F E AT U R E A R T I C L E
Our tip
As Trivago’s ranking model prioritises rates if one can
have a slightly lower rate on their website one will get
more clicks at a lower cost.
HotelsCombined
In FASTBOOKING, we have a substantial customer
base in Asia Pacific. As such, HotelsCombined is one
of the most important metasearch partners for our
hotels in this area. One of the first companies in the
hotel metasearch market, HotelsCombined delivers
an excellent return on investment for hotels targeting
travellers going to Asia Pacific, Australia, and New
Zealand demographics.
AdWords have consistently had the highest return on
investment, and even though metasearch has recently
overtaken AdWords as an advertising channel, in
terms of revenue generated, it remains a vital channel
for hotel marketers. The efficiency of AdWords is
extremely high when using it to protect one’s hotel
brand name from OTAs or other third parties trying
to advertise on one’s name.
Our tip
Our analysis
Although the click volumes are lower than
TripAdvisor, Trivago, and Google Hotel Ads, the
demographics served by HotelsCombined are a
valuable addition to hotels seeking travellers from
Asia Pacific region. Click volumes are stable, and the
business model only costs per acquisition with very
little control over visibility. However, it is a must if
one wants to add traffic from those regions.
The transformation of other
Traffic Acquisition services
Google AdWords
We have included Google AdWords, even though it is
NOT a metasearch channel, as a comparison between
advertising costs and returned on investment for
hotel marketers. AdWords are still one of the most
cost-efficient advertising channels for hotels both
in terms of return on ad spend and click volumes.
Be careful when targeting broad or generic keywords
such as “Hotels in [city]” as these keywords are very
expensive and have a low return on ad spend for
individual hotels. Focus instead on a mix of 80%
brand keywords and 20% broader keywords with
extreme care on budget spend.
Display Advertising
We also included display advertising as we have
noticed through our campaign management that this
nicely complements metasearch advertising, both in
brand awareness and conversions. Through running
multiple campaigns using targeted display channels
and retargeting, we have seen an average return on
ad spend of 10.2X. This makes it a very profitable
addition to the advertising mix.
Our tip
Individual results depend on the hotel’s location:
High-interest destinations such as the main cities
tend to have a better return since there is more traffic
from the pre-targeting campaigns. The trick here
is to ensure that there is enough display volume to
generate brand awareness without over-saturating
the ads to the travellers, and knowing when to turn
the campaigns off so as not to display irrelevant
advertising to the guest.
Better Revenue I Better Industry I APAC I www.revenuemanagement.com.au
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