Google Shakes Up The Internet Tourism Business By Allowing Free Ads

Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 43. This is a recap of my Facebook live video about Google's free ads.

Here's the audio for this episode:

Here's the video for this episode:

Timestamp

00:00 Start
02:10 Let's talk about Google
03:10 What we noticed
04:00 What you can do

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Transcript from the Episode

Today we're going to talk a little bit more about Google. So a couple of weeks ago, I told you about the big news that Google is going to be releasing some free links into their Google business listing or Google Hotel Ads, I've got an image here of what it may look like. So again, this was taken from euroweeklynews.com. And again, this is basically what it could look like when this comes into action. Now, this is obviously taken from a Los Angeles based property. But as you can see right up at the top official site will sit there and Google will allow it for free. Now, they will monetize this. And the rumor is that what they will do is like Google ads, they will let you bid and pay a little bit of money to have it here, here and here. And obviously booking.com, TripAdvisor and everybody's going to have their say on this.

What we noticed

But one thing that we have noticed, you see what booking.com are doing here, they are undercharging the guest. So what they're basically doing is as we all know, booking.com take a 15% plus commission. And what they're doing is they're still paying the property 15% Commission, but what they're doing is they're taking the money. So the $11 here, out of their own pockets, to basically try and bring their rate down. This is naughty, this is cheeky. But again, they're saying the T's and C's, they can do what they want using the T's and C's, they can do what they want. So again, the whole rate parity thing maybe going, but what this means is that booking.com can under mark you so again.

What you can do

My advice would be when you do see this when you've got the ability to do it, pay to get top here. And always try and manipulate the text to say best rates guarantee or best incentives. I always like to play on incentives rather than the rate because, you know, if you're focusing purely on rate, and if you're trying to go to the bottom, it brings in the wrong type of guests. I've always found that but if you play on the incentives as in a free welcome hamper, earlier check-in time, later check out, free Wi-Fi, then that always works in well.

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