any Google Ads advertiser will be able to run ads for the hotel’s website by using rates we’ve sourced.
The advertiser can indicate “I don’t have a Hotel Center account” during campaign creation. This will allow the advertiser to then search for and select hotels of interest. For hotels where Google has available rates, Google will automatically select the highest-quality feed for the hotel.
Scaling hotel advertising across Google properties through Performance Max
Last year, we introduced Performance Max campaigns as a new way to buy Google ads across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign. They complement your existing performance campaigns to help you drive results across Google’s full range of advertising channels and inventory. Now, we’re excited to expand Performance Max for travel goals. Later this year, hotel advertisers will be able to promote their properties and increase bookings across all of Google’s channels.
Performance Max for travel goals simplifies ad campaign setup with pre-populated asset groups for each hotel property, with auto-generated images, descriptions, and videos that you can review and edit. It also extends your reach to property-specific queries on Search, in addition to promoting your hotel properties across Google's advertising channels that comes with Performance Max.
As the travel landscape continues to evolve, we’ll work together to bring your customers helpful and comprehensive experiences wherever they’re searching across Google. To learn even more about how to get started bringing your hotel business online, visit our website.
Posted by Michael Trauttmansdorff, Director, Product Management—Travel at Google