Hotel Google Adwords – From Inspiration to Booking
Hotel Google Adwords.
From Inspiration to Booking.
The promotion of a hotel nowadays, is undoubtedly more complex than ever. The dynamic presence of the Internet in the field of tourism within recent years, has brought about a great deal of nervousness to the old hoteliers and has propagated the requirement for faster development to the new ones who need to know which tools they have at their disposal in order to manage to keep up with the fast pace.
One of the most powerful promotional tools that hoteliers have at their disposal is certainly the Google Adwords platform, which allows the reach of new customers and the growth of the hotel brand awareness.
By advertising through the Google Adwords platform, your online advertisement is displayed to people who are already seeking for an accommodation selection within the area where your hotel is located and are far more likely to include your hotel in their search, thus multiplying the chances of finally selecting it for their stay.
Even though there are tools at the disposal of the hotelier, a hotel cannot achieve on its own the maximal impact that an advertising expertise organization can. When the goal is that of reaching a global and online audience, the aid that those agencies and their consultants can provide through account management as a business service, is truly priceless.
How much do I pay for displaying these advertisements?
The cost of advertisements varies according to how competitive the keywords used are. For example, the keywords “Hotels in Santorini” in high season outmatches the 2.5 euros per click and this brings us to the absolute necessity for a collaboration with the professionals in order to avoid spending too much money without the expected outcome. In other words, when the keywords used are “Luxury hotels in Santorini”, they may prove to cost the hotelier a lot less and yield a better outcome since the advertisement will find less competition and, at the same time, it will target the audiences seeking for a luxury hotel, thus, narrowing down the search to 20% of all hotels on the island.
Example Image Banners for International Hotel Promotion.
According to the image below, in using the keywords “hotels in dubai” we come up with 42.000 results so the competition for this destination is much higher than in the case of advertising a hotel in Teneriffe, Spain where in using the keywords “hotels in Tenerife canary islands” we only come up with 4.000 results. In conclusion, two hotels in two different locations may pay a very different amount of money for the same advertising promotion according to the demand and the competition that applies area-wise.
“Advertising agencies and their consultants have acquired the relevant knowledge over the years of how to apply the tools in the best possible way and get the most impact for your hotel business. Choosing the correct partner for the promotion of your hotel will yield results that you would never imagine feasible”.
Audience targeting and reaching the right guests.
It is usual to believe in the notion that guests choose you and not the other way round. Although this notion is correct, the hotelier should aim at the projection of their hotel in precisely the right market in order to reach the appropriate guests and, thus, save money and valuable time from reaching guests who are not interested in making a booking of what is on offer. Certainly, the doors of a hotel should be open to everyone, but nonetheless, the right advertising campaign is more likely to attract the desired quality of guests who will be the proper recipients of what the hotelier and their business has to offer.
The targeting criteria have a three-dimensional structure and those three dimensions are as follows:
a) the Market (market location)
b) the Target Group (Characteristics may include age, cultural identity, geographic location, specific needs, the financial status of the guests and other relevant characteristics.)
c) the time of booking and the desired length of stay
The total of the information yielded from the above, generates what we call the demand, which must also be analyzed. As far as the Market is concerned, a Sales Analysis must be carried out, as well as, a Traffic Analysis in order to determine which are the actual markets (country break down) visiting the destination within which our hotel is located.
Apart from the traditional markets, there may well be other trends – both upward and downward ones – which will dynamically affect our whole advertising campaign. Therefore, an e-commerce analysis which will be analyzing the full path of the Google Analytics to the booking engine and to sales, will provide us with a very precise indication in which countries we should be investing. At the same time, we must also consider any third party data we may have at our disposal, such as the corresponding analysis by OTAs and other.
In the above example of the WebHotelier booking engine data analysis,A� you see that the visitors from Israel have a steady increase in numbers for the particular hotel. The Marketeer has to add the forecasts in the media plan for the next year.
As far as the Target Group and its determination is concerned, this relies primarily on our communicative skills and involves both the banner and the message that we use to reach our potential customers. A message such as “cheap hotel in Monte Carlo” would never suffice in reaching the correct audience, as in one hand, Monte Carlo is not a destination attracting cheap tourism and, on the other hand, a luxury, five star hotel should never aim at attracting more customers in using such a misleading message. The same applies if someone wishes to promote their motel and their banner includes the words “cheap, luxury accommodation”.
The Time of booking and the desired length of stay in a combinational analysis with the demand, is the key to a highly successful advertising campaign.
One of the very valuable statistics which we have at our disposal, is the Lead Time per country via which we can know in advance how early guests from a particular country make their booking. For example, someone from Australia wishing to book a stay in the Cyclades (islands of Mykonos, Santorini etc) may initiate their booking as early as 8 months in advance, whereas the Italians wishing to make a booking in the Cyclades too, will do so only 25 days before the actual date of stay.
Demand Analysis
If the booking engine is a sophisticated one and provides us with real time statistics, then we have a lot more qualitative data at our disposal which pertains to the demand, per country, per length of stay. For instance, if a hotel has a demand from the UK and the USA for an LOS (length of stay) of 7.2 days for the month of July and an LOS of 3.8 days for the month of June, the Revenue Management department should prepare and advertise packages to the corresponding market for a 7-day stay in July, while 4-day packages should be designed and advertised for June and so on so forth. According to the image below, for the next year (the article is written in December 2013) the demand peaks on May 22. Studying the demand analysis we see the country breakdown and the LOS (Length of Stay) asked for this particular day. Thus, the advertiser can easier plan a successful campaign much more easily using this useful information.
Screenshot from Webhotelier Booking Engine intelligence Data Analysis Tools
Who is my real competitor?
One would easily believe that their competition is simply enough the hotel next door, but the internet distribution is so complex and proves that in Adwords we are compelled to compete with ourselves (or, in fact, with our very own mistakes).
As you will discover by reading this article, Booking.com spends around 2 billion per year on Google Adwords. https://www.traveltrends.biz/ttn555-heres-how-you-do-it-the-online-travel-playbook-according-to-priceline-booking-com-agoda-rentalcars-and-the-rest/
Google Adwords comprises the main advertising channel and, to a certain extend, the main sales channel for Booking.com which heavily relies its sales on the fact that hoteliers do not have the needed know-how for using the Google platform to their advantage, plus the fact that Booking.com, obviously buys CPC for lesser money due to the large volumes of Adwords exposure.
Furthermore, in more than one cases Booking.com buys the name of a hotel as its main keyword, (Image below)A� having measured well in advance that it yields the necessary sales, thus substantially interfering between Repeaters and the Hotel while betting that the Booking.com user is going to carry out a search by using the exact name of the hotel.
This fact certainly signifies that the hoteliers wishing to attract individual reservations, will have to actually compete with their own name/keyword.
All of those tools, knowledge and techniques are simplified so that the high-end user can utilize them to their advantage, but, the hospitality e-commerce is so perplex and sophisticated that relying to the aid and guidance of the professionals and the right tools is an absolute necessity.
We at Panadvert, have acquired an experience via billions of impressions and via more than 600 successful online campaigns. In addition, we employ highly professional individuals who, in most cases, are ex-Google employees who have the valuable know-how of achieving tangible and measurable results in the competitive field of the hotel industry.
