Google recently announced that they are going forward with their plan to block third-party cookie tracking through Google Chrome (Chrome commands 63% of browser market share). What this means exactly for hotels is not totally clear. Mostly what will be affecting is tracking the source of revenue on a hotel's website (also called attribution) and the possibility to re-target visitors to your website (unless you use Google's retargeting ad products). To avoid users getting hit with totally irrelevant ads, like billboards on the highway, Google is creating a new system to target users which involves less tracking. Called FLoC the system essentially groups people into categories based on their behavior and puts a label on top so they can get served ads based on those labels without having any personal information connected. However, it only works if you advertise with Google, which means they are building a taller wall around their garden - an odd choice as they enter a long anti-trust investigation process. But what does this mean for hotel marketing? How will hotels track revenue? Since most non-major brand hotels have two domains (website + booking engine) how will this affect tracking?

Ross McAlpine
Ross McAlpine
Director, CRM at EOS Hospitality

I've seen the website cookie described as “perhaps the Web's biggest mistake” so it's not surprising that Google called time on third party cookies that had already been banned in other more privacy-focused browsers.

It's worth noting that Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), as well as Google's other privacy sandbox initiatives are still under development and there's been resistance from the other browsers towards Google's attempt to make FLoC a universal approach.

We are beginning a new phase of privacy and data control in digital marketing and this is coming at the same time as we also begin a new phase of growth for hospitality post-covid. These two seismic changes combined give us an opportunity to hit the reset button and rebuild marketing strategy from the ground up. I approach that with a sense of excitement rather than a sense of impending doom!

For hotels the solution is to invest in and prioritize first party data. Email sign ups, CRM and PMS data and rewards programs should be core components of a hotel's digital marketing strategy if they're not already. Conversion reporting will evolve as a result of this change but there are already emerging technologies that meet Google's privacy principles that will allow audiences to be built and targeted across devices and domains in a new way that's “95% as effective as before” [according to Google].

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