Spring has arrived, and with it comes a fresh wave of new traveler experiences from Google and TripAdvisor. In an ever growing and competing landscape, opportunities to further promote your services with compelling content and imagery continue to be of the utmost importance. With these new updates, we expect travelers’ search experiences to steadily become more immersive and dynamic, allowing hoteliers additional opportunities to highlight their properties and ancillary services.

 

Google Enhancements

Earlier this week, Google announced a new organic mobile carousel on the traveler’s page, a significant improvement to the traveler experience. While searching, users may experience a new swipeable option to navigate their next hotel stay.

Traveler behavior is not always a simple process, as travelers are given different price points, locations, and amenity options on any given search. With this new experience, Google is testing a carousel option as an entry point into a traditional metasearch experience; the carousel blends low to mid-funnel marketing layers for when travelers know their desired location, but are still determining where they are willing to stay.

 

The new carousel provides a more personalized experience by further highlighting what the traveler can expect when arriving at a destination. Additionally, the experience is immersed with more photos, giving travelers a deeper look into what they can expect at the property. After selecting a property of interest, from a single tap, the traveler will be able to swipe through additional photo highlights, browse reviews, visit the hotel website, or continue on with a traditional metasearch booking experience. Otherwise, if a traveler wishes to continue looking for additional hotel options, they’ll be able to simply swipe up.

 

TripAdvisor Enhancements

After initial testing earlier this year, TripAdvisor has launched a refreshed layout for their Hotel Detail pages, which is now available for US users. This latest view includes several new features that create an enhanced experience for travelers and advertisers alike.

When searching for their ideal stay, it’s important for travelers to be able to both quickly and fully understand a hotel’s rate, amenities, and proximity to nearby locations, among other factors. With TripAdvisor’s new Hotel Detail page, users can now take advantage of above-the-fold hotel commerce placements, finding all of the information they need from the get-go.

 

 

The new Hotel Detail page contains an expanded commerce placement, prominently displaying three offers by default beneath the hotel images, rather than the previous single offer. Additionally, these three offers are now eligible for merchandising meaning callouts, such as “Fully refundable” or “No prepayment needed.” These changes empower travelers as they can now instantly compare rates across three sites to determine which offer best fits their travel budgets and needs.

From an advertiser perspective, this update helps ensure appropriate performance and smoother distribution of clicks amongst participating advertisers. Prior to the update, single advertisers would frequently win the majority of ad unit real estate. Now, with this new UI, three advertisers will be shown consistently. This generates beneficial and meaningful increases to site visitors by improving advertising rank while also minimizing rapid increases in unprofitable traffic by owning the single top slot.

 

Expectations

In a rapidly growing and competitive industry, an advertiser’s ability to promote a hotel’s beneficial details adeptly and coherently is crucial. This balance of efficacy and ease can allow you to reach your target consumers and further grow conversions all while highlighting key merchandising details, giving consumers more confidence in their selected offer.

Moreover, with these enhancements, we expect increased visibility opportunities for ads, stronger engagement with each click, and an increased likelihood of conversions. On the flip side, advertisers below the fold or carousel may not see a noticeable impact to engagement, although it is possible that user behaviors may change.

As innovative test opportunities arise with the full roll-out of these new enhancements, Koddi will continue to analyze the enhanced efficiencies associated with this Hotel Detail view and provide strategic insights for the opportunities it creates for promoters.

Ready to learn more about the new experience? Get in touch with our team today.