Google makes it possible to appear on hotel booking links for free!
Millions of travelers around the world search for hotels on Google every day. Get started with free booking links that will show real-time room rates and availability to potential travelers at no charge to Google.
Free booking links appear on the hotel booking module alongside hotel adverts when travelers search for rooms at a particular hotel.
Reach potential guests and get more direct bookings without commission
With your free hotel direct booking link shown to guests when they search for hotels on Google, travelers will be able to book directly at your property. You control the guest experience on your booking page and collect guest information.
The prices you offer and the conditions you offer are the same as for all other guests using your reservation system.
The difference between Google ads for hotels (paid list)?
While Google provides you with a fantastic opportunity to generate free booking links, keep in mind that other OTA systems will also be present with their links to attract more guests looking for your hotel. Therefore, Google has given you the opportunity to bid on a direct booking link that will be displayed to more potential guests. This is called a paid advertisement (paid list) and can be achieved using the “Google ads for hotels” campaign in the “Google Ads” system. It works similar to a CPC campaign in Google search, but directs traffic to a certified Google booking system – your direct booking system – WebBookingPro!
Keep in mind that Google Ads campaigns for hotels can reach up to 10x more potential guests and searches through your direct booking system. Especially if your price is competitive, you can expect more direct bookings.
Advantages of paid listing:
- Paid advertising performs much better, driving over 85% of traffic and 90% of conversions. Your free link will help drive traffic, but will not replace the bookings you receive through your paid ads.
- Paid advertising gives you full control over ad targeting, resulting in much higher conversion from highly targeted traffic.
- Free booking links do not appear on the hotel knowledge panel, which is the most active area of Google hotel ads. Free ads will only appear on impressive Google Travel pages where users have to click through to see more rates, so traffic potential is greatly reduced.
Impressions of a small hotel in Croatia
One small hotel (4 stars) located in central Croatia started using Google Metasearch and Google Hotel Ads 4 months ago (April 2021 – July). Since joining, it has received 19120 unique new visits – room searches with a visit to the WebBookingPro reservation system. The hotel set up a Google ad campaign for hotels with a small daily budget (a total of 200 EUR spent throughout the entire period), all together achieved more than 15 direct bookings from direct / first visit.
Dozens of reservations were made on a second or subsequent visit to the website where they first came from a Google hotel search. If the hotel only looks at those direct bookings (the first step), the ROI on the campaign was more than 2000% (or the cost of the campaign is less than 5% of the generated revenue). Although the total number of bookings may seem very low, if there was no direct hotel link for the booking, the hotel would probably receive OTA bookings for the same period with a commission of more than 600 EUR.
Perhaps the number of OTA bookings would be lower, but in any case, Google’s free booking links + Google Hotel Ads (if we consider the amount of campaign spend as commission) combined to generate income with a lower commission.
How to start?
Follow 3 steps to enable Google Direct Bookings
- Update your company profile on GoogleMake sure your Google My Business profile is verified and updated with your hotel information. Here is a guide to help you get started.
- Include your prices to show on GoogleConfigure WebBookingPro to send content, availability, prices and promotions to Google in real time
- Get more direct bookingsYou will start receiving direct clicks to your website, so travelers can book directly with your hotel.
