Hotel Digital Marketing is an Agency helping independent hotels like yours increase their

direct bookings and occupancy. We achieve this by growing your brand on social media,
improving your web page ranking on Google and managing ads with good ROI.
Learn more at www.HotelDMarketing.com

Hotel Advertising on Google: Why and How (with Screenshots)

Google offers a range of advertising options to hoteliers. Traditional search ads are text-based and
appear at the top and bottom of a search engine results page (SERP). Display ads are targeted to
relevant web pages across the web, or to specific pages that are chosen by the advertiser. Video ads are
shown on Youtube, before videos or during them, and across the web. We'll discuss the advantages and
disadvantages of these options in comparison to Google's Hotel Ads. We'll also show you how to set up
each kind of campaign.

Google Hotel Ads: Made Just for Hoteliers

Introduced in 2018, hotel ads prominently appear as listings when a person searches for a hotel,
whether the person specifies a location or not (it defaults to the user's location). Hoteliers pay to have
their properties listed. Travelers can find hotel listings with Google search, Google Maps or Google
Assistant.

This is what they look like:

As you can see, there's a map you can use to search in a particular area, and a set of filters for narrowing
your selection. This interface is comparable to popular travel booking sites like Hotels.com, Travelocity
and Trivago.

Why Hotel Advertising on Google?

The most persuasive answer to the question "why advertise my hotel on Google?" is that everyone uses
Google to search for everything. The search engine holds more than 90% of the market.1 Google has an
attractive interface, via Hotel Ads, that makes booking a hotel easy. Google's more traditional ad
campaign types give hotel advertisers some advantages we'll discuss later. There are a few different
campaign types. They are:

● Hotel Ads
● Search Ads
● Display Ads
● Video Ads

We'll discuss these campaign types and show you how set them up.

Setting Up and Managing Google Hotel Ads

Hotel Ads is based on your hotel list feed, which is a list of your hotels and their attributes, and a price
feed that provides pricing and availability. Advertisers define the web page URL where travelers book
the reservation once the dates and rooms are chosen. You can group hotels into ad groups and choose
settings at account level or campaign level.

Setting up hotel ads is a little more technical than setting up other campaign types. There are two
options: find an integration partner or integrate directly. Google recommends finding a partner.

Once you've set up Hotel Ads, management is relatively simple. Set your Hotel Ads bid strategy and
Google will determine when and where to display your ad based on your location, availability and other
aspects. Obviously, the interface show to travelers is Hotel Ads' primary advantage over the other
campaign types.

Things to Remember About Promoting Hotels on Google

Keep in mind that a specific hotel will show up when a user searches for its name. If someone searches
for "Red Lion Hotel in New York," they're likely to see its free My Business listing. This is what a free
business listing looks like:
If you don't have your hotel listed in My Business, it could help your save money and gain some revenue.

Advantages of Display and Video Ads and When to Use Them

As you may have guessed, the big advantage of display (image) and video ads is the ability to engage the
consumer's eyes and ears. You can really showcase who you are and why travelers should choose your
lodging.

With display and video campaigns, you can show your ads on web pages that include keywords you
specify or you can select specific pages, YouTube channels or apps on which your ads will show. You can
also choose a topic to tell Google what kind of content to associate with your business (and where to
display your ads, therefore).

Setting Up Display Ads

1. Once you've signed up for Google Ads, either continue directly to setup or click campaigns in the
left-hand column and then click the big "+" button to create a new campaign.
2. Select a goal. As a hotelier, you probably want to use sales or leads. If you have booking and
payment integrated into your site, use sales.
3. Select display and standard display campaign.

4. Enter your website address and click continue.

5. At the top of the next page, name your campaign.
6. Search for geographic areas and click target to show ads to people who live inside them. Don't
target too many locations. Start with one or two from where your visitors have originated
regularly in the past and then add more later. You can click advanced search to see your
locations on a map or use a radius to select an area. Double check your selections. Location
options probably isn't relevant to you, but have a look at that section to make sure.
7. In the next section, choose a language or languages. Consider the languages available on your
website. You don't want to show ads or web pages in Spanish to people who can't speak
Spanish, for example.
8. In the next section, choose a bid strategy. This can be a complex decision. Read about bid
strategies here. Setting up conversion tracking is needed for some bid strategies.
9. Set your daily budget in the next section. Try to budget more rather than less. You want to find
out what works and then cut out the ineffective parts of your campaign. A small budget could
make it difficult to determine what's working.
10. You can click additional settings if you need more control over your campaign. For example, if
you don't want to show ads during the night or if you want to limit how many times a person
can see your ads per day or week (with frequency capping), you can edit these settings. We
recommend the default delivery method.

11. Create your first ad group. Ad groups simply allow you to use different settings and targeting so
that you can more easily manage your campaigns. For example, you could create ad groups for
 properties located in a different cities, for specific demographic segments, or for particular
audiences. It's up to you.
12. The next step is selecting audiences. You can omit choosing audiences and use keywords only.
You can also use audiences without keywords or use audiences in addition to keywords. We
recommend starting with keywords and considering other targeting later. To learn about
audiences, see this page. To add keywords, click in-market and custom intent.

13. Then, click the "+" button to create a custom intent audience. Then, name your audience and
add your keywords. Try to keep them closely related. Create a new ad group later if you want to
use keywords that are of a different category. (i.e. if one ad group contains keywords "eco lodge
in guatemala" and "green hotel in guatemala", the keyword "hotel near antigua guatemala"
should be added to a different ad group since it deals with location and the others deal with a
particular type of lodging.

Press enter to put your keywords into the list.

14. The next four sections give you better control over your ad group. Demographics lets you
narrow the people who see your ads based on demographics such as age. You can use keywords
if you want to target people based on their searches only. However, we've already set up a
custom intent audience, which takes app usage and website visits into account in addition to
searches. Targeting expansion allows you to set the accuracy with which google targets your
ads. Ad group bid lets you set a default bid at the ad group level, which overrides the campaign-
level bid. You don't need to use any of these settings, but some of them might improve your
performance.

15. You're almost done. The last section is for creating ads. You can create responsive display ads or
upload your own ads. Creating responsive display ads is much easier than uploading your own,
which must be the right format, size, etc. If you need custom-designed ads for uploading, it
might be best to consult an expert.
 16. Responsive display ads take the images, headlines, descriptions, videos etc. (yep, you can upload
videos in display campaigns) that you provide and test different combinations to find out which
one performs best, based on the goal you chose. Provide at least a few images, headlines, etc.
Make sure everything aligns, though. That means if all your text pertains to your fantastic dining
room, don't use a picture that shows your pool. Put a few ads into each ad group. Google will
use the best-performing ads the most. You can create more ads after creating the campaign.
17. Click add to ad group and then click create campaign.

Setting Up Video Ads

1. Once you've signed up for Google Ads, either continue directly to setup or click campaigns in
the left-hand column and then click the big "+" button to create a new campaign.
2. Select a goal. As a hotelier, you probably want to use sales or leads. If you have booking and
payment integrated into your site, use sales.
3. Click continue.
4. Name your campaign.
5. Set your daily budget in the next section. Try to budget more rather than less. You want to find
out what works and then cut out the ineffective parts of your campaign. Too little in your
budget could make it difficult to determine what's working.
6. In the next section, you can choose your bid strategy. Target CPA allows you to set a target cost
per acquisition (CPA or target cost per booking, in your case). Google tries to optimize your
campaign to keep your costs down. If you use maximize conversions, Google will try to optimize
for as many conversions as possible without a target CPA. A better conversion rate generally
drives CPA down, though. You need to set up conversion tracking for most of these bid
strategies.
7. In the next section, you can set your networks and languages if necessary. We recommend
choosing the language that matches the language in your advertisements and on your landing
pages.

8. Expand the locations section to select the regions in which you want to show ads. You can
search for provinces, countries, etc. Click target to show ads in a particular area. Don't target a
region that doesn't speak the languages you're using. Double check your work by clicking
advanced search to view your map.
9. You can prevent your videos from showing among certain kinds of content with the content
exclusions options. These sections explain themselves quite well once you expand them.

10. You can click additional settings if you need more control over your campaign. For example, if
you don't want to show ads during the night or if you want to limit how many times a person
can see your ads per day or week (with frequency capping), use these settings.

11. Create your first ad group. Ad groups simply allow you to use different settings and targeting so
that you can more easily manage your campaigns. For example, you could create ad groups for
properties located in a different cities, for specific demographic segments, or for particular
audiences. It's up to you. Name your ad group something that explains who you're targeting.
12. Exclude any demographic segments that are unlikely to convert (meaning book a room, in your
case). Click this section to expand it.
 13. You can expand the audience section if you want to show your ads to people with specific
interests, people who are actively searching for hotels or people of other audiences. You can
even target people who are actively searching for hotels by expanding Browse>In-market>Travel
and selecting Hotels & Accomodations. This will reduce your reach (the number of people who
see your ads), but may improve your CPA. Learn about audiences here.
14. The next three sections offer more targeting options, which you can use in addition to audience
targeting if you want. For information about these content options, see this page.

15. Upload your video to YouTube if you haven't already, and then paste its URL into the next
section to use it in your campaign. Try to compare performance between a few ads instead of
using just one.
16. Click save and continue.

Advantages of Search Ads and When to Use Them

Search ads show up just above any hotel ads listings on a SERP, at the top of the page. They may also
appear at the bottom of the page. They are text-only. We've highlighted an ad in the image below. It
happens to be an ad for an online travel agency, but it could be for a family-run B&B or any other
lodging business.
Without the highlighting, the hotel ads would probably catch your eye better than the text ad at the top
of the page. On the other hand, there's only one text ad at the top of this page. There can be up to 3,
whereas there may be hundreds of hotel listings. If you can use your ad copy, or text, to stand out and
make a connection, you could get great performance with search ads.

Setting Up Search Ads (with screenshots)

1. Once you've signed up for Google Ads, either continue directly to setup or click "campaigns" in
the left-hand column and then click the big "+" button to create a new campaign.
2. As a hotelier, your goal is likely going to be sales. Your campaign type is search.
3. Once you've selected your goal and campaign type, select website visits and enter your website
address. If any other selections apply (phone calls, etc.), select those as well.

4. Click continue.
5. Enter a campaign name that is descriptive of your targeting or strategy.
6. Deselect display network in the networks section, since doing so is recognized as a best practice.

7. Click additional settings if you want to adjust start and end dates for your campaign, use a
tracking template or use dynamic search ads. These are not always necessary.

8. Search for geographic areas and click target to show ads to people who live inside them.
Consider where your visitors have come from in the past as well as the language they speak (and
the language of your site and ads). You can click advanced search to see your locations on the
map or use a radius to select an area. Double check your selections.
9. Next, choose your language. It should align with your target locations, ad text and landing pages.
10. Expand the audience section if you want to show your ads to people with specific interests,
people who are actively searching for hotels or other audiences. There are other targeting
 options we'll cover later. You don't have to select an audience.

11. Expand the budget section and enter a budget. Keep in mind that a small budget might hinder
campaign performance and optimization. Budget as much as you can.
12. In the bidding section, choose a bid strategy. This can be a complex decision. Read about bid
strategies here. Setting up conversion tracking is needed for some bid strategies.

13. Click show more settings (highlighted above) to choose whether to use the account-level
conversions settings (this is probably not necessary), edit the hours of the day when your ads
are shown (with the ad schedule), or change your ad rotation (we recommend the default
setting).
14. Next, expand each of the ad extensions sections and create as many ad extensions as you can.
This may take a while. Learn about the types of extensions here. Click "+ Ad Extension" to see
the rest of the extension types and use what you can. The more, the better.

15. Click save and continue.

16. Create an ad group next. Try Try to keep the keywords of each ad group closely related (i.e. if
one ad group contains keywords "eco lodge in guatemala" and "green hotel in guatemala", the
keyword "hotel near antigua guatemala" should be added to a different ad group since it deals
with your specific location and the others deal with a particular type of lodging. Give your ad
group a descriptive name that tells you the kind of keywords in it and any special settings it has.
Click new ad group to create additional ad groups.
 17. Click save and continue.
18. Create ads for your ad groups. You'll be able to see which ad group your working on at the top
of the section. You can find tips on writing text ads here. Create 3 ads per ad group, as Google
will show the best-performing ones more often.

19. Click save and continue.

Potential Concerns and Opportunities for Hotel Advertisers

1. Remarketing

Remarketing, sometimes called "retargeting," shows ads to consumers who have interacted with you in
a specific way. For example, you can show ads to people who have viewed more than 2 pages on your
website but didn't book a room. Consider what kind of messaging and imagery can seal the deal. See this
page to learn more about remarketing.

2. Landing Pages

A landing page is the first page a person sees after he or she clicks your ad. Get tips for optimizing your
landing pages here.

3. Your Brand and Competitive Advantages

Throughout the advertising process, try your best to differentiate yourself from your competitors and to
keep your brand voice evident. If you have any unique characteristics or specialties, find a way to
showcase them in your ads. This will help to stand out and give travelers a piece of your brand they can
grab onto and remember. They don't have to book right away. When they remember you, the likelihood
of booking later is increased.

4. Not Sure Which Campaign Type to Use?

The best case scenario is the one in which you have enough money to test several campaign types and
then use those which perform best. Although, you should think about which types of ads best convey
your brand in any case.

For example, if you run an oceanfront hotel that caters to surfers, you may find it difficult to reach the
right travelers with hotel ads. Maybe you can make a better connection with video ads featuring some
great surfers who have visited your hotel. If you have followers on social media or you have significant
traffic on your website, you can target them or expand to similar consumers. Or, you can show your ads
on relevant sites like Surfline.com. These are potential scenarios that could involve features we
mentioned earlier: remarketing, audiences and placements.

5. Using Multiple Campaign Types Simultaneously

You can run multiple campaign types simultaneously if you wish. If you run hotel ads and search ads at
the same time, a traveler might see both ads on the same page. This is likely to improve your
performance since your ads are occupying more of the page than they otherwise would be.

Summing Up

Advertising a hotel on Google can be challenging. There's a learning curve involved. Take your time and
make sure everything's right. Then, monitor your performance, keep the elements that work and pause
the elements that don't. If you find that you're not getting the performance you want, there are experts
all over the world who can help you out. Your campaigns can almost always be improved. Contact a
freelancer or agency when in need. Best of luck!

Hotel Digital Marketing is an Agency helping independent hotels like yours increase their
direct bookings and occupancy. We achieve this by growing your brand on social media,
improving your web page ranking on Google and managing ads with good ROI.
Find more at www.HotelDMarketing.com