Google is testing a new user experience (UX) that is designed to elevate consumers’ hotel searches when booking travel. In this new UX, some users are served a destination-level search, complete with Property Promotion Ads – even when searching for and clicking into a specific property’s availability page. Standard Hotel Ads Experience In the standard metasearch experience, after a...
Countries like China, who first weathered the coronavirus, continue to show positive signs of recovery following relief from lockdowns. As the initial epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak, China trends could serve as a projection model for phased recovery around the world. Back in late February, travel demand for China began to see an increase following the outbreak of COVID-19. Since...
With unprecedented market conditions, COVID-19 has spurred dramatic shifts in travel trends. Recent changes to user behavior include declining demand across major metropolitan areas, early signs of recovery in China, as well as notable shifts in demand across booking windows. With recent updates to hoteliers’ cancellation policies and volatility due to travel bans and stay-at-home orders, extremely short booking windows...
In our previous posts on the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve looked at the impact on travel demand in Europe and the United States. With some of the more recent announcements by the World Health Organization and the US government, shifts in hotel demand are quickly occurring across the country. To get a clearer picture of how search traffic is being affected...
All roads, or rather clicks, lead to Google’s Hotel Search page. Google continues to iterate on its hotel search interface and experience for destination searches. When it was released back in 2018, the hotel search interface was only accessible from a destination search by clicking on the bottom button of the local pack to view additional hotels (as shown below)....
Google is currently in the process of testing a new UI, in which the metasearch auction spot is now a part of the paid search ad space, replacing a paid search ad slot. Below, you can see a comparison highlighting the key differences between the previous layout and the new experimental UI. In order to see this new layout you...