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Top 7 Hotel Tech Trends to Watch Out in 2022

Traveler expectations and behaviour keep changing! The hospitality industry for long has always been adapting to changes in the latest technology to be up-to-speed. From the way guests search for a hotel to the booking process, communication, check-in, room service, check-out, after-service; the industry has witnessed tremendous change and upgradation.

To call the last 2 years challenging for the hotel industry would be an understatement.  However the industry has always bounced back and there is a hope that it would emerge even stronger from the present crisis. As we all hope for a successful 2022, RateTiger brings you the latest hotel tech trends to know what is happening in the industry.

Reshape the Hospitality Industry In 2022 with hotel technology.

 1. Unified Solution – Here to Rule

For long data silos has been a cause of concern for hoteliers. Revenue and distribution managers use on average 8-10 tech solutions each having its own reporting system. Making data talk to each other would have made things much simpler. Thanks to today’s unified platform hotels finally can have access to integrated analytics. These types of platforms bring all key solutions in one place thereby connecting and delivering real-time insights from all booking channels.

Hotel Channel Manager is the central platform that unites all the properties under a brand and brings them together along with other functionalities of the hotel: restaurant, spa, gym, sports club, pool, etc.

2. Technology is on Clouds

 The world has moved to cloud-based technology and so are hoteliers. A cloud-based technology not only eases the hotel management process for the hoteliers but also gives them easy access to hotel data from anywhere they want. Advanced solutions that uses AI help the hotel owners predict the upcoming trend and be prepared for it in advance. Integrating AI and ML into hotel operations, helps the hotel operators save on manual costs and invest better on user-friendly, efficient and optimized hotel management software.

3. Invest in Booking Engine to Earn More

Booking Engine is a platform that will increase your ROI by bringing in direct bookings to your hotel. Therefore, it has to be flexible and mobile friendly. It should be simple, well-defined and attractive for the customers to browse through and get them to make a booking without investing much time.

Integrating the Booking Engine with the hotel’s PMS, RMS, Channel Manager and other hotel tech solutions will automate the workflow and sales process. Connecting a booking engine to the sales conversion tool will assist the sales team keep a track on lead generation and conversion.

Coming with a variety of features, Hotel Booking Engine allows you to target corporate bookings by displaying different offers and visuals along with room rates and dates. Grabbing more direct bookings saves on commission cost paid to OTAs and other third-parties like travel agencies.

4. Hotel Digital Marketing to Redefine Brand Value

Internet and social media has become people’s daily partner. They can’t imagine a day without it. In the present world, people look for everything online: whether it is which place to go on a vacation to which hotel to stay to where to eat to what activities to do and so on. What they don’t do or like is being bothered by hotel staff for every small thing.

Integrate social media channels like Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram to contact and share details over texts instead of calling. Go digital, integrate social media channels, expand your reach and increase your revenue to not only redefine your brand but provide  people with the service they like.

5. Gain Visibility with Google Hotel Ads

Google Hotel Ads is the largest Metasearch channel  that displays your hotel rates and availability in comparison to other OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) displaying clear and real-time status. Being the largest search engine and the epitome of digital marketing, Google Hotel Ads is the best and safest way to present your hotel to a millions at a go.

In March 2021, Google announced waving off fees for hotel booking links to make the booking process simpler and comprehensive. With this they created an organic list of hotels with their intelligence tool providing free visibility to hotels, OTAs, and other booking sites.

To make the most of this all you need to do is create a business profile on Google, list your property, and sign up for Google Adwords. With nearly 4 billion Google users around the world, it is the best platform to start ads on and achieve the maximum leads. Linking your hotel’s website to the Ads, you also increase the website traffic and brand’s visibility.

6. Go Mobile with Responsive view

Mobile optimization is one of the most important aspects of hotel landscape today. 50% of the traffic on the web comes from mobile devices. This makes it crucial for the hotel website, booking engine, OTA to be mobile-responsive. Nearly 77% of the travelers search for hotels on their mobile phone.

With the drastic rise in mobile bookings, focussing on mobile users’ need and tailoring to their convenience will deliver more bookings and better revenue.

7. Check-in check-out Automation

With pandemic being the new normal, both the hoteliers and guests look for contactless travel and stay. Using the SaaS technology, the hotels owners can create an app for the hotel. This app will not only automate the workflow but initiate automated check-in check-out process.

You can hyperlink the app URL to the website for the guests to download it directly from there. Once downloaded, the guests can update their personal details to begin the check-in process. The data is then sent to the hotel’s software system for them to complete the process from their end. This way, having a mobile app reduces risk for both hoteliers and the guests and streamlines the process in less time.

Get Ready to Welcome Your Guests

 2022 is unpredictable and so is the travel and tourism industry, but going innovative and tech-rich is the only solution to survive. If not today, these hotel tech trends 2022 will definitely bring in more bookings and revenue to your property in the coming days. So, what are you waiting for?

It’s time to reshape your hotel and get back to business with RateTiger!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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How Much Google Ads Cost for Hotel Owners?

Did you know for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, they get an $8 profit through Google Search and Ads?

There’s a reason why so many big brands spend millions on Google paid ad campaigns. It is one of the simplest ways to reach out to the right target audience and drive sales.

But “simple” doesn’t exactly mean easy. While Google ads do provide immense opportunities for business owners, especially in the hospitality sector, there’s also a big room to commit mistakes and waste away the ad budget.

There are countless stories of hotel owners using Google ads to attract guests and exponentially scale their business.

If you run a hotel, you can follow suit.

But it’s essential to identify the common pitfalls, have a plan for expected challenges, and have basic knowledge of how to run Google Hotel ads campaigns.

How Much Google Ads Cost for Hotel Owners

Google Hotel Ads Budget Management:

One of the biggest challenges people who run Google ads, without the necessary expertise and experience, face is improper ad budget management. This leads to financial leakages, draining the budget off the account with very little ROI.

Google ads budget management is the principal thing, aside from the how-tos, hotel owners should know before they get to the implementation part. Because, one, it defines their ROI. And second, it affects the cost of the ad.

The Cost of Google Hotel Ads:

There’s no defined number as to how much Google Hotel ads cost. That figure is dynamic, based on several factors, like the type of ads you’re running, the localized competition, the keywords you’re targeting, and more.

Google Hotel Ads showroom availability at your hotel, as well as the rates, on Google Search, Maps, and the Assistant. You pay only when someone selects your room rate. Again, this ad spend depends on where the ad has shown up and other factors.

You can also choose other basic types of Google ads: Search Network campaigns, Display Network campaigns and Video campaigns. (These ads are preferred when you want to drive traffic to your website’s landing page rather than have people engage with your brand on Google and book on an aggregator website.) The cost of these ads for hotel owners is dynamic as well, influenced by numerous factors.

So, addressing the main subject: How much does Google Hotel Ads cost? There’s no definite answer. The pricing is based on simple bidding where you set your preferred commission, ROI or bid.

Keeping Google Hotel Ads Cost Low:

Whatever you’re paying per click, it’s essential to keep an eye on that cost and figure out ways to minimize it. There are several steps involved to optimize your Google ad campaigns and ad spending, all the while improving your conversion and ROI.

  • The first step in Google ads spend management is thoroughly understanding how the pay-per-click model works. Fair knowledge on this will help you learn about the how’s and what’s of bidding.
  • The next step, and possibly the most important one, is to define your budget. Many hotel owners have ambiguous ad spending patterns. So, even when they aren’t driving the required ROI, they continue spending on the ads, hoping for conversion. Setting your budget allows you to track results, find out CPA over a defined period and take definite measures to make improvements.
  • In addition to these two broad steps, some of the other things you can do to effectively manage your Google hotel ads spending is connect Google Ads and Google Analytics, choose the right keywords and target locations, create multiple simultaneous campaigns that employ aggressive A/B testing (recommended for advanced users), and intensively monitor the results.

How to Get Started?

Starting with Google Hotel Ads is simple. Create your Google Hotel Center account, manage your room availability and rates, and set up the feed.

Next, connect your Hotel Center account to a Google Ads account. And then from the ads account, add a budget to your campaign and start serving the ads to your target audience.

But going back to what we mentioned earlier, just because it’s “simple” doesn’t mean it’s easy. Despite all the measures in terms of spend management, you may fall short in making a real difference in your budget due to a lack of expertise.

This is why it’s recommended you get help from experts who specialize in Google Hotel Ads; experts who have helped other hotel owners increase booking and achieve higher scalability.

In the end, running Google Hotel Ads can be a whole different experience. It’s easy to make mistakes and end up draining the budget if you don’t have the expertise. So, you have to be careful and educated throughout.

 

Find the Hotel booking channel manager software.

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How Google Hotel Ads Impact Hotel Bookings in 2021?

Good news first. People want to travel. The global search for “where to travel” and “can I travel” are at a record level as per Google. While Google doesn’t share the number of searches, its research report shows that during the summer months, travel demand was nearly at 100, indicating a peak.

Travel Demand

As millions of people worldwide search for hotels on Google, it is important to know how to grab the attention of your potential guests. Thanks to Google Hotel Listing which has been made freely available to all hoteliers earlier this year, it is now possible to attract them to your direct booking channel as well. Sounds interesting, right?

Domestic travel on the rise

It might sound cliché, but the fact remains that the pandemic has changed guest behaviour and preferences. After a year and more of travel restrictions, people want to visit and meet friends and family and create new experiences. As travel restrictions keep on changing, domestic travel is on the rise.

Travel Demand Compare

travel Demand Compare

This is where Google Hotel Ads can help hoteliers get more exposure. Done correctly, Google will show your direct hotel booking link prominently along with other bidders when someone searches for accommodation.

Google Hotel Ads works with the same AdWords auction model where businesses bid for listings. If their bid is higher, provided other boxes are checked (like higher relevance), their name shows up on SERP when someone searches for the target keyword.

There are four types of paid hotel campaigns on Google –

  1. Commissions (pay-per-conversion): Pay only when a traveler books your hotel, depending on the payment model you choose.
  2. Commissions (pay-per-stay): Pay only when a traveler completes a stay that they booked through hotel ads. Available only to select partners.
  3. Max CPC bid (fixed or per cent): Pay when a traveler clicks on your ad. For the CPC bid strategies, you can adjust your bid by factors such as device type, traveler location, length of stay, and other factors.
  4. Enhanced CPC: Automates bid adjustments for a Max CPC bidding strategy.

Convenience in research

3.5 billion searches are made on Google every day, which is 92.47% of total searches on the internet. As travelers search for accommodation, Google Hotel Ads display rates and availability of properties on Google Search, Maps, and Assistant.

By providing intensive and comparative data right up and front based on user’s search query, as well as other factors, aiding their decision-making process, Google becomes the first touchpoint of the guest’s booking journey. It offers them higher convenience to browse through different hotels, check their amenities, and compare pricing – all from a single place.

This level of convenience, in fact, is one of the biggest factors why most people now book hotels online rather than choosing phone calls or relying on travel agents.

Enhanced experience

Did you know an easy-to-use website matters more to high-value travelers than online reviews or loyalty programs? User experience is clearly a key factor people consider when booking hotels online. Google Hotel Ads delivers here in a big way. It provides a consistent (and excellent) experience to the users. If a traveler is checking hotels for a city, it will show properties based on categories like Budget, Luxury and Top Rated.

Google hotel ads connector

 

If your property appears on the organic search result, upon clicking, the user will be taken to the Hotels Details Part which shows prices from various sites including potentially your own brand website.

Hotel Featured Ads

You can have a fair chance of converting lookers into bookers by rich content, hotel photos and reviews. New and returning customers can be redirected to your brand website to book direct – or they can book on Google. The Book on Google option is a useful feature mitigating the risk for hotel owners of losing prospects because of poor-performing websites and unoptimized booking processes.

Boosted conversion

One of the biggest benefits of Google Hotel Ads is the conversion rate for hotel owners. Users would be redirected to your landing page after they have done thorough research on Google; after they have learned about your hotel, pricing, offers, and facilities and read the reviews. With all such information, if they decide to go to your landing page, they are likely to have high buying intent making the lead more qualified.

 

In Summary

With a lower than 8% acquisition cost, Google Hotel Ads can significantly help in the hotel’s digital marketing effort. If you haven’t already used it, take a step forward and tap on the power of Google Hotel Ads today. You’ll be surprised by the results.