Google Ads for hotels works when the account is built around direct bookings: a campaign that protects the hotel's name, a Hotel campaign connected to the booking engine, city keywords only when they include a service or a season, and tracking that counts bookings with their value. Generic city keywords cost between £1.06 and £1.82 a click in the UK (DataForSEO, Google UK, September 2026; CPC converted from USD at £1 = $1.3242), but auction competition is among the highest we measure, because Booking.com and Expedia are bidding on the other side.
So what tools does a hotel have?
Three:
- a Search campaign on keywords;
- Hotel campaigns (Google Hotel Ads) inside the price panel;
- Performance Max for travel goals.
And in the accommodation accounts we open, the problem is almost always the same: money goes into all three without knowing how many bookings come back.
No campaign on the hotel's name, while Booking.com buys it.
Conversion set on the "Book" click.
Performance Max switched on from day one.
Why listen to us?
Because we have already taken broken tracking apart, even if in other sectors. On Valore Solare the account was counting 15,267 "conversions" in a month on 5,467 clicks; after the rebuild the real enquiries came to 1,506, at €70.78 each.
In this guide:
- how Google Hotel Ads works in 2026 (and why pay per stay is gone);
- what Premier Inn, Travelodge and an independent in Blackpool actually buy;
- the account structure in four campaigns;
- the minimum budget worked out from measured CPCs;
- the mistakes we find most often.
The organic side is covered in the companion article SEO for hotels.
Let's start with the price panel.
Google Hotel Ads: how it works in 2026 (and pay per stay is gone)
Google Hotel Ads is the part of Google Ads that shows your property's price in the Google Hotels panel, the one that appears above all organic results for a search like "hotels blackpool". Once the dates are chosen, the panel lists the sites where you can book, each with its price: Booking.com, Expedia and the hotel's official website, if it is there.
For a one-night stay at the end of September in Blackpool, for example: Grand Hotel Blackpool from £42, The Imperial Hotel from £53, Premier Inn Blackpool North Pier from £81.
What do you need to be there?
Two things.
- A connection that sends rates and availability to Hotel Center. Almost every booking engine and channel manager can do it (SiteMinder, Bookassist and similar, each with its own pricing).
- A Hotel campaign in Google Ads linked to that Hotel Center account.
If you have the first piece but not the second you still appear, free, through "free booking links". Google introduced them in 2021 and they are still the cheapest way to get your direct rate into the panel.
What's the catch?
The free booking link sits below the paid positions. In a city with a lot of supply it is often off the first screen.
Then there is one thing many guides still repeat that is no longer true: commission-based payment.
The "Commissions per stay" (pay per stay) and "Commissions per conversion" bid strategies were closed to new campaigns by Google on 30 April 2024 and retired completely on 20 February 2025 (source: Google Ads Help, "Commission-based bid strategies in hotel ads to sunset").
Today a Hotel campaign is paid per click, with enhanced CPC or target ROAS, or you move to Performance Max for travel goals.
The "pay only when the guest stays" model no longer exists.
Which keywords the chains buy on Search (and which they don't: the independent buys nothing)
Of the three UK operators we analysed, only the largest chain buys generic city searches: Premier Inn, with hundreds of hotels, can do it for the same reason the OTAs can. Travelodge buys towns and specific needs, and the independent Boulevard Hotel in Blackpool buys nothing.
Doesn't Google Ads for a hotel mean buying "hotel + city"?
That is the common belief. Here is what three operators of very different sizes buy.
| Domain | Paid keywords | What they buy | Top keywords by volume (CPC) |
|---|---|---|---|
| premierinn.com | 443 | own locations, competitor names, some generic city searches | "travelodge edinburgh" 27,100 (£1.13), "premier inn docklands" 18,100 (£0.60), "bournemouth hotels" 14,800 (£1.28) |
| travelodge.co.uk | 36 | towns and specific needs | "hotels london gatwick north terminal" 12,100 (£2.14), "southampton hotel" 8,100 (£1.39), "hotels in ely cambs" 2,900 (£1.38) |
| boulevardhotel.co.uk | 0 | - | no campaigns detected |
Premier Inn buys generic city searches because every click on "bournemouth hotels" can end up at one of its own properties. It also bids on competitors' names ("travelodge edinburgh", "ibis hotel leeds centre").
Travelodge buys much less, and mostly specific needs ("hotels by waterloo station london", "hotels in morecambe with parking").
The Boulevard Hotel, an independent that ranks first organically for "hotels blackpool" (12,100 searches a month), buys nothing.
Why should an independent stay out of the city auction?
Because on generic city keywords the auction is run by the OTAs and by chains that monetise across hundreds of properties. A single hotel that enters it pays the same click for a user who hasn't yet chosen the area.
The keywords where an independent buys well fall into three groups:
- Its own name and variants ("boulevard hotel blackpool", "boulevard hotel blackpool prices"): low CPCs, high conversion rate, and these are the searches Booking.com buys instead of you if you don't.
- City + service or reason ("brighton hotels with pool", 1,000 searches a month at £0.98; "seafront hotels in blackpool"; "hotels near excel london", 4,400 searches at £2.96): whoever searches these has already chosen the area and the type of property. Venue searches can cost more than the generic ones, so check the CPC before building the campaign.
- Seasons and events (New Year's Eve, Easter breaks, the Blackpool Illuminations, the city's main trade fair or conference): in Ads they are switched on for four to six weeks and then switched off.
What about match types?
Phrase for city + service keywords, exact on the brand.
Broad match only once booking tracking works, and with automated bidding. Otherwise the account ends up buying "hotels in london" through the back door.
Negatives to add on day one: "jobs", "careers", "reviews", "booking", "trivago", "tripadvisor", "free", "hostel", and the names of nearby towns where you don't have a property.
Further reading: long tail and short tail keywords.
How to structure a hotel account (four campaigns, Performance Max last)
For a single property, the account we run has four campaigns: brand, Hotel, Search city + service and seasonal. We switch them on in this order.
- Brand: Search, exact and phrase match on the hotel's name, small budget, always on. If organic clicks on the brand don't fall when the campaign is running, the campaign is taking traffic that was going to the OTAs.
- Hotel (Google Hotel Ads): linked to Hotel Center, with enhanced CPC for the first 30-60 days and then target ROAS once there are at least 30 tracked bookings.
- Search city + service: one or two ad groups for each combination with volume ("seafront", "with pool", "near the conference centre"), dedicated landing pages, budget adjusted to the season.
- Seasonal and events: campaigns with a start and end date, reusing the same landing page every year (New Year, Easter, the city's main event).
And Performance Max?
It comes later, not first.
It extends coverage to Maps, YouTube and Display, but without bookings tracked with their value it optimises for whatever it finds. In the accounts we inherit, Performance Max switched on from day one is the most common case of budget spent without knowing on what.
Further reading: when Google Ads makes sense.
Where to send the click: landing page and booking engine (with the dates already chosen)
A click from a Hotel campaign arrives with the dates already chosen: the landing page has to open the booking engine with those dates and that number of guests, not the website's home page. If the user has to enter everything again, some of them go back to Booking.com, where the dates were already filled in.
For city + service Search campaigns, the landing page is the page for that service (pool, spa, family room) with the booking widget at the top and a visible "from" price.
Two checks before going live:
- rate parity: if your own site is more expensive than Booking.com, the campaign is paying to send guests to the OTAs;
- the booking engine's speed on mobile, the most common cause of conversion rates below 1%.
Further reading: why a website doesn't convert.
How to track bookings (not clicks on the "Book" button)
In hotel accounts the conversion is almost always set up wrongly, because the booking engine sits on a different domain from the website. What we find: the conversion is the click on "Book" (which also counts people who check prices and leave), or a visit to the booking engine, or there is no conversion at all.
How much can that distort the numbers?
A lot. We have measured it in other sectors.
At Valore Solare, before we stepped in, the account counted 15,267 "conversions" in a month against 5,467 clicks. They were technical events.
At Sunscape there were 1,487 conversions at €0.61 each. Again, events.
In both cases Google's automated strategies were optimising for those numbers. In other words, for nothing.
A hotel with the conversion set on the "Book" click is in the same position.
The correct setup has three parts:
- cross-domain tracking between website and booking engine in Google Analytics 4;
- a confirmed-booking event that passes the value of the stay as the conversion value;
- that event imported into Google Ads as the primary conversion.
Phone calls are tracked separately, with call assets, and count as a secondary conversion.
Only then does target ROAS make sense.
Does your account count bookings or clicks on "Book"?
Valore Solare counted 15,267 "conversions" on 5,467 clicks, and automated bidding was chasing technical events. If your booking engine sits on another domain, the same is probably happening to you. Let's check together what your account really counts.
Book a strategy consultationFurther reading: Google Analytics 4 and the Valore Solare case study.
How much budget you need: the sums with measured CPCs (£450-600 a month in season)
For a single hotel the sensible minimum on Google Ads is around £450-600 a month in season, not counting the management fee. The sums start from the CPC of "4 star hotels brighton", £1.22, and a booking engine conversion rate of 2.5%.
The 2.5% is a typical figure for an independent property with rate parity and a fast website: below 1% if the booking engine is slow, above 4% on the brand.
Let's do the sums for a 4-star hotel in Brighton that wants to sell direct:
- 40 clicks per booking, so £48.80 cost per booking.
- With an average stay of two nights at, say, £150 a night, that is £300 of revenue: acquisition cost is 16% of revenue, in line with an OTA commission (15-25%), but with the guest in your own system and the second booking free.
- On the brand the sums change: CPCs of around £0.25-0.45 and a 4-5% conversion rate give £5-10 per booking. That is why the brand campaign goes live first.
- To have data you can make decisions on, you need at least 300-400 clicks a month on non-brand campaigns: at £1.22 a click that is £365-490 a month, plus £85-130 for brand.
And if the hotel is in London?
The sums are similar, with a reversed calendar. "Hotels central london" costs £1.82 a click and demand peaks between September and January (22,200 searches a month against 14,800 from May to August).
By the sea, "hotels in blackpool" goes from 8,100 searches in December to 22,200 in July, August and September.
Budget should follow your own city's curve, not be spread evenly across twelve months.
The limit of this calculation: the 2.5% is our own average, not a Keyword Planner figure, and it varies a lot by category (a 5-star hotel converts less but with a higher average spend). Replace it with your own number after the first month of correct tracking.
Further reading: Google Ads statistics 2026 and how to calculate ROI.
The mistakes we find most often in hotel accounts (the most expensive one is invisible)
The most expensive mistake in hotel accounts is having no campaign on your own name while Booking.com buys it: the booking still comes in, but with 15-18% commission. It is invisible, which is why nobody fixes it.
The other six:
- Conversion set on the "Book" click, or missing: automated strategies optimise for a number that isn't a booking.
- Performance Max switched on first, with no conversion value: it spends on Display and YouTube because clicks are cheaper there, and the report says "conversions" without saying which.
- Generic "hotel + city" keywords on broad match, with no negatives: the account enters the OTA auction and pays up to £1.80 for someone who hasn't yet chosen the area.
- Price feed out of sync: the ad shows one price, the booking engine another, and Google reduces visibility for the mismatch.
- The same budget for twelve months in a place where demand almost triples between low and high season.
- No remarketing to people who opened the booking engine without completing: it is the warmest audience the hotel has.
Is Booking.com buying your hotel's name?
Every booking that goes through it costs you 15-18% commission, while a brand click costs £0.25-0.45 and a direct booking £5-10. In 30 minutes we look together at the auctions on your name and your area.
Book a strategy consultationFurther reading: how to do remarketing.
Google Ads or SEO for a hotel? (21,000 paid visits against about 6 million organic)
For an independent hotel, SEO works on the brand, the Google Business Profile, area pages and events, while Google Ads covers the price panel, protecting the name and city + service keywords in the months when the demand is there. On the "hotels blackpool" SERP, five of the nine organic results on the first page belong to OTAs and comparison sites (Trivago, lastminute.com, Tripadvisor, Booking.com, Hotels.com), plus the tourist board's accommodation list.
For Premier Inn, ads bring an estimated 21,000 visits a month against about 6 million organic.
Not many?
No, but those are visits from the panel where people book.
How to build the organic side is in SEO for hotels. For how the two channels fit together, see SEO and Google Ads together. If the property sells packages and experiences as well as rooms, Google Ads for tourism is also worth a read.
Frequently asked questions
It depends: appearing in the panel through "free booking links" is free, as long as a booking engine or channel manager is connected to Hotel Center. The top positions in the price panel are paid, per click. The commission-per-stay model has not existed since 20 February 2025.
It depends: on generic city keywords in the UK, between £1.06 ("hotels blackpool") and £1.82 ("hotels central london"), with a high top-of-page bid between £1.16 and £2.00. Much less on the hotel's own name. In Hotel campaigns the cost varies by date and location and has to be read in your own account.
No. You need a partner that sends rates and availability to Hotel Center: the channel manager, or the booking engine directly if it is one of the integration partners. Without a price feed the Hotel campaign won't run; the Search campaign will.
Yes, if an OTA or a chain is buying it: search for your name and look at the ads. Premier Inn bids on competitors' hotel names, so the risk is real for chains and independents alike. If nobody is buying your brand, the campaign can stay on a minimum budget, as insurance.
No, it includes them: it uses the Hotel Center feed and the property's Business Profile to show ads on Maps, YouTube and Display as well. It is the campaign Google recommends in place of the old commission models, but without bookings tracked with their value it has nothing to optimise for.
Where to start (from a phone, searching for your hotel's name)
Not "hotels central london" at £1.82, but your own name at £0.25-0.45.
Not the click on "Book", but the confirmed booking with its value.
Not pay per stay, gone since 20 February 2025, but per-click with target ROAS.
Not twelve identical months, but your city's curve.
Now, two concrete things.
One: search for your hotel's name on Google from a phone. If there is a Booking.com or Expedia ad above your website, the first pound goes into the brand campaign, today.
Two: pick any date in the Google Hotels panel and look at who appears in the price list. If your website isn't there, connect the booking engine to Hotel Center before spending anything else.
The rest (Search city + service, seasonal campaigns, Performance Max) comes after a month of bookings tracked with their value.
If you would like us to look at your account or the auctions in your area together, in Italy or in Ticino, book a strategy consultation.
See you next time!
