Every day, millions of travelers visit TripAdvisor looking for a place to stay. There are currently 1.4 million hotels, B&Bs, and specialty lodging on TripAdvisor, and hotels can take full advantage of the site and get premium exposure TripAdvisor offers through its Sponsored Placements solution – but how does that really work and what benefits are you going to receive? Hotelintel.co has some of the answers for you.
How it works
A Sponsored Placement is specifically designed to target high-intent travelers on TripAdvisor who are looking for the kind of accommodation that you offer. That is, if you pay for a Sponsored Placement, the hotel will be promoted via targeted ads aimed at travelers who are interested in properties like yours – those who are actively searching for places to stay in your location, seeking the facilities you can offer, and on dates when you have availability. Payment for the service is click-based, so you only pay if the traveler clicks on your ad.
Targeted ads are able to drive high-quality traffic and exposure for your business by appearing in prime positions above TripAdvisor search results\and on other high-profile shopping pages across all devices. Ads can also appear in various search results pages including those sorted as Traveler Ranked, Best Value, and Distance. They also appear on other TripAdvisor results pages that are optimized for search engine traffic.
What you get
According to Visarut Tantitaweewatana, Assistant Group Marketing Director of the Katathani Collection in Thailand, comprising eight hotels with a total of 1,716 rooms in a highly competitive market, the need to stimulate direct hotel bookings for all their properties led them to TripAdvisor’s Sponsored Placements.
“A lot of international and local chain hotels have started to operate in Thailand’s key cities in these last two years, and a huge pipeline of brand hotels is already defined,” said Visarut.
“TripAdvisor has enabled Katathani properties to build awareness over hotel chains which have a bigger advertising, marketing, and sales budget. Customers sharing their real, first-hand experience of their stay is the strongest advertising tool,” he added.
The numbers over the past year bear out the effectiveness of the strategy, with Katathani’s year-on-year bookings up by 30%, revenues up 30%, and a 100% increase in exposure and impressions. Katathani also saw a 12% increase in the amount of time potential customers spent on their own website.
“This solution is cost effective, achieves ROI, helps create the customer journey from planning stage through the evaluation stage and to the booking stage all in one place, so that’s what drew us to TripAdvisor Sponsored Placements,” Visarut elaborated.
Visarut certainly isn’t wrong. The latest TripAdvisor Power of Reviews study reveals that 49% of travelers say TripAdvisor has inspired them to visit a destination they had not previously considered, so taking out a sponsored placement driven by such a powerful and influential travel resource makes perfect senseLearn more about a Sponsored Placement