As a hotel tech geek, I’m fascinated by any innovation in the hotel booking landscape that helps hotels operate more profitably, or simplifies the booking supply chain and fuels more online business for hotels. From a hotel digital marketing perspective, Google first evolved their search platform back in 2011 to offer more “digital real estate” for hotel prices within Google Search results and later within Google Maps. With mobile already a key strategic platform in the travel industry, Google and Room 77 offer the potential to move consumers from Search-to-Book on mobile devices with less friction than a pop-up website or landing page.

In Google’s words, “HPA is a feature that assists users who are researching travel by surfacing hotel rates and availability across Google properties.”

Clearly, the opportunity for the hotel marketing team is to drive Google traffic to your hotel website. But at what cost?  The challenge is to manage your HPA ad spend for the greatest return on investment (ROI).  But there are several elements involved in the potential ROI, which involve revenue management, technology and marketing influences.  Revenue Managers, is your pricing aligned with market demand and your hotel value perception?  IT folks, if your pricing is correct, how efficiently and at what rate can your website and booking engine convert “clicks to bookings”?  Marketers, if your pricing, digital platform and booking engine are optimised for maximum returns, how aggressive can you be with your bids to ensure you have enough traffic to convert to a direct booking, at a lower overall cost than alternate online booking channels?

Welcome to the era where hotel revenue management and digital marketing teams must work together, to align their strategies for maximum revenues at the lowest cost of customer acquisition. But don’t be daunted by this “forced marriage” of revenue management and marketing, it’s a huge opportunity, so let’s work through this step-by-step.

• Free stuff: Take a look at page one of Google after you search for your favourite hotel destination and you might have noticed a digitally delightful strip of hotel photos at the very top of Google search results? That’s called Google Carousel and is available for free, so make sure your static hotel content (name, address, location and stunning images) are optimised for this precious digital real estate, including your hotel profile on Google+ Local. Your hotel profile on Carousel is free, so make sure your digital images show your hotel in the very best way. Analytics have shown that better quality images lead to more engagement and more bookings.

• Connectivity: Essentially you will be distributing live rates and availability to Google HPA and bidding for your hotel website link (usually a deep-link to ensure your web traffic lands in the correct date range and room type search).  The main technology platforms involved here will be your booking engine, your digital platform (website, mobile and tablets) and possibly your revenue management system (for optimal room rate pricing).

• Find a Partner: Google HPA can be managed for you by a digital agency or via your hotel booking technology provider. Each partner will have his or her own pricing model. If you have marketing resources in your hotel, look for a partner that can offer you the connectivity and a self-service bid management tool. If you don’t have the marketing resources, perhaps an agency model is a better option. In short, do your homework as no two Google HPA partners offer the exact same services, commercial model or bid management functionality.

• Bid Management: The highest bid gains top placement within Google HPA digital assets. From a technical perspective and revenue optimisation perspective, Google offers some very valuable segmentation, called “Signals” by which you can manage your bids. For example, you can bid by length of stay (LOS), room type or by availability. This is both exciting and challenging, depending on the analytics and business intelligence available for you or your service provider.

• Summary: t’s not a simple matter of connecting to HPA and hoping for a click-to-booking ratio of 5% or better. Fundamental pricing principals relating to hotel location, value perception and reputation still weigh heavily in the consumer purchasing decision.  And once a consumer lands on your website, what’s your booking experience like? Smooth or scary, or something in-between? Your website and booking engine experience is critical to ensure a seamless and smooth purchase journey, so you don’t burn clicks due to poor usability, device platform performance or less-than-inspiring digital imagery.

The amount you invest in a cost-per-click for the top placement in HPA will be driven by market demand from other booking providers like Online Travel Agents (OTAs) or Destination Management Organisations (DMOs). Those OTAs and DMOs also want to drive traffic to their websites to convert more of those clicks to actual hotel bookings. As Google becomes more pervasive in our digital lives, the following Google products will attract more interest from hotels and online travel organisations looking to acquire more direct website traffic; Google Hotel Finder, Google Search, Google +Local, Maps and Mobile.

From a sheer volume perspective, the online audience Google commands cannot be ignored. Throughout the customer purchase journey, a consumer may not get travel inspiration from a Google website, but they will most likely engage with Search, Maps and Mobile in the research, booking and stay phases of their purchase journey.  And then write their review on TripAdvisor and post photos of their hotel room view and meals on Facebook. Welcome to hotel revenue management and marketing 3.0!