How do the Cost Per Clicks compare for Google Hotel Finder and TripAdvisor?

[Jason Price]

As the popularity of metasearch marketing continues to grow, so too does the CPC for advertisers on the TripAdvisors Show Prices and Google Hotel Finder.

In the HeBS Digital portfolio of over 1000 participating hotels, the average CPC has increased by nearly $1.00 in the past year. Advertising on TripAdvisor Show Prices has gotten more expensive.  To illustrate the extremes, we saw in June the highest CPC to date of of $9.90 and the lowest CPC of $1.05. On Google Hotel Finder we have seen a similar astonishingly high  $29.91 and low of $1.75.

Hotels with the highest CPCs tend to be those with higher ADRs, located in competitive markets, and very importantly, have as many as 9 or more OTAs advertising the hotel rate.  As long as there are at least three OTAs competing on TripAdvisor and two on Hotel Finder then the hotel is forced to compete with itself on the OTAs creating an artificially high CPC.

Maintaining visibility as a top three advertiser on TripAdvisor and top two on Google Hotel Finder is critical. For hotels with only a limited number of OTA contracts, these hotels experience a lower avg CPC and a generally higher ROAS. We believe the time is fast approaching when hotels will be able to negotiate with OTAs to disallow participation of their hotel inventory on the metasearch channels.