Google is positioning itself as the only website you need for anything, including finding a place to stay. Let me explain with a bit of history.
HISTORY OF GOOGLE HOTEL ADS
More than seven years ago, Google introduced the Google Hotel Finder, which today is called Google Hotel Ads. Google Hotel Ads are a type of ad users can create on Google. For those familiar with Google AdWords (now called Google Ads), Google Hotel Ads were never an option. Hotel ads had only been available via the Google Hotel Ads dashboard and not on the regular Google Ad dashboard. These ads display on Google Maps like this:
Hotel ads can be highly productive for participating hotels. Instead of paying Google per click and hoping clicks turn into enough bookings to justify the amount spent on ads, hotels can pay for these ads based on a percentage of bookings. That means hotels pay only for the bookings they receive. We see clients paying up to $3,000/mo. to Google for traditional Google ads, plus the amount that they pay to someone (employee or agency or both) to manage these ads. The question is, which of these options is better:
| Pay | Receive |
| Pay $3,000/mo. to Google + pay for someone to manage the ads. | Uncertain number of bookings |
| 10 percent of booking | $10 in bookings for every $1 spent |
The answer lies in how well your Google Ad campaigns are producing now (keeping phone bookings and assisted conversions in mind) and how much risk you want to take that you get those bookings in the future.
Google Hotel Ads highlight hotels in an effective way. Of the 385 million Google results for Orlando hotels, only 304 hotels are listed with Google Hotel Ads. In other words, the list of results is narrowed down by 99.99 percent.
Here’s what that looks like today. In most cases, when a traveler clicks Book a Room, they are presented with booking options from multiple online travel agencies (OTAs).
HELLO, BOOK ON GOOGLE
The user experience of showing multiple OTAs was not the goal for Google. According to , “Google does not want to be yet another price-comparison site but rather the main searching, decision-making, and even booking point.” For this reason, in 2016, Google launched its Book on Google option. Book on Google is a program that allows a traveler to book a hotel without ever leaving Google. That means that the traveler doesn’t go to a separate website such as the hotel or an OTA website.
