Articles tagged “hotel ads”

Imagine converting a roadside billboard that you paste up once a season to an electronic screen with real-time pricing and images. That's how to think about Google's upgraded search ads.

Hilton is running two new TV ads during the Grammy Awards, with one featuring the artist Laufey. The hotel group aims to woo music lovers by offering concerts and live events as some of the redemption options in its loyalty program.

Google is constantly tweaking its hotels platform and we see its latest iteration contributing directly to the democratization of the online travel industry.

Marriott's new ad campaign for its loyalty program doesn't explicitly mention online travel agencies. But the ad's gist is that you can find a hotel for any taste and budget on its app. Why book anywhere else?

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.

It took novel coronavirus to see free organic links from Expedia, Tripadvisor, and Booking.com rise in prominence in Google Search. This isn't necessarily a game changer for the online travel agencies at a time when travel demand is in the tank. It's more like a temporary reprieve from the Google World Order.

The fact that Google is leveraging its dominance as a search engine into taking market share away from travel competitors is no longer even debatable. Expedia and TripAdvisor officials seem almost depressed about the whole thing and resigned to its impact. Is there any more room on the couch?

Many hotel groups are directing more of their ad budgets toward price-comparison search sites. That's a boon for vendors providing connectivity and automation services. But it's also a welcome, if still modest, injection for metasearch players like Trivago that have recently been struggling.

The European regulatory probe of Google on several fronts is putting pressure on the U.S.'s FTC to jump into the fray after bowing out under less-than-stellar circumstances a few years ago. Still, don't expect any meaningful changes in Google's practices until the regulatory processes likely wind through the courts.