Metasearch Basics

What is hotel metasearch engine? A metasearch engine acts as an aggregator, compiling data from other engines to produce its own list of results. Metasearch engines make it easy for a user to find the information they need, organizing data into a digestible and easily comparable list.

For hotels, this means that a potential customer can quickly and clearly find rates, to book with the confidence of getting the best deal. Hotel metasearch engines therefore reduce the frustration and confusion that can come with searching multiple travel platforms, but they can cause issues for your hotel without proper attention. 

Hotel metasearch engines aggregate data such as inventory, rates, and availability from your hotel’s official website booking engine/CRS, but this information is also sourced from online travel agencies (OTAs), posing a risk to your business. A booking placed through an OTA does help your hotel, but reservations made directly through an official website are far more beneficial for your bottom line. And because hotel metasearch engines display OTA rates alongside your own, it’s all too easy to lose out on direct bookings without a dedicated hotel metasearch strategy. 

Making hotel metasearch work for you

To get the most out of hotel metasearch, you need to connect with an engine such as Google Hotel Ads, Tripadvisor, or Kayak. This allows your hotel to display and monitor official rates in the engine’s compiled results, which is vital to driving direct bookings. Your guests can’t book directly if there’s no direct listing available!

However, the benefits don’t stop there. Aside from real-time pricing and availability, perhaps the most helpful feature of many hotel metasearch campaigns is the ability to make bid adjustments. Tailoring audience bids based on performance allows you to optimize your hotel’s search appearance, using your budget more efficiently to reach a highly qualified audience of likely customers.

If you’re still not convinced, hotel metasearch campaigns also open up a world of reporting and marketing insights that would otherwise be unavailable. These platforms offer easy monitoring of OTAs to ensure rate parity and accuracy, data on search impressions and clicks that would otherwise be impossible to track, and detailed conversion data to help you nail down your most profitable audiences. 

Getting started with hotel metasearch

To connect with a hotel metasearch engine, you’ll need to work with a hotel metasearch partner. Many central reservation systems and booking engines provide metasearch features, but their benefits often stop at feeding rates to a hotel metasearch engine. Using these programs is better than nothing, but they don’t offer every tool you need for a truly great hotel metasearch campaign. 

Instead, we recommend working with a partner that offers more comprehensive campaign management features. These partners provide options for fine-tuned bid adjustments, better location targeting, and more in-depth reporting, providing a more well-rounded approach to optimize your hotel’s metasearch presence and capture direct bookings. 

OTAs are already using hotel metasearch campaigns, and it’s working for them. If you’re not harnessing the power of hotel metasearch, you’re already behind, and it’s important to start now. 

If you’re interested in learning more about hotel metasearch or ready to partner, check out Metadesk.