Google Adwords Return on Investment for Hotels

29 Jul

Google Adwords For Hotels - What is the Return on Investment?

Following the introduction of our Adwords Conversion Tracking Module (ie Hotel X paid 495€ for Google Adwords and earned 4622€ in online room sales etc), we evaluated the results of Google Adwords Campaigns across 3 hotels between June 15th and July 15th. The consistency of the results surprised even us given that the hotels were in 2 different markets (City Centre and Leisure Break).

Hotel A - Adwords Cost 495€, Bookings Made 4622€ Return on Investment 930% (for every 1 € invested resulted in 9.3€ of sales)
Hotel B - Adwords Cost 309€, Bookings Made 3714€ Return on Investment 1200%
Hotel C - Adwords Cost 303.73 Bookings Made 2806€ Return on Investment 920%

We felt that an average result across the 3 properties in the area of 10 or 11 was very positive, especially as this quite likely understates the true level, given that people may see the Adword and not necessarily book straight away,but ring or e mail the hotel to make their booking (bookings which cannot be tracked online). Most hoteliers are likely to agree that a ROI of 10 is good enough to continue making the investment.

The one commom thread with these properties that could have driven this consistency was that their Adwords Campaigns had all been set up according to standard Adwords 'principles'. ie The Adwords had a relevant and uptodate 'call to action' in them, taking the viewer to a purpose built landing page.
For example one adwords campaign featured '90€ PPS 3 B&B Midweek Limited Offer - Book Direct Before July 31st'. This Adword linked through to a purpose built landing page that further extolled the advantages of this offer and gave viewers several 'buttons' to book straight away. In working with hotels to maximise their campaigns this last step......making sure the landing page is optimised for guests who have just landed their after clicking on the Adword.....is the one that is the most difficult to bring across. Simply setting up an Adwords Campaign that takes visitors to their homepage which does not have any content releavant to the content of the Adword is a big 'no no' for 2 reasons;
A. The visitor, after having their eye caught by the Adwords does not find straight away something connected to the campaign to encourage them to look further they will move on to another site (ie'bounce'), wasting the money spent getting the guest to the site.
B. This bounce and poor conversion is 'seen' by Google who will assume you have a poor quality Adword and penalise you with a higher Cost Per Click.

This however was not an exhaustive review, we expect some variations to appear over a longer period (Ie taking into account winter also). For this reason we will release a more extensive review towards the end of the year. We will also attempt to seperate what happens if a hotel uses their Adwords Budget simply to bid on their own name (ie competing with the Online Travel Agents who are also bidding on their name), and hotels that avoid direct competition and instead focus are their own 'niche' offers and packages.