Google will allow hotels to show real-time prices in search advertising

Skift Take

Imagine turning that roadside billboard you put up once a season into an electronic display with real-time prices and images. Here’s how to feel about Google’s revamped search advertising.

Sean O’Neill

Google has long allowed hotels to buy advertising at the top of search results. However, these paid advertisements only contain general static information about the property. On Monday, Google said it was changing that by allowing hotels to add “rich data” such as real-time rates, images and star ratings from user reviews.

Google said a small group of hotel advertisers using rich data saw “click-through rates increase by up to 20%” in previous tests. A Google spokesperson confirmed that the updated ads are available worldwide.

Hotels are the first to use Google’s new “data rich” ads in search results. But the company said it is testing expanding the ad format to car rental, tour and event companies, and live event operators.

Making advertising more dynamic

Google’s change on Monday affects so-called “search ads,” or ads that a user sees when they enter a search query, such as “hotels in destination X,” or so-called keywords, such as brand name and hotel location. The search results describe them as “advertising” or “sponsored listings.”

One Google ad Skift saw on Monday using a traditional ad unit was bought by Minor International for its Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel. This ad only showed the name of the hotel with a link to the website and general static information such as that it is open 24 hours a day and that if you stay longer you can save up to 20%. A traditional search ad does not contain prices, images or reviews.

Skift couldn’t find any examples of hotels using Google’s new ad format. However, Google has demonstrated what it will look like when a hotel augments its existing search campaigns with hotel prices, images and other important information in real time.

Uncertain influence

It’s unclear whether Google’s new tool, called Travel Feeds for Search Ads, will directly incentivize many hoteliers to advertise through such search ads. Some industry players expect at least some success.

“Displaying price and dates in advertising makes a big difference when it comes to clicks and conversions,” said Martin Soler, a Paris-based hotel marketing consultant. “The information will be more convenient for travelers because they won’t have to click and enter dates before finding out if a hotel is within their budget. This way, travelers are more likely to engage with ads.”

Some hoteliers may feel that they are already appearing in Google search results with organic links, partly due to search engine optimization efforts and partly due to free appearances on Google through other means.

As Skift reports, in early 2022, Google will allow hotel owners to use free links to book hotels through Google.com and Google Maps. These free links appear in Google Hotel Ads, which are typically a widget that visually displays information about a hotel and offers links to multiple vendors for booking rooms there.

While hotels can pay for more prominent positioning in Google Hotel Ads widgets, few take the plunge and instead accept free links as good enough.

Monday’s announcement instead focuses on ads at the top of search results. This will not affect the Hotel Ads product.

Ads placed at the top of search results are “still many times more important” than the so-called “Hotel Ads” widget that Google sometimes includes with search results, said Rudolf Dekker, head of travel at Adchieve.

Dekker claims the impact of Google’s new data-rich search advertising will result in “higher click-through rates” for hotels than they received. Hotel advertisers will see this benefit without paying more as Google has updated its advertising to be more data-rich for free.

“Traditional hotel results, Google Hotel Ads results on Maps, and organic results have all moved a little further down the list with this change,” said Deep Kohli, vice president of customer experience at Koddi. “This is another place for clicks, so we should expect some minor changes between traffic sources and be prepared to invest money in the best-performing campaigns.”