Hotel PPC Agency

Hotel PPC (pay-per-click) is paid advertising that places your hotel at the top of search results when potential guests are actively searching. You pay each time someone clicks your ad. For hotels, the most important platforms are Google Search (including brand protection campaigns), Google Hotel Ads (metasearch price comparisons), Performance Max, and paid social. Done well, hotel PPC campaigns deliver direct bookings at a channel cost well below OTA commission rates – typically 5–12% versus 15–25% for most OTAs.

Brand jacking is when OTAs bid on your hotel’s name in Google Ads – so when a guest searches for your property, Booking.com or Expedia appears above your own website. It’s one of the most expensive forms of OTA dependency because it captures guests who had already chosen you. Brand protection PPC campaigns bid on your own hotel name to ensure your website appears first, cutting OTAs out of the transaction. It’s one of the fastest-payback PPC investments a hotel can make.

Google Search Ads appear at the top of standard search results – when someone searches “luxury hotel Edinburgh” or your hotel name. Google Hotel Ads (metasearch) appear in a separate booking panel that shows rates from multiple sources side by side, including OTAs and your direct website. They serve different functions: Search Ads capture intent broadly, Hotel Ads capture price comparison intent at the point of booking decision. A complete hotel Google Ads strategy addresses both.

It depends on your OTA exposure, your average daily rate, your direct booking ambition, and your market. The useful benchmark is channel cost: what percentage of revenue are you paying per booking? OTAs typically charge 15–25%. A well-run hotel PPC campaign should deliver direct bookings at 5–12% channel cost. The right budget is whatever generates bookings at a channel cost below your OTA rate – which for most hotels with meaningful OTA spend is a straightforward business case. We’ll model this for your property in your free proposal.

Unlike SEO, PPC can generate bookings within days of launch. Brand protection campaigns are typically the fastest – within the first week you’ll see OTA interception reduce and direct traffic increase for your branded searches. Prospecting campaigns take a few weeks to accumulate enough data for Google’s algorithms to optimise effectively. Most hotel clients see a clear ROAS picture within the first 4–6 weeks, with campaigns becoming increasingly efficient from month three onwards as the data compounds.

Yes – they require different setup, different bidding strategies (typically commission-based or target ROAS), and different tracking. We manage both and build a unified hotel paid media strategy where each campaign type plays its appropriate role rather than cannibalising budget from the other.

Yes – and it’s one of the strongest reasons to use north9 rather than a standalone PPC agency. Paid and organic channels inform each other: high-performing paid keywords signal organic content opportunities, organic rankings reduce branded CPC, and PR coverage improves Quality Scores. We manage hotel SEO, PR, and link building alongside PPC – so the channels are built as a system rather than run independently. See our full hotel marketing services →

Monthly reports covering: spend breakdown by campaign type, cost per click, conversion rate, cost per booking, ROAS, direct booking revenue attributed to PPC, and a channel cost comparison against your OTA commission rates. We also track impression share (how often your ads appear vs. how often they’re eligible), Quality Scores, and competitor activity where relevant. All of this is delivered in plain language.