Direct channel specialist Roiback has announced that Google Hotel Ads (GHA), the Google platform that distributes hotel prices in real time, now represents 65% of hotel bookings coming from metasearch engines.
This is part of the 12% of hotel reservations that are made through metasearch engines; these assist in 25% of other channels’ sales (SEO, direct, Adwords, Display, among others).
GHA has therefore become the most profitable metasearch engine – above Trivago and Tripadvisor- with a 150% growth compared to the same period last year, when it only represented 26%.
In a context in which 75% of travellers book their holidays online, Roiback highlighted the importance of maximising the hotels’ digital presence, both independent hotels and chains, and to leverage the advantages offered by metasearch engines.
Felipe Bravo, head of digital marketing at Roiback, said: “Google Ads continues to be the most important marketing channel, since it means 20% of the total, but Google Hotel Ads is gaining ground. Our advice is to combine both channels, since Ads is more useful during the consideration phase of the purchase cycle, and Google Hotel Ads acts more as a tool for the booking phase. With a combined channel strategy, the hotelier has it easier to compete with OTAs and attract customers at a much lower distribution cost.”
The Palma-based tech company also underlined that the return on investment (ROI) of its customers using Google Hotel Ads is around 900% (a return of €9 per each invested euro). They also compared the bookings generated through GHA for the same hotels, during last summer and the same period of the previous year, and there is an increase of 77% at practically the same profitability levels or even lower in some cases thanks to the optimization.
Regarding this aspect, Bravo said: “It proves that during this year GHA has been significantly increasing its visibility in Google.com, Google Maps and Google Destinations, as well as enhancing visibility in desktop but especially in mobile devices, and that it is becoming the most relevant metasearch engine for the hotel industry”.
