About Travel Promotion Ads

Travel Promotion Ads support hotel campaigns by listing your properties in prominent positions across Google’s immersive Hotel Search results. Travel Promotion Ads are designed to increase traveler consideration, drive incremental traffic, and help generate more direct leads while travelers decide where to stay.

Note: Travel Promotion Ads no longer use bids from booking link ad groups. To create Travel promotion Ads, you’ll need to use Travel Promotion Ads groups.

Benefits

Determine which properties to promote based on your goals
Drive direct leads from distinctive placements across Google
Prominently place your property in front of travelers choosing a place to stay

Get started

Travel Promotion Ads are open to all advertisers globally that meet the following criteria:

Have an active Hotel Center account linked to at least one Google Ads account
Have at least one active landing page in Hotel Center
Have at least one image of the property available for use in your ad

If you’ve met the established criteria to create a Travel Promotion Ads, consider promoting properties that:

Experience periods of low occupancy
Are new to a market and need to raise brand awareness
Are recently renovated or have expanded their services (for example, added a spa, outdoor recreation area, or partnerships with nearby activities)
Are more relevant or desirable than usual due to a big event in the area
Are currently having a flash sale (or that you're willing to offer at a discounted rate for a limited time)

Where your Travel Promotion Ads appear

Travel Promotion Ads can appear in multiple places across Google. As of late 2023, the appearance of Travel Promotion Ads on Google’s immersive Hotel Search listings was updated, and travelers are no longer sent to the “Sponsored” tab.

By serving your ads at the top of Google Search results, you’ll have a more consistent experience that aligns your charged clicks and impressions. Review the details below to understand how your ads and your charged clicks will work after this change.

Understand your charge events

For all Travel Promotion Ads placements in immersive Hotel Search, you’ll be charged for the click that sends a user outbound to the partner site. The following clicks are “charge events” in Travel Promotion Ads:

Clicks on the list view carousel card
Clicks on the list view inline ad (when placesheet is open)
Clicks on the “similar hotels” card in the Overview tab

How Google chooses what hotel imagery and information to show in your Travel Promotion Ads

Google is currently changing the policy on image provisioning and surfacing across Travel Promotion Ads. To make sure that your ads are meeting a high standard of quality, you’ll soon be able to display images directly uploaded from your price feeds.

Google Search results

Appears on desktop and mobile

When you search for hotels in a given geographic area (for example, “hotels nyc”) on Google Search, a carousel may appear at the top of the search results page with sponsored hotel options.

This illustration shows an example of an ads carousel on Google Search.

An illustration of hotel promotion ads appearing in a carousel at the top of Google search results

Hotel Search results

Appears on desktop and mobile

When you search for hotels on Google Hotel Search (for example, “hotels nyc”), Travel Promotion Ads can appear in the list of search results or in the “Overview” tab of a hotel listing.

List view

Up to 9 Travel Promotion Ads can appear in a carousel at the top of list view.

Desktop

This animation represents Hotel Search Listview on desktop.

Mobile

This image is a representation of Hotel Search Listview on mobile devices.

Desktop with placesheet open

Travel Promotion Ads display differently when a traveler is viewing a placesheet. When a hotel’s details are visible on desktop, the list of hotels becomes narrow, and the ad carousel disappears. As a result, up to 9 Travel Promotion Ads may be displayed among organic results.

Overview tab

Up to 9 Travel Promotion Ads can appear in a carousel below the booking links in the hotel listing’s “Overview” tab. Similar to list view, when a user clicks on one of these ads, they’re sent directly to the partner’s landing page.

Desktop

Mobile

Google Maps

Travel Promotion Ads in Google Maps will appear on desktop, but not on Android or iPhone mobile apps. Your ads will return to these surfaces in 2024.

Desktop in Search

Up to 2 Travel Promotions Ads can appear at the top of search results when you search for hotels. When a user clicks on one of these ads, they will be presented with the hotel details page or “placesheet” or be taken directly to the advertiser’s booking site if the click is on the “Visit site” banner. On the hotel details page, the hotels booking module paid positions are occupied by the winning Travel Promotion Ads advertiser. Only outbound clicks to the advertiser website will be charged.

Desktop on Basemap (new as of August 2023)

Travel promotion pins on Maps surface on the Maps basemap on desktop. These trigger when the user’s viewport focuses on an area where the user isn’t frequently located. This means that triggering shouldn’t occur within the user’s home area or the areas that the user visits regularly.

If a user hovers over the pin, a hovercard appears. A user can click on either the top half or bottom half of the hovercard.

When a user clicks on the top half of the hovercard, the user is led to the placesheet, where the advertiser is the only partner shown in the paid booking links. Outbound clicks on these links lead to the advertiser’s website. A click is logged and charged.

An animation demonstrating how clicking the Maps hovercard opens the placesheet.

When a user clicks on the bottom half of the hovercard, the user is led to the outbound deeplink. Users are then sent to the advertiser’s website. A click is logged and charged.

An animation demonstrating how clicking the Maps hovercard opens the property's website.

If a user clicks directly on the pin, the user is led to the placesheet. Outbound clicks from the placesheet lead to the advertiser’s website. A click is logged and charged.

An animation demonstrating how clicking the Maps pin opens the placesheet.

Advertisers are able to show Travel Promotion Ads for all pin positions. However, it’s unlikely that one advertiser would show all pins.

Set up Travel Promotion Ads

You can create and modify Travel Promotion Ads ad groups in your Google Ads account and through the Google Ads API.

To create a Travel Promotion Ads ad group, follow the steps below.

Sign in to the Google Ads account that is linked to your Hotel Center account.
Choose a hotel campaign where you want to create a Travel Promotion Ads ad group.
From the Ad groups page, click the blue + button
Select "Travel Promotion Ads" as the ad group type.
Name the ad group.
Set the Max. CPC bid.
Click "Save and Continue".
You'll be taken to the Ad groups page. If you click into the newly created Travel Promotion ad group, you'll find one hotel group "All hotels". Create more hotel groups using subdivisions to make bidding more specific.

Bidding for Travel Promotion Ads

Travel Promotion Ads let you increase consideration of your hotel by promoting it at the top of search results. You can choose which hotels to promote and set a bid that aligns with your business objectives.

Travel Promotion Ads are compatible with all bid strategies available for hotel campaigns, including:

Starting April 30, 2024, Commissions (per Stay) and Commissions (per Conversions) bid strategies will no longer be available for new Hotel Ads campaigns.

Active Hotel Ads campaigns with commissions-based bid strategies will continue to serve until February 20, 2025. Review Commission-based bid strategies in hotel ads to sunset to learn more about your next steps.

Learn more about Bidding overview for hotel ads.

Reporting for Travel Promotion Ads

You can view performance metrics for Travel Promotion Ads by using the Report Editor and segmenting by the ad group type “Travel Promotion Ads”.

Eligible impressions

An eligible impression is awarded for every active bid in the Travel Promotion Ads query geography (at the hotel city level) and is capped at the number of available ad positions for the Google Ads account.

Example

Let's say you have 10 properties that are applicable to the query with bids above reserve. If there are 2 ad positions on the page, eligible impressions are awarded to the top 2 properties as ranked by our auction. Partners won't receive an eligible impression if their bid is below reserve.

Available ad positions depend on the placement:

For Hotel Search and Google Maps, the number of available ad positions varies.
For the Google Search carousel, there are up to 20 ad positions.

Eligible impressions per geographic region might also have overlap. For example, if you have eligible impressions in Dallas, eligible impressions in Fort Worth, and eligible impressions in the Greater Dallas Area, then the Greater Dallas Area might contain eligible impressions from both Dallas and Fort Worth.

Impressions

Hotel Search and Google Maps

An animation that shows Travel Promotion Ads in a placesheet.

An illustration of Travel Promotion Ads that appear in Listview - Desktop.

A Travel Promotion Ad receives impressions when it shows in the list view on Hotel Search or Google Maps. For Hotel Search, impressions are never logged in the "Sponsored" tab. For Travel Promotion Ad pins on Maps, impressions are logged when the pin appears on the user’s basemap.

Google Search carousel

A Travel Promotion Ad receives impressions when it's shown in the carousel (even if a user doesn't scroll to view the list).

If a user interacts with a format to reveal more ads (like more cards in a carousel), all additional ads are applied to the overall impression count (even if the user exposes a subset of those cards).

Impression Share

Impression Share is defined as the percentage of all eligible impressions for a given user query.

Clicks

A click occurs when a user selects an outbound link to the partner website. There's no reporting specific to the Travel Promotion Ads carousel, Flights, and others. These stats are included in aggregated metrics.

Note: Starting in 2023, the Travel Promotion Ad auction will no longer use booking link bids and will exclusively use Travel Promotion Ad ad group bids. If you don't have Travel Promotion Ad ad groups set up for a hotel, your campaign will stop serving Travel Promotion Ads for that hotel. If you want to use Travel Promotion Ads to drive traffic to your hotels, you’ll need to add them to a new or existing Travel Promotion Ad ad group.

Note: For the pins on Maps format, clicks are only charged for outbound links to the partner website:

Outbound clicks from the placesheet, such as:
- When a user clicks on the pin: Outbound clicks occur when users click out to the partner on the placesheet.
- When a user clicks on the top half of the hovercard: Outbound clicks occur when users click out to the partner on the placesheet.
When a user clicks on the bottom half of the hovercard: Outbound clicks occur when users click on the bottom link in the hover card.

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