And here we go!! Google Hotel Ads…connected!
WuBookers,
here you are. We finally can release a very good and new interface. We are able to offer you Google Hotel Price Ads (Google HPA from now on). It is a system with which you will be able to publish your rooms sale on Google. Same concept of TripConnect (the business product of TripAdvisor). So, Google promotes your property showing the prices of your Online Reception to users, allowing direct reservations. When a user click on the prices, there is a cost (Pay per Click model) and this Cost Per Click depends on configurations you have done. You can choose your marketing budget, the strategy to adopt to attack each market you are interested in.
As I was saying, Google HPA is going to access the tourism market following the other metasearchers profiles (such as TripAdvisor, Trivago, JetRadar, Yandex) that collaborate with the most important Booking Engine and Channel Manager of the market. By doing this, they try to conquer position and influence at the expense of the OTAs, which are now still leading tourism dynamics. Anyway, in WuBook, we call all these interesting projects, Fount Sites.
This project concept looks very good. TripAdvisor, for example, is obtening a great success. Conversion percentages are really good so far. People like it. I also want to add we are going to upgrade our collaboration with TripAdvisor, adding and supporting the Instant Booking, a technology for TripAdvisor Mobile users. Stay tuned, we will announce it soon.
Back to Google: the testers phase is done (thanks guys) and I must say it was pretty rich of properties, so it gave us a good range of feedbacks. Like for TripAdvisor, conversion percentage are good (about 3 or 4% more or less). It is also hard to compare the efficiency and power of it, considering investment/incomes. The famous ROI is unknown in here so far. We can only compare with TripAdvisor and datas are good. But to give a detailed opinion, we must wait a few months.
As said before, the flexibility od Google configuration allows very interesting commercial strategies. It is a bit complex, but it deserves all the time spent on setting the interface up.
First of all, Google allows to differenciate (using different budgets) investments based on the platform you want to publish the ads on: the 4 platforms Google offers are Google+, Google Maps, Local Universal & Google Hotel Finder. Everybody know that Google+ is the google social network and Google Maps is the interactive worlwide map. About Local Universal I must say it is new for me! It is the Search Engine of Google. Let’s open up a quick explanation. When a user search for “Hotel London”, the bid payed by the hotelier to Google HPA will appear among results. Better: at the top of all the results! Same way to the classic appearence of google classic advertising, when it appears at the top of the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Google Hotel Finder, concluding, is a search engine dedicated to hotels (check here for more info).
It is possible to make different investments on each one of these platforms. For instance, an Hotel that is already investing a lot on social networks, like Facebook and Google+, would be interested in assigning an high amount on Google+ Ads, rather than the rest.
Once you have decided on which platform and how much for each one, you can start to configure the the “geography” of your investments. The system allows you to assign different amounts for each one of your campaign, depending on the location origin of the user. You can choose if the ads will be shown only in some country or all over the world. And, obviously, you could asign a dedicated amount. If hoteliers are interested in Spanish travellers, they could push more that country, and less for (in example) Italy. You, as hotel, have a lot of French guests? So, why not to push more for that market origin? Conversion will probably raise up!
From a commercial point of view, we are in charge of paying Google. So, we charge you the investments you have done with them plus a 4% margin for us. If you invest on GHPA Fount Site 1000 Euro, the final and total expense will be 1040 Euro, 40 of which will be kept by us. These 4% will be used to support and manage the connectivity technically and accountingly.
By the way, investments and costs for GHPA are not only clear and transparent, but also easy to monitor. The Fount system for reports, is available and really rich in details. We are able to give you lots of statistics on Google (and other Founts) and I strongly suggest to have a visit of it.
Reports show the number of clicks coming from each platform, contry, Lenght of Stay, Device Type (desktop or mobile). Moreover, we publish the details on each ad: for example the cost (in case of click on the ad), the number of impressions, the ranking and much more.
In conclusion, I am confident we have done a great job. The environment is really inspiring, we are all very curious about the future of this project. We are curious to understand how this new concept of online sale, visibility and presence, will be able to face the market chances, how these big players, with the help of tech providers like WuBook, will be sustainable and how it will change the entire market. Anyway, we are here, surfing the wave! And you can activate it very easily directly from WuBook Fount System.
Enjoy!
