Use Google Ads to increase the live share of your hotel
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Discover how to increase your direct bookings by learning more about hotel digital marketing tools.

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How to use Google Ads to increase the live share of your hotel?

Faced with the various dematerialized travel agencies that deploy phenomenal means to attract customers, independent hoteliers sometimes feel overwhelmed and vulnerable. However, Google ADS is a powerful tool to get ahead of this competition and increase the share of a hotel. We explain how.


Some figures on Google

Some hoteliers might think that it is useless to work on the visibility of their hotel on Google. If it requires a certain investment (in time or money), referencing your hotel on the most used search engine in the world is nevertheless the best way to acquire customers. A few figures speak for themselves:

  • 92.99% of Internet users use Google as a search engine, and 97% of them use their mobile to do a search (the second is Bing, with only 3% of the market) ;
  • 40,000 queries are launched every second on Google;
  • The “hotel” keyword costs € 110,000 per day, but it is sought after almost 1.3 million times on a daily basis;
  • In 2018, 53 % of hotels reservations came from paid SEO (SEA), and therefore from the Google ecosystem.

To help you position your hotel correctly on Google, the Google Ads tool improves your visibility quickly and easily.


What is Google Ads?

Google ADS is a platform for broadcasting a paid advertisement on the Google (SERP) search results.

This paid referencing (SEA) then makes it possible to display a link to the official website of a hotel at the very top of the results page, when an Internet user types in the keywords for which the hotelier has Positioned in its Google Ads campaign.

Thus, for an establishment in Nantes, the professional can create an ADS campaign on the keywords “Hotel + Nantes”. As soon as this request is made on Google, the Internet user will see the hotel link appear in the first results.

Google ADS makes it possible to considerably increase the visibility of a hotel, and therefore increase the share of direct.


Google ADS: How does it work?

résultat d'une annonce SEA pour un hotel

It is not enough to pay an internal advertising campaign to see the site of a hotel propelling at the forefront of the SERP. To do this, you have to choose the most relevant keywords, and bid with Google Ads.

  • The auction price will depend on several things;
  • La concurrence sur le même mot-clé ;
  • The value of the keyword, in other words, the amount that the Internet user will be ready to invest with you after clicking on your ad;
  • Research volume;
  • The quality of the ad, or Quality Score (QS).

Then, Google will charge the hotelier each time a visitor clicks on their ad. This is called cost per click (CPC).

For advertising campaigns with Google Ads to work, it is therefore necessary to have a budget adapted to the auctions, and a quality ad.


Why use Google Ads to increase my direct bookings?

Between 2014 and 2018, online reservation of hotels increased by almost 47 %, and this figure continues to grow. This growth is particularly beneficial to OTAs (Online Tourism Agencies), such as Booking.com or Expedia.fr, which record almost 80% of online hotel reservations.

If they manage to recover so many customers, it is simply thanks to Google Ads advertising campaigns , which allow them to have almost unbeatable visibility (millions of dollars are invested each year for Google Ads ads OTA).

So, if it is not possible to dethrone these giants of online booking, it is however essential to position yourself in front of them, in order to increase the visibility of the hotel’s official website. Indeed, a site absent from search engines necessarily considerably reduces the live reservation rate.


Getting started with Google Ads account: brand defense

Many hoteliers have already had the experience of typing the name of their hotel in the Google search bar, only to realize that the first results lead to an intermediary platform (OTA).

This phenomenon is called brandjacking, or brand hijacking. To avoid this, it is then essential to buy the brand name on Google Ads, so that it can no longer be used without your consent. It is also advisable to deposit the brand with the INPI (National Institute of Industrial Property).

 

Buying the brand name on Google Ads

Brandjacking is never inevitable, and Google Ads can help hospitality professionals develop an effective brand defense strategy. The purchase of the brand name thus presents several advantages.

  • Be at the top of the search engines: travelers who search for a hotel on the Internet generally do not know the difference between a paid link or a link resulting from natural referencing (SEO), and 55% of clicks are concentrated on the first 3 results of the SERP;
  • Recover the traffic that comes back to you: if an Internet user types the name of your hotel in the search bar, it is logical that he comes across your site, and not that of an OTA. However, if you do not buy the brand of your establishment on Google Ads, it is the OTA that will recover the reservation which should nevertheless come back to you directly.

Buying the brand name on Google Ads thus makes it possible to get ahead of the OTAs on Google, and thus increase the hotel’s direct share, the conversion rate, and therefore the turnover.


Hoteliers: Do you know Google Hotel Ads?

Google Hotel Ads is a meta search engine that provides information on all online offers of a hotel, either the official website or OTAs. It thus allows the Internet user to compare the prices of the same hotel on the various sites, and to click on the link which seems to him the most interesting.

For an independent hotelier, it is therefore very interesting to use Google Hotel Ads, displaying the official website’s reservation prices, which are often cheaper than the rates applied by the OTAs (which recover a commission).

Google Hotel Ads then allows:

  • attract potential customers who are looking for a hotel in a particular area;
  • To increase the number of direct bookings;
  • Keep control over the customer journey;
  • Access a lot of customer information and enter it into your database.

Hotel Search results on Google - wihp hotels


Attract potential customers with Google Hotel Ads

The interest of the Google Hotel Ads metasearch is to be able to display the price of the hotel’s official website, and thus compete with OTAs.

It is therefore essential to create a Hotel Ads campaign to attract potential customers to the official website of the hotel. To do this, the hotelier must imperatively create a business file for the hotel (Google My Business file), where the direct rates will be displayed and updated regularly. Then, by connecting to the Google Hotel Ads service, the establishment will be visible:

  • In the Google SERP;
  • On Google Maps;
  • With Google Assistant (voice control);
  • On the Google Hotel Search or Google Travel platform.

 

Conclusion

Google Ads is a powerful tool that allows hoteliers to take back control of online bookings. At WIHP, hotel marketing agency, we are here to support you in the set up of an effective digital communication strategy. We help you increase your hotel’s direct share, contact us!

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