Methodology

The hospitality Google Ads playbook, published in the open..

Six pillars. Twelve months of seasonal calendar. A direct-booking incentive layer most properties leave on the table. We run this playbook on every hospitality engagement — and we publish it because the work is in the execution, not the secret.

Hospitality wedge service page See your property's leak — 60 sec, no email
118 markets covered
11.2× Hotel Ads ROAS
$127K commissions saved

01

Audit

Map the leak before you spend a dollar.

Every engagement begins with a full ad-account + booking-engine + analytics audit. We map your last 90 days of ad spend against actual bookings, identify wasted budget (geos, devices, audiences, times of day), find tracking gaps, and quantify the OTA-commission line item. Most properties walk away with 3-5 wins they could ship that week even without us.

Channel mix waterfall (OTA / direct / Google Ads / Meta / referral)
Booking funnel conversion-rate map
Wasted-spend breakdown by geo + device + creative
Tracking + measurement gap report
Competitive ad-copy + landing-page audit

02

Foundation

Tracking infrastructure, before campaigns.

No amount of optimisation matters if the data layer is broken. Before any campaign launches, we verify end-to-end conversion tracking (booking-engine integration, server-side measurement where possible, cross-domain stitching), wire up the bidding signals the platforms actually need, and stand up a single shared performance dashboard. If we can't see it, we don't spend on it.

End-to-end conversion tracking + verification
Server-side measurement where applicable
Bidding-signal layer (booking value, occupancy, ADR by stay-date)
Shared real-time performance dashboard
Weekly + monthly executive reporting cadence

03

Launch

Hotel Ads + Search built as one system.

We refuse to run Hotel Ads and standard Google Search as two disconnected accounts. Same budget pool, shared negative-keyword logic, single dashboard view. Hotel Ads captures guests in the comparison-shopping moment; Search captures upstream high-intent ("boutique resort + city" + property-type modifiers). Brand-defence Search runs on every search where OTAs bid on your property name. The system is unified — and that unification is most of the alpha.

Hotel Ads campaign + meta-search property listings
Branded Search + brand-defence
Generic Search across head + mid + long-tail
Performance Max with audience signals fed from your CRM
Negative-keyword library + competitor exclusions

Halfway through · Want a property-specific version?

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Two fast paths: a 60-second OTA-leak calculator (no email needed), or a property-specific audit returned within 48 hours.

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04

Optimise

Booking-engine intelligence in the bid logic.

We pull ADR, real-time availability, occupancy, and 30-day pace from your booking engine into the bid logic. When the property is sold out three weeks ahead, bids drop automatically instead of burning spend on traffic that can't convert. When a Tuesday-Wednesday shoulder-season window has open rooms at premium ADR, bids surge. Most agencies leave this layer of intelligence on the table — it is the single biggest profit lever in hospitality paid search.

Booking-engine ↔ ad-platform bid integration
Occupancy-pace-aware bid rules
ADR-sensitive bidding by stay-date
Lead-time-aware budget allocation (lead-time pacing)
Daily-vs-weekly-vs-monthly cadence by spend tier

05

Calendar

A 12-month seasonal campaign calendar.

No flat-spend campaign in any month of the year. We map your peak / shoulder / low pattern by source market, build brand-awareness campaigns ramping 6-8 weeks before peak high season, run urgency-led Search during prime booking windows, and switch to promo + drive-market targeting in low season to maintain occupancy without discounting the brand.

Peak / shoulder / low map by source market
6-8 week pre-peak awareness ramp
Urgency-led Search in prime booking windows
Promo + drive-market campaigns in low season
Brand integrity protected through rate-parity-compliant offers

06

Direct

Direct-booking incentive layer.

Driving traffic isn't the same as winning the booking. We audit your booking engine end-to-end, layer in rate-match guarantees, and build a 4-perk direct-booking offer (free transfers, room upgrade, daily breakfast, late checkout) that materially beats the equivalent OTA stay without breaking rate parity. Retargeting sequences for non-converting visitors catch the 60-70% who looked once and left.

Booking-engine UX + conversion audit
Rate-match guarantee + plain-language explainer
Direct-booking perk stack (without rate-parity breach)
Retargeting sequences (display + Search RLSA + email)
Welcome-sequence email automation for direct bookers

Principles

How we work — and the things we refuse to do.

Pricing is custom-scoped, not packaged.

Every property is different — ADR, occupancy, channel mix, seasonality, ad spend, market competition. We refuse to publish "starter / pro / enterprise" packages because they would force the wrong work onto the wrong properties. Pricing is scoped after the free audit, when we actually know what your property needs.

You own the account, the data, and the playbook.

Every campaign runs in YOUR Google Ads / Meta / Hotel Ads accounts under your billing. Every script, every audience, every report — yours. If we ever part ways, you keep everything. No vendor lock-in is a non-negotiable.

We say no when the work would be wrong.

If your property doesn't have enough room nights to justify Hotel Ads, we tell you. If your booking engine can't support direct-booking incentives without breaking rate parity, we tell you. If a $2,000/mo ad budget can't support meaningful Search + Hotel Ads + retargeting at your market's CPC, we tell you that too. The work has to fit the property.

Vendor-neutral tooling.

We pick the right tracking stack, the right dashboard, the right booking-engine integration for YOUR property — not the one that pays us referral commissions. We have no affiliate deals with any analytics, dashboard, booking-engine, or PMS vendor. Tool choice is part of the strategy, not a kickback line item.

Run this on your property

Free audit. Then we'll know if it fits.

Send us your property URL + a sentence about your goals. We come back within 48 hours with a property-specific version of this playbook.

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