Harnessing Google Performance Max for Hotels and Travel 

Despite being in a highly competitive advertising sector, today’s ever-evolving digital landscape offers hotels and travel businesses of all sizes several options for gaining exposure and capturing market share. While Google’s Search Ads stand out for their ability to effectively drive direct conversions, Google’s Performance Max (PMax) is an additional innovative advertising solution that makes it easier for small to mid-sized hotels and travel businesses to increase brand exposure across all Google-owned channels, better-ensuring offers reach potential customers wherever they are online. This article explores the capabilities and benefits of Performance Max campaigns for hotels and travel industry businesses, detailing how they work, what they entail, and where they are displayed.

What Is Performance Max?

Performance Max (PMax) is a goal-based campaign type that allows advertisers to access all of Google’s advertising inventory from a single campaign. It uses advanced machine learning technologies to automatically optimize bids and placements, delivering ads to potential customers at optimal times and locations across Google’s extensive network. Compared to advertising on each of Google’s channels separately, PMax simplifies the ad setup process and makes it easier for advertisers to manage their multichannel advertising budget and performance from a single campaign and ad platform. Performance Max Ads can also help maximize conversion value by targeting users most likely to convert based on your campaign’s specific goals, such as leads, sales, or website traffic. By advertising across all Google platforms, hotels and travel agencies gain increased visibility, reaching potential customers at every stage of their journey.

How Performance Max Campaigns Work

While Google Search Ads utilize keywords to target people based on relevant search queries and intent, Performance Max campaigns operate by using machine learning and by integrating user, context, and intent signals to predict the most likely conversion events and serve ads across Google’s entire range of channels and devices. This integration allows for a holistic approach to ad placements, optimizing the campaign’s reach and impact. Advertisers start by setting a goal and providing Google with inputs such as budget, target regions, and conversion goals. Advertisers are also responsible for supplying creative assets, including headlines, descriptions, images, and videos. Google’s algorithm then tests various combinations of these assets across different networks to determine which configurations perform best. This video explains how Performance Max Campaigns work in more specific detail.

How to Incorporate PMax With Your Google Search Ads

Because Google’s Search Ads and PM Ads ads target customers differently, one ad type doesn’t completely replace the purpose or performance of the other. In addition, PMax’s machine learning model benefits from drawing data from the historical performance of pre-existing Search Ad campaigns that successfully generate conversations. Hence, it’s ideal to run your PMax campaigns and Search Campaigns concurrently in a sort of “layered approach” and launch a PMax campaign only after you’ve been running successful Search Ad campaigns with sufficient monthly conversions (which we outline below). To get an idea of what goes into a Performance Max campaign setup, Search Engine Journal outlines a good step-by-step example of how to use Performance Max for hotels and travel-related business campaigns, and Google offers helpful steps in their free Performance Max for travel goals onboarding guide.

Where Performance Max Ads Are Shown

Performance Max campaigns have the unique advantage of spanning across the entirety of Google’s advertising ecosystem. Once you’ve set up all available PMax asset types, here’s where you can expect your ads to appear:

• Google Search Network: PMax ads can appear in search results when potential customers are looking for travel options or hotel bookings.
• Google Display Network: These ads reach users on various websites that partner with Google to display ads, providing visual touchpoints.
• YouTube: Video ads may be displayed before or during relevant YouTube content, engaging users who are consuming travel-related videos.
• Google Maps: For local travel and hotel options, ads might appear directly in Maps, guiding potential customers to your location.
• Gmail: Ads can also appear within Gmail, targeting users as they check their email.

Key Capabilities of Performance Max for Hotels and Travel

1. Broad reach across channels: Performance Max campaigns provide unprecedented reach by utilizing all Google ad networks, including Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Google Maps. Such a broad reach is particularly beneficial for the hotel and travel industry, as it allows businesses to connect with travellers at multiple touchpoints in their travel-planning journey, from initial research to booking confirmation.
2. Audience expansion: PMax employs Google’s audience signals to find new customers who match the profile of your best existing customers but who have yet to be reached through traditional targeting methods. Reaching these untapped customers is crucial in the travel industry, where capturing new market segments can significantly boost bookings.
3. Optimized budget spending: PMax’s use of machine learning helps to ensure that your advertising budget is automatically shifted to the most effective channels and times, maximizing ROI. This dynamic allocation of resources is especially advantageous in the competitive travel market, where consumer behaviour and preferences can shift rapidly.
4. Insightful reporting and attribution: Performance Max provides detailed insights into campaign performance across channels, offering a comprehensive view of how different touchpoints contribute to conversions. These insights help hotels and travel agencies make informed decisions about future advertising strategies and consumer behaviour.

Look Before You Launch!

While Performance Max ads for hotels can be a great addition to your digital advertising strategy, here are a few things to consider before launching a PMax Campaign:

1. Less control: Compared to Search Ads, PMax doesn’t afford advertisers as much control over brand messaging, ad combinations and configurations, and placements. Options such as utilizing page feeds may help by telling Google which landing pages to index, but for advertisers with stringent brand guidelines, PMax may not be a great fit.
2. Poaching from brand search campaigns: Consider using PMax’s brand exclusion lists option to prevent your PMax Campaign from competing with an already successful brand search campaign. Keep an eye on your brand search campaign’s performance and cost per click. If performance dips while the cost per click increases, experiment with PMax’s brand exclusions list and negative keyword options (which isn’t straightforward). BrightBid’s article on How to Exclude Brand from Performance Max walks you through the process.
3. Know your average cost per acquisition: PMax requires sufficient budget to run. A good start is to look at what your average cost per conversion is in a similar Search Ad campaign and consider making that your starting daily budget.
4. Sufficient historical conversion data: As explained in detail by Aaron Young in his video titled “How Performance Max Campaigns Work,” PMax uses a conversions-based strategy that looks at historical data and performance stats at the account level (the keywords, search terms and audience demographic etc) your overall account is targeting. Unless you have a significant budget to burn on experimentation, It’s wise to hold off on starting a PMax campaign until your related Search Ad campaigns are collectively generating at least 30 conversions a month for Google to use as conversion data for your Performance Max Campaign.

Are You Ready to Try Performance Max?

To summarize, Google Performance Max campaigns offer yet another digital advertising advantage for the hotel and travel industry. By integrating advanced machine learning technologies and offering extensive reach across all Google platforms, PMax enables hotels and travel businesses to efficiently and effectively reach a broad audience, enhance their online presence, complement their Google Search Ads performance and drive more conversions.

Google Is Ever Evolving

It’s worth mentioning that Google’s channels and offerings are constantly evolving. For example, this recent article by WordStream details four new Google Ads Performance Max updates every advertiser should know about. Even if you’re a DIY advertiser, It definitely helps to have seasoned experts you can lean on when you run into challenges and need help troubleshooting.

Do You Have Questions?

Do you operate a hotel or other hospitality and tourism-related business and have questions about Performance Max ads for hotels, how to boost bookings, and where to focus your marketing resources? Or do you have questions about Google Advertising and optimizing what you’re already doing? We’d love to hear from you. Contact us online today or click here to schedule a call with us.

Additional Resources + Recommendations

Check out these additional suggested resources on maximizing your marketing effectiveness and increasing bookings!

Hospitality Email Marketing Tips to Implement Now | Part One

10 Essential Website Ranking Factors for Resorts in 2024

What is a Brand Ad in Google Search & Why Might You Need One?

Subscribe now to the PlusROI newsletter to be notified of upcoming free webinars, online marketing tips and current best practices.