The hospitality industry is witnessing a shorter booking window than it was a few years ago. It is because potential guests make last-minute plans to travel to their favorite destinations. Some of your potential guests also decide to get in the car and travel without taking trains or flights. In this short booking window, the guests might not have time to open an online booking app or visit your website. They will straight away head to Google and look for nearby hotels available for stay. Hence, this is when an advertisement of hotel on maps will seem fit to help your property be visible and available for guests to access.
At the same time, you can also integrate Google free booking links to make your booking site appear across the search results page when your potential customers search for hotels in your location. It will help you connect with more travelers at no additional cost.
Let’s take one step at a time and primarily learn about an advertisement of hotel on maps and its benefits. Later, this post will educate you on how to use Google’s free booking links to increase your search engine exposure.
What Are Map Advertisements?
Before digging deeper, let’s understand the basic definition of map advertisements. These ads are for businesses, especially your hotel, to improve the visibility quotient. As the search frequency on mobile phones increases, these ads work best on them.
When you hire advertisers for this job, they will set a geofence for your hotel within 5,10, or 15 miles. It means that if any potential guest searches for a hotel within this geofence, then your map advertisement will pop up. It is effective when people are searching for any nearby and available hotels.
By enabling map advertisements, you can push your hotel ahead of competitors and get noticed first. Google Maps is one of the most practical platforms for you to advertise your hotel, as it has more than 154 million monthly users. Apart from Google Maps, Waze maps also offer this facility, but people have to download it to see your ad, which is ineffective.
Google Maps is pre-installed on all Android phones, and even Apple users prefer to download and use it instead of their mapping software. Apple Maps don’t offer map advertisements at the moment. Hence, if you add hotel business to Google Maps, it is the best approach for running advertisement of hotel on maps.
Promoted Pins of Google Maps
Google Maps is now introducing ‘promoted pins’ to help your business stand out with map advertisements. The nearby users searching for hotels will find a different colored pin on their map, which will be supported with a creative ad copy, to help them stand out.
For instance, if you are offering complimentary services such as free breakfast or free spa service, then highlight it in your ad copy to draw the attention of the searchers. Talk to your advertiser to help you set it up.
Benefits of Implementing Advertisements of Hotel on Google Maps
Now that you know the importance of advertising your hotel business on maps, take a closer look at some of its evident benefits of it before you finally decide to implement it:
Gives Out Exact Location
Map ads will not just pop up on the search results of your potential guests on Google maps or search engines but will also pinpoint the exact location of your property. Hence, it will be easy for your guests to find your hotel without wandering around the nearby lanes.
Basic Information Is Listed in the Advertisement
All the basic details such as website, phone number, and address will be highlighted in these ads. It means that people will more likely access your brand within the geofenced search results than the other options lower in the list.
Improved Local Search Ranking
With professional advertising on maps, your local search ranking will improve, and the visibility aspects will increase. With higher visibility, you will not just benefit from geofencing rules, but will also get business from usual local searches.
Collaborate Your Hotel Map Advertisement with Google’s Free Booking Links
With advertisements for your hotel on maps, you will be found easily by the nearby searchers. But what’s next? The next thing you should think and implement is convincing them to book with you. You must ensure that your booking site is available in the same search results.
And this is where Google’s free booking links will assist you. The free booking links will display the name of your hotel and the room price for selected dates. Hence, you can use this ideal opportunity to display the best rate to your travelers. After they find your hotel on the map, they will look forward to immediately booking with you at the last minute.
When they see the best rates on display as a booking link, they can just click and land on your linked page to proceed with the bookings.
Do not assume it is similar to a hotel ad you see on Google. Such ads are ranked depending on Google’s algorithm, whereas free booking links are unpaid and are ranked based on their usefulness to the users.
As a hotel owner, you can enable the badge of “Official Site” on these free booking links to get more credibility among potential guests.
How to Setup Google’s Free Booking Links?
You can become a Hotel Center partner for Google and you will be eligible to enroll in free booking links. Hotel Center is Google’s hub where you will be managing the online presence of your hotel. The management details and information will be confirmed with your Google Business profile.
If you create a new account, you can run hotel ads or set up free booking links only after all the information is validated.
But, if you are actively participating in promoting your hotel ads or an existing partner in Hotel Center, then you can implement the free booking links without waiting. You will already have an option on your dashboard.
Your property must have a bid, landing page, and available rates in your hotel campaigns to be eligible for free booking links. If you own some vacation rental houses, those properties are not eligible to enroll with Google’s free booking links. But a property management business, on the other hand, can avail of the benefits of a Hotel Center account.
Take Help of Professional Tools to Decide on a Stronger Advertising Approach
Your advertiser will do the needful in implementing advertisement of hotel on maps and enroll you for free booking links. But, to help your business grow, you also need self-observation and statistical insight. For that, you can plan on using “Rate Shopper” software by AxisRooms.
This tool will help you stay ahead of your competition in terms of pricing, marketing, and other competitive aspects. Before you set pricing with the free booking links, it is important to have a competitive analysis to put up the best prices among all. In this way, you will easily be able to draw the attention of potential guests to pin your property location on the map instead of others’.
The “near me” searches on Google should find your hotel’s map ads and free booking links on the top. Improve your service quality and marketing approaches to support your organic search ranking.