Yule be Sorry You’re Not Using Metasearch
If your hotel isn’t already using Metasearch to drive direct bookings, then you need to review your strategy for 2020!
Metasearch engines are unique search engines that display the current rates of many different hotels in a given destination. Examples of this include Google Hotel Price Ads, Trivago and TripAdvisor among others.
What are the benefits?
The key benefit is to make the booking process more convenient for bookers, as they can compare rates at a glance from both OTA’s and independent hoteliers.Today’s travellers want hotel searches to be as quick and painless as possible.
If your hotel is live on Metasearch then the booking is made through your own booking engine. Unlike acquiring guests from an OTA, when you acquire a guest via Metasearch you will ‘own’ the customer data and be able to build more personalised relationships. Google’s dominance of the travel sector is growing – their Hotel Ads platform is quickly becoming an indispensable opportunity to market to the masses.
Our Results:
In 2019, Avvio’s average Cost Per Acquisition for metasearch was 7% across all channels. Even after adding in your booking engine commission, that still makes Metasearch a lot cheaper than an OTA booking. The average ROI from metasearch for Avvio customers in 2019 was an amazing 13:1.
So why should you sign up?
Here are some reasons why we recommend using Metasearch:
- Metasearch marketing should form part of a hotels strategy to shift bookings away from OTA’s and towards the hotels direct website.
- Hotels can reduce their dependence on OTA’s and drive more direct bookings thereby reducing your overall cost of sale.
- It offers a link directly to the hotel’s booking engine so it funnels the user down the booking path
- By advertising on metasearch, hotels can take up more ‘real estate’ on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) and drive additional brand awareness which is key when competing head to head with the OTAs.
- Can advertise on various channels – Google, Tripadvisor, Trivago, Kayak, Skyscanner, Wego and Bing.
- Potentially reaching new customers and markets globally
It’s important to ensure your hotel is working with digital experts to effectively manage your metasearch presence, and ensure you get the best return by testing the channels which will work best for you and tweaking bids and settings. Like PPC, Metasearch is an area where you can get a poor return if not managed properly.
With its real-time availability and pricing, alongside guest reviews it combines everything travel consumers want for convenience, on platforms they’re already using. Those not doing it are losing potential bookers to the OTAs. So if this is not on your to do list for 2020, you may want to check it twice!