HOTELMARKETING.COM

Hyper-local PPC is where hotel marketers can outbid OTAs

September 07, 2012 | Hotel Marketing

OTAs such as Expedia and Booking.com dominate Google AdWords' prime real estate - a match lost by hotel marketers long ago. Yet, there are some exceptions where hotels can outbid OTAs, like targeting hyper-local keywords.

Trying to circumvent rather than confront, the latest hotel approach to PPC is from a hyper-local perspective. For example, staff will scour the local area convention and visitors bureau guides, identifying all the upcoming events in a specific market, then targeting related search terms to bid on. Courting customers online in such a personalized manner isn’t something OTAs are doing.

“Where you can make the real niche difference is with specific key terms, if you know what’s happening in the marketplace. The OTAs don’t do it that way,” Paul Wood, VP of revenue management for Greenwood Hospitality Group said. “They don’t say, ‘Gosh, the top medical seminar for the Southwest division is coming in at the beginning of July.’ They’ve got all these massive hotel sites, and it’s not only the PPCs where they have better organics - they have a lot of organic search ratios, too - and that’s hard to overcome as well; you can’t take that on head-on. You need to find that trench in the Death Star.”

From a PPC perspective, the status quo is likely to remain in place, provided OTAs have the coin to keep outbidding their competitors. What’s more likely to change - and also central to the entire online marketplace - is where Google itself is headed, between search listings and all its other ventures.

Get the full story at HotelNewsNow.com

Visit our sponsors: