5 Tips to Maximise Your Hotel Metasearch Advertising Revenue

hotel digital marketing

We know that most people, who are new to it and do not know the ABCs of digital marketing concepts like “metasearch advertising” is a very critical term and it takes a lot of intense studies to understand how it actually works and how can hotel owners can actually imply it to generate good revenue.

So before we dive into understanding it, let’s go through its quick meaning – metasearch advertising works like an acquisition channel that helps you receive qualified traffic to your hotel website.

So for example, if I ask you about online travel booking websites, you may mention websites like Trivago, Google hotel ads, Tripadvisor, kayak, etc. Now, a metasearch engine gathers insights from all such hotels and online booking websites and portals compile all such results mostly qualified and send them your way.

Now, if you are consulting a hotel digital marketing agency to use metasearch advertising in a better way, there are five tips to follow –

Keep Your Hotel Rates Lower Than The OTAs rate

Now again, you will ask what is an OTA commission rate – it is the total booking cost percentage that an online travel agent charges. So for example, if an OTA charges 9% on a room of 1800 rupees per night, the hotelier would pay 162 for each reservation made through them.

In most metasearch sites the top three positions receive the most clicks and dominate. Please note that the algorithm of metasearch sites is coded in a way to show the lowest rates near top search results. Remember if your OTA’s CPC (cost per click) is higher than yours, your hotel rates will never compete.

Also Read: Trends Of Digital Marketing In 2023

Different searches for metasearch sites

There are multiple metasearch sites and each one needs a slightly different approach and no one-size bidding strategy works the same for all. For example, if you are targeting TripAdvisor for hotel bookings please note that 77% of trip planners usually browse it before consulting a hotel website.

Though there are other options as well like Tripconnect, Kayak and Trivago please make a mental note that having a top spot is not always a good thing, given that every click costs money it requires critical analysis to know that not all leads to a conversion.

Continuous monitoring and change

Working on metasearch advertising is not a one-time thing, it requires timely attention and amendments, most people do not know this but these sites implement new formats to check new responses and optimize their own conversion rates. If you are not aware of it you will never benefit from it. For example, Google hanged the position of its metasearch box from right to left above paid search section, and Kayak changed the position of its instant booking from right to left.

Pro tip: Never have outdated information on your website, it eliminates your website’s front eh search results.

Test new changes

As a hotel owner, you should always test and keep on doing that, ask your hotel marketing solution provider to have everything updated and checked for example there are multiple aspects like daily campaigns, inventory checking, conducting regular tests, bid management, tracking ad returns, conversion rates, optimizing booking volume etc. Don’t forget each aspect will play its role in increasing your metasearch advertising revenue.

Connect with a good hotel digital marketing agency

When we speak about so many changes, tests, optimization and strategies it becomes hard to cater to all of it, so it’s better to hire and pay for hotel marketing solutions, but it cannot be any company, search and study about them it is also possible to find agencies that completely work in the hospitality sector.

We hope this article will help you bring your A-game and your revenue from metasearch advertising will increase gradually.