On March 7, 2023, Google Ads announced that they will be rolling out Performance Max for travel goals campaigns to all hotel suppliers. In this blog, we’ll go over what Performance Max for travel goals is, how it works, and how it can potentially benefit hotel advertisers.
What is Performance Max for Travel Goals?
Performance Max for travel goals is a goal-based, multi-channel campaign type available in Google Ads that’s designed to drive more direct hotel bookings. Utilizing the power of Google’s AI, these campaigns aim to show relevant ads to potential customers at the exact moment they are planning their trips via Google Maps, Search, Gmail, Display, Video, Discover, YouTube, and Hotel Ads (expected later this year).
How it Works
When setting up Performance Max for travel goals campaigns, advertisers can select their hotel properties from a map using a hotel picker tool, with the ability to choose up to 100 hotel properties in a single campaign.
After selecting your hotel properties, Google will pre-populate ads for each hotel, including creative elements such as copy, images, and URLs. Advertisers can choose to edit any of these assets or upload their own instead.
Once live, Performance Max for travel goals shares campaign performance metrics for each location separately, helping you determine what is and isn’t working for each of your locations. Advertisers will also be able to view a search term insights report, which shares what guests are searching for when they view your ad.
Benefits of Performance Max for Travel Goals
- Expands your reach – by streamlining the addition of new ad formats, inventories, and using automated targeting, these campaigns are designed to help you identify new potential guests looking for properties like yours.
- Easy to set up – Google’s AI will provide you with ad messaging, images, and URLs automatically to help you get started.
- Easy to maintain – Google’s AI will manage bidding, ad inventories, and selecting the best assets to show to potential guests.
- Easy to understand – per-property reporting makes it easy to track and share your campaign performance for each of your hotel locations separately.
Why We Care
If you’re a hotel supplier, Performance Max for travel goals may be a great campaign type to test as it caters specifically to the travel industry and offers some great, unique features that could potentially generate more and higher-quality leads.
Note: If you already are running a Performance Max campaign and wish to run a travel goals campaign at the same time, Google states that the campaigns should target different locations as they could compete against each other or behave in unexpected ways.
Contact us today to learn how our experts can maximize your ROI and drive more bookings.
