Let’s start getting more direct reservations
Hotel SEM
Why should you consider search engine marketing for your hotel?
Getting direct reservations through your site is the most cost effective way in any hotel’s marketing. However, that might be a long and rocky road because the competition on the free search results in the hospitality industry is more than hard. That’s why it might be worth for invest in search engine marketing (SEM) or PPC (pay per click).
Right SEM-strategy for your hotel
When you are planning the right SEM-strategy you need to plan carefully how you will spend your budget. The click prices with the most demanded keywords in the hotel industry are usually quite expensive. Experienced PPC manager can avoid burning your budget on clicks that won’t bring you business.
Before we launch a PPC Campaign we do a comprehensive keyword research and decide the goals we want to achieve. All the hotels are different and there is never one formula that would work for all the hotels.
Here are some questions we go through before we launch a new campaign:
Who are the people we want to achieve with marketing? (From which location they come, how many nights they are going to stay, how long in advance you want them to make the reservation, etc.).
How much are we willing to use in advertising for one reservation (CPA, cost per acquisition)?
Google Hotel Ads
Google Hotel Ads allows brands to create hotel campaigns that display your hotel prices, which appear when a traveler searches for a hotel on Search, Maps, or Google Assistant. The ads are displayed across all devices. An important factor is that potential travelers can see your hotel prices in direct comparison to OTA’s on their Google search page.
If your prices are attractive enough users will book directly with you over the OTA’s. Why would anybody want to pay more for the same hotel room?
Also, if you have a strong Google My Business profile with good reviews it helps a lot on your Google Hotel Ads marketing as well as receiving free clicks from Google Hotels Travel platform. If you want to invest your marketing budget wisely, you should consider marketing in Google Hotels, as it is the highest growing meta search engine and growing popularity over traditional OTA’s. Also, according to Google, the conversion rates are generally better in Google Hotel Ads than in traditional PPC.
