Bookings from metasearch remain the largest ad-driven booking channel, but display advertising, one of the latest digital media techniques, now generates 31% of ad-based bookings, overtaking branded search.
This is according to the latest study conducted by D-EDGE on the state of hotel advertising. It surveyed a fixed pool of 954 properties worldwide over the last eight years from 2012 to 2019.
“In the span of just three years, the advertising landscape has changed dramatically in our industry; display advertising has become the second-highest performing advertising channel for hotels,” it said.
According to D-EDGE, the practice of pre-targeting (or prospecting) and the use of classic re-targeting has “become standard” for its customers.
“In 2019 alone, these channels generated as many bookings as Google Hotel Ads and TripAdvisor combined. Because display ads are not shown directly on search engine results, the use of this kind of campaign can increase visibility without the risk of traffic cannibalisation,” said the study.
Yet, metasearch is still the “most reliable advertising channel” with regards hotel bookings. In 2019, for the first time, Google Hotel Ads drove the highest volume of traffic to hotel websites. The study, however, does caution that click volume is often not the entire story. A wholistic look at the data metrics including click volume, cost per click and return on ad-spend will give a more accurate picture and help hotels more effectively allocate its marketing budget.
The white paper also provides a few best practices to optimise ad spend. These include:
- Ensure the best offer is on the channel that you want to maximise conversions
- Have an optimised website for conversion which means having high quality images, fast load times and a website designed for mobile
- Have a robust booking engine that connects to metasearch channels with a low error rate between published and actual prices, has the ability to sell any type of rooms and rates, is designed for mobile, offers a streamlined user experience to final booking
- Have well set-up tracking that respects privacy and security of the website users while also reporting properly on the campaigns, sources and their performance.
- Understand the shift to mobile. In the past few months, there has been a marked increase in mobile bookings which underscores the importance of a mobile-friendly customer experience from inquiry through to booking.
Read the full report.
