As of 2024, Google has announced that it will begin enforcing key EU regulations that require a website visitor’s consent to track them and serve personalised ads. The change means that for hotels to continue to track guest behaviour on their website and booking engine, hotels will be required to switch on Consent Mode – a feature provided by most major cookie consent solutions.
NB: This is an article from Hotelchamp
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Google Consent Mode receives users’ consent choices from your cookie banner or widget and dynamically adapts the behaviour of Analytics, Ads, and third-party tags. As a result, the Consent Mode impacts measurement, ad personalisation and remarketing features.
Google has warned that those who fail to do this will lose important Google features, including Google measurement features used in GA4, however, they have not yet specified when this will happen. This is why, it’s strongly recommended to implement Consent Mode as soon as possible to avoid data loss.
What are the implications for hotels?
Hotels hoping to bring in traffic from travellers within the European Economic Area (EEA) must adhere to the EU consent policy to use ad personalisation. As a result, if a traveller from the EEA is using your website and you currently measure their behaviour with Google tags, you need to pass the users’ consent choices to Google.
- For hotels that do not have a consent banner and do not use consent mode, it’s crucial to set up a consent banner right away and enable consent mode. Google also recommends learning why it’s important to manage user consent.
- For hotels that already have a consent banner but don’t use consent mode, it is recommended to implement consent mode to be able to use the full range of Google advertising potential.
- Hotels that use consent mode and engage in personalised advertising, such as remarketing, need to work with their CMP to ensure they are using the latest consent mode update. If you maintain your own consent banner, make sure to implement Consent Mode v2.
If your current CMP does not support Consent Mode, then you should consider using one of the following providers that are certified by Google. Cookiebot is an example of a popular, free (up to 50 pages), and recommended CMP.
