Metasearch, otherwise known as price comparison sites, have become essential to promote a hotel’s direct rate in real time, as well as drive traffic to the hotel’s official website.
NB: This is an article from WIHP
Metasearch are evolving and now offer two types of promotion to hoteliers wishing to increase their direct revenues with their booking engine:
- The promotion of your “website” rate on your page (Tripadvisor, Kayak, Google Business Profile, Trivago, etc), where you will reach customers who are looking for the best channel to book in your establishment.
- The promotion of your hotel on your destination (Google Property Promotion Ads, Tripadvisor Sponsored Placement, Trivago Sponsored Listing), placed at the beginning of the customer journey. You will reach customers when they are looking for a hotel in your city.
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In this article, we will focus on the management of metasearch campaigns to promote your official website on your property pages (Google Business Profile, TripAdvisor, Trivago).
Examples: Hotel prices on Google Hotel Ads (Business Profile), Tripadvisor and Trivago respectively.
Where does the information that feeds the metasearch campaigns come from?
Information such as your availability, rates, offers, etc. are displayed through what is called an API. This is a web service that links your inventory information (your prices, availability, currencies and check-in/check-out dates) to metasearch engines such as Google Hotel Ads, Tripadvisor, Trivago or Kayak.
This information is then sent to our metasearch manager Meta I/O via a tracking system. This is how you can monitor your campaigns and see if they are performing well or not.
What are the metrics to monitor in a metasearch campaign?
Evaluating your campaigns depends on the objective you have set for your hotel, there is no universal king indicator. Overall, the goal of metasearch campaigns is to protect your hotel’s brand.
People will only see your campaigns when they search for your hotel rooms. Metasearch campaigns allow you to increase your share of direct bookings rather than get bookings through OTAs.
You should therefore seek maximum visibility. Depending on the metasearch, you will analyze different metrics, here are three examples of KPIs to monitor:
