How to Promote your Hotel on Google

To promote your hotel on Google, the sky’s the limit. Google is no longer just a simple search engine, and using pay-per-click advertising is not the only option available to hoteliers.

In fact, Google now offers hoteliers a vast range of tools to advertise your hotel, to drive direct bookings, and to increase potential guest reach. Like a swiss army knife for hotels, there are tools for practically every hotelier’s need.
But using them effectively? Well that’s another story altogether.

Starting to Promote your Hotel on Google

First on our checklist is your Google My Business account. 

Your Google My Business (GMB) account forms the foundation of all your hotel marketing tools. It adds legitimacy to your venue, it builds your unique online identity, features your hotel in local search queries, and it’s entirely free.

With a fully registered GMB account, your hotel not only features on searches, but also appears on Google Maps as well. With the right high-quality photographs, and a range of contact information for your hotel, it can drive up reservations and walk-ins.

Not only that, but Google will also display your direct booking price in comparison with any Online Travel Agencies that you may be registered with. As more and more countries are looking out for hoteliers and we reach the end of rate parity – this also gives hoteliers the advantage to keep direct bookings, rather than paying commission to the OTAs in question.

Studying Google Analytics

Google Analytics is your best friend when it comes to online website analysis. It allows you to track and analyse the movements and clicks of visitors on your website, and obtain various metrics on their behaviour, be it acquisition, conversion, or behavioural.

Okay, that’s a lot of words, but in short Google Analytics tells you how potential guests arrived at your website, how long they spent there, and more importantly – where they clicked off.

Obviously we don’t want guests clicking off your website at all, but this is a priceless tool as it lets you understand where your website has problems. If you have a large number of guests leaving your website at one particular point, you identify a friction point.

By finding these friction points, you can re-optimise your webpage to increase your conversion rates. Whether it’s an aesthetic issue, or an underdeveloped booking engine problem, Google Analytics will let you understand where to improve.

Promote your Hotel with the Google Keyword Planner

Our other favourite tool from Google is the Google Keyword Planner.

When it comes to driving organic traffic on Google, keywords are the entire premise of search engine optimisation (SEO.) Every single one of the 70,000 Google searches per second skim through metadata of millions of online pages to deliver the closest results to a guest query.

The Google Keyword Planner

• Tells you the most related keywords to your industry
• Allows you to optimise your website with keyword-rich content
• Helps you compete with other hotels in the industry
• Benefits small-medium sized hotels in carving their own unique niche within Google searches

Google Test My Site

This tool from Google allows you to receive a run-down of your hotel website. This is essential not only because it is where you will receive those hard-earned direct bookings, but because guests are notoriously impatient.

Did you know that according to Google research, 53% of customers will click-off a webpage if it has a loading time that is longer than 3 seconds? That’s really no time at all.

With Test My Site, you can study the problems around your website, and know if you need some tweaking. With this guide you can learn how to improve your hotel website page load speed and boost conversions!

Google Hotel Ads

We finally get to the big way to promote your hotel, and unfortunately the most poorly used. 

Google Hotel Ads was launched in 2011 as a meta-search platform. This paid service places your hotel in comparison with other bookings engines and OTAs, allowing guests the chance to browse prices, while placing you competitively against the OTAs who are always featured in this manner.

Now this paid service is useful for a number of reasons.

1. The service is pay-per-click (PPC) meaning that you only pay if a guest is intrigued enough to come directly to your website.
2. Your hotel only appears if it meets guest search criteria, meaning that your target audience is more qualified than a generic Google Search result.
3. Your conversion rate is higher, as the guest has only arrived after setting certain filters.
4. You not only have the chance to compete against OTAs, but have the chance to retain guest information, and build a future relationship with them in hopes of creating returning guests.

But this tool is often poorly used without the proper application of other Google Tools alongside it. Without careful consideration and planning, your Google Hotel Ads might just fail to target the proper audience.

Any Other Tools to Promote your Hotel on Google?

There are indeed a few other tools available which we will feature in the future – but these ones above are the main priority due to their sheer effectiveness.

While hoteliers should be aware that these tools are available for you, using them efficiently is an entirely different story. Once you begin to unpack the possibilities with these tools, you will find layer after layer of strategies that can be used just with Google.

With the right help, you can drive direct bookings and revolutionise your hotel’s online presence. Just check out our ever-expanding list of resources and guides for help, and if you need a free consultation, simply get in contact with a member of our team.