Learning About Hotel Metasearch Bid Modifiers

Discover how Metasearch bid modifiers and Metadesk can assist in tailoring your bid strategy to your hotel’s goals.

What are Hotel Metasearch Bid Modifiers and How Can They Support Your Hotel’s Goals

Hotel metasearch bid adjustments provide marketers the flexibility to target segments at a variety of levels. They allow us to use more complex bidding strategies for our properties to reach their requested goals.

What Are Bid Modifiers

Bid Modifiers in hotel metasearch allow us to adjust our default bid by a percentage at a variety of levels. Based on your goals, they enable us to increase or decrease what we are willing to bid on each click or transaction. This allows us to target your hotel’s specific revenue production needs, acquire more valuable traffic, and reduce focus on those segments that are not effective in driving revenue production.

Do All Hotel Metasearch Channels Use Bid Modifiers?

To a certain degree, all available hotel metasearch channels have bid modifier capabilities. The categories we can add bid modifiers to are the following: Device, Length of Stay, Checkin Day, Days to Arrival, & Date Type.

• Device - consist of Mobile, Desktop & Tablet
• Length Of Stay - ranges from 1 - 30 nights
• Checkin Day - refers to the day of the week Monday-Sunday
• Days to Arrival - start from 0 days - 6 days, then 7-14 days, 15-29 days, and 30+
• Date Type - refers to the default date or a user-selected date

Available bid modifiers can vary by hotel metasearch marketing channel. Google Hotel Ads provides the most robust list of bid modifier segment options while other channels like Kayak and Trivago are much more limited.

How Can Hotel Metasearch Bid Modifiers Help Assist In Reaching Your Hotel’s Goals? 

Every property has a business objective or KPI goal for their advertising. Return on ad spend and revenue production is the most common priority. However, hotel metasearch can assist in more ways than focusing on directly attributed revenue production and return on ad spend.

For example, there is a need period during select dates of the month. We can utilize our bid modifiers to assist their visibility for specific time periods such as how many days to arrival from the search date. We can also focus on the day of the week. If we want to focus on April 30 of this year, it falls on a Saturday; we can increase our bid for Saturday and six days prior with Days to Arrival, focusing on the farthest day out and increasing bids as we get closer to April 30. We will also reduce the default date and increase the user-selected date since we want to focus on those searching for April 30, not the default date provided by the channel, such as Google Hotel Ads. This may not necessarily lead to conversions, but like any awareness play, it will push the property's visibility during its need period.  

Another example is reducing their visibility during high occupancy. With Summer on its way, many resorts are starting to fill up during the summer months. Once more, we can decrease our 0-6 day, 7-14-, and 18-29-day bids adjustments during those months and increase the request for 30+ days.

Other property goals may include focusing on extended stays; we can place bids on the length of visits and focus on 3 to 4 nights or shorter if necessary.

Hotel metasearch is developing quickly and providing hotel marketers with more flexibility. Having properties with goals such as the above allows us to utilize more of the system and tailor the accounts to each one. Keep in mind not all channels offer multiple bid multipliers, and some will be restricted to the one or two bid multipliers offered, but Google Hotel Ads and Trip Advisor provide the most robust options.

If you are interested in hotel metasearch or know you are ready, please reach out to Metadesk, and we will be more than happy to assist in getting you started with hotel metasearch to support your direct booking goals and continue to reduce OTA contributions.