Google Hotel Ads: the paid prices on your hotel's Google listing

Google says hotel ads show hotel prices and availability on Google Search and Google Maps. Hotel campaigns in Google Ads let an advertiser bid for them, and they appear in a hotel booking module with the hotel's photos, amenities, prices and a link to book. After a search on Google Search, Google Maps or YouTube, a traveller sees hotels with their photos, names, prices and a map, and on choosing one, its prices and links to book for their dates.

Google says hotel ads let hotels, online travel agencies and metasearch companies such as Kayak reach travellers. So on your own hotel's listing, a booking site can pay to show its price above your website's.

• Free booking links are unpaid, and ranked on what is useful to the guest: Google names consumer preference, the value offered, the landing page and how accurate the partner's prices have been. Nobody can pay for a higher place, and Google takes no payment for them.
• Hotel ads are paid, and ranked by an auction in which Google weighs each partner's bid and the quality of its ad, including how accurate its prices are and how well the ad meets the guest's need.
• Both can show at once: Google says a partner can appear in paid and free booking links for the same search.
• The “Official site” badge: Google shows it for one partner per hotel, for hotel owners, direct suppliers, central reservation systems and integration partners, never for booking sites, at no cost. Clicks on an ad that carries it are charged as usual.

Google says hotels already running hotel ads are eligible for free booking links automatically, and that bids have no effect on where free links rank.

1. 1A complete Google Business Profile: Google asks for it before Hotel Center.
2. 2Your prices sent to Google by a connectivity partner, such as your booking engine, channel manager or PMS. Google says direct integration is currently unavailable because of high demand.
3. 3A Hotel Center account holding your hotel list, your prices for each stay a guest may search for, and your landing pages, the pages on your website where guests arrive.
4. 4A Google Ads account linked to Hotel Center, where you set budgets, campaigns and bids.
5. 5Conversion tracking that reports each booking's full value: Google requires it for its automatic bidding strategies.

Google strongly recommends working with an integration partner. Ask your booking engine or channel manager whether it can run hotel ads for you, and on what terms.

• Manual CPC: a fixed amount you pay when a traveller clicks your ad.
• CPC percentage: a percentage of the room's price per night, taxes and fees included, paid on a click. For a stay of several nights it is worked out night by night and added up.
• Target ROAS, return on ad spend: Google sets each bid automatically to bring in as much booking value as it can for the return you aim for.
• Enhanced CPC: Google adjusts your manual bids automatically.
• Commission per conversion: you pay a percentage you set of the booking's value, only when a traveller books. Google links its commission strategies to a notice that commission-based bid strategies in hotel ads are to be retired, so check which your account still offers.

Budgets are set by campaign, and bids can be raised or lowered by the traveller's country, device, length of stay, check-in day and how far ahead they are booking.

Your price must match the traveller's search exactly to take part: Google says rates must match the itinerary, such as three nights from 14 July, and that hotels whose tax information is missing or incomplete enter the auction only when no hotel with full rates does.

So work it out from your own clicks and bookings each month before you raise a budget, and spend on the nights you need to fill rather than on nights that sell anyway.

• Search your hotel's name on Google and open its prices: which booking sites have ads, and where is your website?
• Set up free booking links before paying for ads: they cost nothing.
• Check your prices on Google are accurate, night by night: price accuracy counts in both the ad auction and the free ranking.
• Start small, on the nights you need to fill, and count bookings, not clicks.
• Each month, set the cost per booking beside what the booking sites keep on the same bookings.

OneHorizyn's Google Hotels page shows which booking sites pay for the top of your listing, night by night, and how your website's price compares with the cheapest one.