The Google Travel Lowdown: Hotel Location Scores, Search Evolution And More
It's a big year for Google. The search giant has just turned 20 and to celebrate has announced a number of new features that confirm Google's influence over how we operate online shows no sign of waning.
Hotels need to be assigning the same importance to Google as they do to Booking.com, Expedia, trivago, their own booking engine, or any other advertising or distribution channel. Those that don't are going to be left behind. More than just a search engine, Google is now a fully-fledged travel platform in its own right. The aim is clearly to get more guests searching, browsing and booking right there on Google, rather than clicking out to an organic link or an advertiser's site.
So where does this leave hotels? Well, it certainly opens up a lot of doors in terms of new ways to acquire high-quality traffic and compete with OTAs on a (slightly) more level playing field. It also means, though, that hotels are at risk of being completely behind in an ever-accelerating war between Google and the major OTAs over guest attention.
We've broken down some of the recent developments to Google's travel offering. Read on to see how they could impact your business.
