As of this morning, we are seeing multiple new additions to the Google Hotel Ads mobile user experience. Most notably, we noticed a widespread implementation of the room booking module, a price trend overview, other locations, and a question/answer portion. As with all Google experiments, it will be interesting to see how pervasive this is.
The room booking module could drive a small degree of traffic away from the conventional metasearch placements. The price trends overview could provide a lot of important information for leisure travelers who can easily adjust their check in/out date. The “other locations” portion could be incredibly valuable for hotels that have high brand loyalty or great loyalty rewards. The questions and answers portion is a great tool for upper funnel consumers that are still in the early stages of their trip planning. Let’s look at these additions in more detail:
Room Booking Module
The room booking module is Google’s next step in creating a “one-stop shop” for travelers. Consumers are now able to easily search for hotels and book directly on the Google site. This has great implications for advertisers who may not have a perfect mobile site experience. This module is more built out than the previous iteration (Book on Google) with room images, pricing, and a clear indication of amenities. Currently, we are only seeing online travel agencies participating in this module, but we expect hotel suppliers to join them soon.
It is difficult to speculate the impact this may have on your campaign, but if you are an advertiser that has a heavy mobile focus, you could anticipate slight reductions in booking volume.
Price Trends Overview
The price trends tool is an interesting addition to the mobile user experience. This tool allows you to view future prices (our tests let us see prices as far out as the end of February, so it appears to show about 90 days in the future) for the specific hotel you are looking at. This tool could provide crucial information for users who are still in the planning stage of their trip. A leisure traveler who knows they are interested in visiting an area at some point in the next few months could utilize this tool to determine when prices fall most in line with their desired budget.
