Worldwide: Google has announced a combined hotel and vacation rental search product at its Marketing Live online event last week, in a further acknowledgment of the blurring lines between the two lodging segments.
With the search engine revealing that searches for ‘beach rentals’ and ‘staycations’ had grown by more than 100 per cent globally over the last 12 months, vacation rentals and hotels may now be listed together in one comprehensive search result for a specific destination on Google’s Travel product.
Launched in March 2019, Google’s ‘vacation rentals’ filter will remain in place for users seeking to filter out results for hotels in search of other forms of short-term lodging. This was updated last summer when a specific ‘holiday rentals’ tab was added on the Travel product, allowing users to search directly for such listings.
A Google spokesperson said in an emailed statement: “We’ve seen growing and sustained interest in vacation rentals since the start of the pandemic and have evolved our product accordingly to meet those user preferences. This launch is the first time that we’re showing results that combine both hotels and vacation rentals when a user is looking for a place to stay.”
The option is seen as an ideal opportunity to create greater awareness for the vacation rental segment, in particular for property owners with individual listings or smaller portfolios, but at the same time it could add increased competition for hotel listings within the same search results page.
Google said its results are ranked based on the relevance to the searcher’s query and current known supply partners include the likes of TripAdvisor, Agoda, Sonder, Vacasa, Rentals United and RedAwning.
While TripAdvisor is participating in the vacation rental search, it is unclear if its online travel agency competitors such as Booking.com and Airbnb will do the same, although the latter already claims to show over six million ‘alternative accommodation’ listings.
Meanwhile, Vrbo listings previously appeared on the search engine until February this year when CEO Peter Kern pulled the company out, citing “lots of direct traffic”, a lack of “incremental investment” and a “not particularly valuable customer experience”.
To help advertisers and searchers adapt to the ‘new normal’, and support tourism and hospitality businesses in meeting the pend-up demand for travel, Google is also extending Hotel Ads feed data to appear within search text ads extensions globally over the coming weeks to make campaigns more relevant and helpful, and updating its pay per stay commissions program to help advertisers manage their cancellations more easily. The new features to commissions include a per-booking report in Google Ads to help advertisers with reconciliation, bid adjustment support for commission [per stay] campaigns, and credit card billing and additional currency support.
