Are Google Hotel Ads coming or going?

Welcome to the 10th edition of The Hotel Hype!

Hasn’t that come around fast?

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by on the journey so far and has had a read. I appreciate the support and feedback I’ve received.

Right… let’s get back to it!

Undoubtedly, Google Hotels Ads have been a huge success for Google.

There are a few main reasons for this…

Users like them

This is the main one. They are useful for customers. When a relevant search is done, “hotels in New York,” the user is provided with a map and list of appropriate hotels.

This makes it easier for people to find what they want, rather than jumping between various OTAs and brand sites.

Brand and independent hoteliers like them

They provide a fair chance for brands and hoteliers to get direct bookings in the Google results for terms that would have previously been hard to achieve.

Looking back at the example given previously, “hotels in New York”, this is an extremely difficult term for a brand or independent hotel to rank for. Before Google Hotel Ads, you pretty much had to accept OTAs would take this traffic and most likely the booking. 

Google Hotels Ads have provided a chance to level the playing field a little.

They make Google a lot of money

I don’t know the specifics, but Google will be making a huge sum of money from Hotel Ads. 

Any placement that puts OTAs, metasearches, brands, and independent hoteliers into a bidding war is always going to be a winner for Google. This is exactly that. 

Google is at a crossroads

So it seems like a winner all around… almost.

Except the OTAs and metasearch sites. They are losing out on huge volumes of traffic and bookings that would have been pretty much guaranteed to be theirs previously.