New Google advertising feature allows hoteliers to reach high-converting audiences using guest profiles

Throughout the last several months, Google has introduced several new and valuable features that allow us to help you, our hotelier customers, more effectively pinpoint and reach your target audiences via paid search advertising. In addition to targeting audiences by their location and device type, we can now layer in demographic data including age, gender and household income.

Analyzing a variety of data sources – including audience insights from Google Analytics and Google AdWords, guest profiles in CRM databases and booking engine data from our own Retailing Insights platform – allows us to define the unique personas that fit your hotel’s guest profile. With this data in hand, we can develop uniquely targeted strategies that truly resonate with each persona. While the ability to target users by age and gender has been readily available for high-funnel initiatives like display and social advertising for quite some time, demographics for search affords us the opportunity to promote a consistent message to each unique persona – from their first interaction with your brand via a banner ad while researching travel destinations, to conducting a branded hotel search in Google right before booking their stay.

During the beta phase of demographics for search, we worked with a luxury hotel in New York City that needed to fill guest rooms and suites with higher ADRs. By creating a unique PPC campaign that targeted a more affluent audience using demographics for search, the campaign generated significant results. Most notably:

• 44% increase in click-through rate
• 30% increase in looks to the booking engine
• Online bookings for high tiered room types doubled

Key observations from all of our recent tests utilizing demographic targeting for search:

• Increases engagement: Campaigns that utilize age and gender targeting consistently yield higher click-through rates
• Higher purchase intent: Even non-branded campaigns that enabled demographic targeting drove more users to check availability and ultimately convert
• Creates cost efficiencies: Focusing on target personas with the highest conversion potential decreases overall cost per acquisition

Learn more about our Digital Experience Team and how we can help you exceed your acquisition goals through the use of persona development and paid search and media strategies.