Activate Room Booking Module (RBM) of Google Hotel Ads
news
March 1, 2024
Felipe Bravo, Head of Digital Marketing. "When I studied marketing and advertising, my goal was actually to learn about the offline world and TV commercials. By coincidence of life my first job was at a dot.com and everything changed. thank goodness!"
As we reported a few weeks ago, Roiback has been the first Spanish technology company and one of the first in the world to integrate directly with BoG (Book on Google), the Google Hotel Ads (GHA) solution that allows you to finalize the hotel booking without leaving the Google environment instead of making a "click-out" and redirecting to the hotel website. One of the advantages of activating your hotels in Book on Google, is to be able to opt-in to the additional Room Booking Module (RBM) section.
What is Room Booking Module (RBM)?
RBM is an extra module of Book on Google, which allows to show the prices and content of the different room types and give the user the possibility to start the reservation directly from this module being redirected to the BoG process.
If I already have standard Google Hotel Ads campaigns active, am I already using RMB?
No. In order to activate the RMB module it is necessary to activate Book on Google completely or only partially with the RBM option, since Room Booking Module requires the use of BoG.
If you do not have active GHA campaigns, contact your DCS immediately and he will advise you on how to implement them in a few days, since as you know GHA already represents 65% of the total sales of Metabuscadores, a channel that together with the rest of Metabuscadores represents around 15%-20% of the total sales of the direct channel (data from Roiback hotels).
Can I activate standard Google Hotel Ads campaigns and Book on Google?
Yes, but you can only combine the standard Google Hotel Ads campaigns with the extra Room Booking Module. That is, if you activate BoG in full, the whole booking process will be carried out in the Google environment, both in the standard section you already know (with the price comparison of the official website and the OTAs), and in the new RBM section.
So what is the best recommendation, do I activate Book on Google or leave the standard Google Hotel Ads campaigns?
Our recommendation for the moment is only to activate the Room Booking Module + the standard Google Hotel Ads campaigns.
Why don't we recommend Book on Google in full?
Book on Google is a relatively new booking system created by Google in order to eliminate friction during the customer purchase process, particularly on mobile devices and trying to improve the user experience. In any case, it is too drastic a change in navigation right now and users are not used to this new process. It is preferable to wait a prudent amount of time until this new booking process settles a bit more within the Google ecosystem buying cycle.
What are the advantages of activating standard Google Hotel Ads campaigns + BoG's Room Booking Module?
The first thing is that nowadays activating RBM is a great opportunity, since it means an extra addition to your GHA configuration. By adding RBM to your GHA activity you can get more visibility, more clicks and therefore more bookings. Right now there is practically no competition in RBM and the OTAs are not participating, so now is the time to be the first and occupy that space at the lowest possible cost.
Book on Google is active in Spain, United States, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden, therefore, your Room Booking Module campaigns will also have visibility in these markets.
Ok, I want to activate it, what should I do, is there an extra cost, any limitation?
Activating it is very simple, you only have to contact your DCS and request the activation of Room Booking Module. In a few days you will have it ready. Both Book on Google and RBM have no extra cost since they are part of the integration you already have with Google Hotel Ads and you will only pay Google the cost of the clicks or commission you have already configured in your GHA campaigns.
You must take into account some limitations, such as when activating BoG (and therefore RBM), you will not be able to show rates of your Loyalty program since Google does not allow you to register in your program while browsing in its environment, but this should not be a block to activate RBM since in the standard Google Hotel Ads campaigns you will be able to show these prices. Book on Google does not support rates with POS as an associated payment method, but from Roiback we have worked on a solution that will allow you to send this type of rates (check with your DCS).
Don't wait any longer and contact your DCS to activate the Room Booking Module of Book on Google.
