Google Hotel Ads Is Becoming the Behemoth Everyone Feared
Skift Take
Google has all the tools, including a giant search engine, to make its mark in hotel metasearch and its competitors are starting to really feel it. The only hope for rivals is a hail Mary to regulators — or to focus on being faster and better.
Metasearch competitors such as Kayak and Trivago have been anticipating that Google would almost inevitably be coming on strong to eat their brunch — or take market share, that is — and Google's surge appears indeed to be taking place.
In a new analysis of metasearchers Google, TripAdvisor, Trivago and HotelsCombined, hotel digital marketer Fastbooking said that Google Hotel Ads has "grown exponentially" annually "in terms of click volume and return on ad spend."
Fastbooking, acquired in 2015 by Accor, crunches some 1.2 million transactions per year and assists hoteliers in their digital marketing campaigns. Its report is based on its clients' data.
Fastbooking argued that Google is on the cusp of being one of the globe's most important metasearch companies.
"Based on click volume, Google’s Hotel Ads matured in 2016, and today the click volume equals or surpasses TripAdvisor while keeping a very profitable return on ad spend," the Fastbooking an
