Google Ads campaigns in the Corona crisis: How to get your Google Ads back on track

Not even the largest search engine in the world is protected from the current situation. But what trends can be observed in the Google advertising world? And how can you gradually reactivate your advertising campaigns on Google and lead them to success? We have taken a closer look at the development around Google Ads campaigns.

Slow uptrend in booking requests

Let us first of all look at the recent statistics regarding booking requests. And yes, with the gradual opening of the travel market there is already a cautious but steady upward trend for hotel enquiries worldwide. Current data even gives us reason to hope that we have overcome the "demand drop" and that the situation in the hotel industry is slowly but surely easing. It seems that after a period of restrictions and travel bans, people are once again dreaming of travelling and are now planning their next holiday.

In the following chart of Myhotelshop Google Ads campaigns, the cautious upward trend in booking requests is evident:

According to a recent study by Tripadvisor, one of the world's largest travel platforms, travel requests for domestic destinations of more than 90 days' notice are increasing. Domestic destinations are therefore likely to be the first to recover from the Corona crisis. It also shows that the focus is mainly on the months of August and September 2020:

Source: Tripadvisor 2020

What does this mean for the marketing strategies regarding your Google Ads?

We recommend our hoteliers to get their SEA campaigns back on track with the following four steps:

First, make sure that you are visible on Google, the world's largest search engine. Since people are currently starting to plan their travels again, it is important to be present with your own ads now. Revitalize your brand campaigns, for example. Above all, the focus should be on the domestic market, as domestic destinations will be the first to recover.

Secondly, it is advantageous to start generic campaigns right now. Here, it is especially important to specifically include the search period. As we pointed out, searches for domestic destinations with more than 90 days will increase in the future. Especially the months of August and September 2020 will be increasingly searched for. Hoteliers should start from here. We recommend promoting these periods with generic Google Ads campaigns to reach new guests.

While classic generic Google Ads campaigns mainly work via "Hotel + Location" (e.g. "Hotel + Baltic Sea" or "Wellness Hotel + Black Forest"), we recommend adding the explicit month in the search: "Hotel + Location + Month". In addition, events such as the summer holidays in July/August/September (depending on the country) and the autumn holidays (for Germany in October) should also be advertised. This is especially true for hotels located in classic domestic holiday regions (e.g. Baltic and North Sea, Bavarian Forest, etc.).

Thirdly: Advertise special hotel offers. These can either be specially tailored packages or individual transitional offers in the current "Corona period". For example, some hotels offer a meal delivery service, provide special co-working areas as an alternative to home office, or gear their current offers specifically to business travellers.

Fourth: Even though this article is primarily about ad placement on Google, visibility on Microsoft's search engine Bing is another effective way to attract more potential guests and generate traffic for your website.

Summary

Considering that currently click costs in the search engines are very low and there is hardly any competition with the big OTAs, we recommend to reactivate the Google Ads campaigns step by step and especially to focus on generic campaigns with a clear time frame, which is more than 90 days in the future. Would you like to know how this could look like for your hotel? Please feel free to contact us. We support you on the way (back) to more traffic and bookings via Google Ads & Bing campaigns.

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