While competing in the local market, covering all possible touchpoints to engage with customers is essential to edge out your competition, and Google Posts is a great way to do just that.
NB: This is an article from Milestone
Businesses that have a Google My Business Profile can use Google Posts to engage with their customers if they have something new to announce, if their product or service is on offer or if they have an upcoming event. This short post when published is displayed on the Knowledge Panel of the business and could prove to be the door to your business for new and potential customers.
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While this benefit has eluded the hospitality industry. However, over the last month, our Team noticed that the functionality to carry out posts was available (on the GMB Backend screen) for hotels as the posts tab was displayed for this excluded industry.
Having presumed it to be a bug, we played the wait and watch game. Sure enough, Google confirmed that they are indeed extended Google Posts to the Hotel Industry – they even drafted guidelines on their Help Document.
For what can Hotel’s use the Google Posts Functionality?
Google has predominately extended the use of this feature to hotels to bridge the communication gap with customers during the COVID-19 Pandemic. So, hotels can now use this feature for any notices or communications regarding their business during the pandemic. Hotels can also use the feature to describe ‘What’s New’ (of their services) to customers and post upcoming events using the ‘Event’ option.
Limitation of Google Posts for Hotels – No ‘Offer’ Posts
Hotels can’t use Google Posts for promotional purposes and as a result, the ‘Offer’ option that’s available for other industries will not be extended to hotels. The reasoning being that Google already displays the price of the hotel and that of OTAs and if there are deals or promotions, and having another ‘price-related’ section on the Knowledge Panel of the business could be a cause for price discrepancy and confusion for customers.
