How Google Plans to Make Money in Travel — and Everything Else

Online Travel This Week

Google’s decision in March to add organic listings to Google Hotels — and thus to offer hotels and online travel agencies both paid and free options — is part of its overriding strategy, and it will eventually be replicated in both tours and activities, and vacation rentals.

After all, in addition to Google Hotels, outside of the travel sector the company transitioned Google Shopping to a pay per click and a free model for vendors in July 2020, when it eliminated commissions.

In almost any industry, companies crave to capture customers directly, but Google has seen incremental traffic in its hotel metasearch, or price-comparison, service since the company turned on free links to supplement the already-existing paid ads in its bid for more comprehensiveness and engagement.

So Google is aiming for monetization consistency across all its verticals — in travel and beyond.

What is this important?

What it means is that in both Google Vacation Rentals and Things to Do, both of which are part of its travel-metasearch offering, which is separate from Google Search, it’s hardly shocking but you can expect that Google will add paid listings to both.

Google Vacation Rentals currently offers only free listings to the likes of Tripadvisor, FindHotel, Rentals United, Sonder, Holiday Lettings, and many others.

Although it might not happen immediately coming out of the pandemic as a travel recovery takes place in parts of the world, Google’s vision ultimately is to stock those vacation rental listings with paid advertising and free listings, similar to what it currently does with hotels. Incidentally, Google announced it would mix together hotel and vacation rental results when consumers search for accommodations, but it hasn’t implemented that move yet.

In Google’s Things to Do — i.e. tours and activities or experiences — offering, Arival pointed out recently that Google currently doesn’t charge operators a commission.

However, Google is indeed piloting paid advertising in Things to Do, and like Google Hotels and eventually Google Vacation Rentals, the plan is to make it a blend of paid advertising and free links.

Google Flights could be an exception to the overall strategy, particularly in the U.S. where airline consolidation has made carriers so powerful. Flight listings in Google Flights became largely free in 2020 for airlines, but Google has been steadily adding more online travel agency booking options in markets outside the U.S.

The largest vacation rental platforms, namely Airbnb, Expedia/Vrbo and Booking Holdings currently do not appear to be offering inventory in Google Vacation Rentals, either because they want to reduce their reliance on Google or they aren’t getting what they want out of the product.

If that is a negotiating ploy among those major players, don’t expect their absence to last forever — which is indeed a very long time. Google’s grand plan is to monetize those vacation rental listings like everything else, and there will be plenty of behind-the-scenes jockeying for position when the time comes.

In Brief

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