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Paying Google to increase direct bookings seems like a contradiction in terms unless it is for brand advertising on YouTube that truly brings guests direct to the hotel website for the next trip.

Google said Tuesday it will debut globally over the next few weeks a tool, Performance Max, that enables hotels to create digital ads in multiple formats to reach travelers across six of its ad channels, namely YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps.

Google said it plans to add Hotel Ads to Performance Max later in 2023.

Previously, hotels had to create separate campaigns to reach travelers across these channels.

If Performance Max works as efficiently as Google states and streamlines ad campaign creation for hotels, one of the benefits could be an increase in revenue for hotels, but also “direct bookings,” according to Google.

For example in its announcement, Google stated: “Corissia Hotels & Resort doubled their overall capacity over the last three years and needed an easy way to increase their bookings and revenue. They used Performance Max for travel goals to expand their distribution channels and reach more potential guests. Within one month, their Performance Max for travel goals campaigns yielded a 32 percent increase in revenue and a 26 percent increase in total direct bookings.”

Here’s how Google said it works.

“During campaign setup, advertisers select their hotel properties from a map using our hotel picker tool,” Google’s announcement said. “Then it’ll pre-populate ads for the hotel — including creative elements like copy, images and URLs — in every format. Advertisers can edit any of these pre-populated assets or upload their own instead.”

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Tags: advertising, direct booking, gmail, google, google maps, hotel ads, marketing, online travel, online travel newsletter, search, youtube

Photo credit: Pictured is YouTube Tokyo. A new Google ad creation tool for hotels should streamline ad creation across Google properties. YouTube Tokyo

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