Metasearch advertising is gaining popularity among travellers and hotel guests thanks to its objective positioning. A metasearch engine or website lets travellers compare hotel room rates from various online travel agencies (OTAs) and other booking sites all in one place. Popular examples include Google Hotel Ads, Tripadvisor, Kayak, and Trivago. A potential guest can use these sites to find room prices from multiple booking options at the same time.
By using a cost-per-click (CPC), or pay-per-click (PPC) model, metasearch creates a neutral and transparent marketplace for independent hotels, OTAs, and chains to grow their business and connect with millions of travellers booking hotels online.
The key is to find balance. If you bid too low your listing won’t show high enough on results – but bid too high, and your guest acquisition cost will be more than it should be.
What is the current state of metasearch?
According to research from travel consultants PACE Dimensions, metasearch sites account for more than 45% of global unique visitors in travel, according to analysis of the top 10,000 travel websites. This is greater than the proportion of unique visitors for OTAs, both globally and in the US.
The top advertiser currently is Booking.com with the highest share of ad placements (almost 20%) across the top five featured deals. Hotel websites are ranked in fourth place with just under 10% of the share. Hotel companies only generated 8% of spending and fared best using Google and TripAdvisor, rounding out the top three advertisers on these platforms.
By contrast, hotels performed worst of all on the combined flight and hotel metasearch sites: just a 7% share of top placements on Skyscanner and 4% on Kayak.
It can be a challenge for hotels to continue operating strongly in metasearch as the bigger players look to consolidate and these larger companies can, and do, outspend hotels, making it difficult for most independents to gain visibility.
But this doesn’t mean hotels should give up competing on metasearch. Travellers use it extensively and there are some things hotels can do to optimise their advertising. Ideally, both the booking sites and the hoteliers compete for their position, and in the end it’s the market itself that sets the appropriate CPC.
5 tips for hotels advertising on metasearch
Tip #1: Choose the right metasearch channels
As hinted above, hotels should take a specific and unwavering stance on their advertising. Focus on those with an ‘accommodation only’ slant and prioritise sites like Google Hotel Ads above combined advertising platforms such as Kayak.
This allows a high-quality hotel metasearch platform to continually assess the specific hotel-related needs of both travellers and hoteliers and offer a unique and intuitive experience to both parties.
