Google is adding vacation rental listings to its Google Hotel platform, with both vacation rental and hotel options set to appear alongside each other in search results for a given destination.
The change comes as the tech giant reports increased interest in smaller, local destinations and vacation rentals throughout the pandemic, with searches for accommodations like “beach rentals” up over 100% globally since last year.
Google has concurrently made several other hotel-related updates, including the ability to pull Hotel Ads feed data into an advertiser's existing search campaigns. Over the next few weeks, searchers will start to see hotel information like landing page, price and availability, in search text ads, which Google said will make search campaigns "more relevant and helpful.
Lastly, the company has made additional improvements to its commissions (per stay) bidding strategy, which was updated last year to allow lodging partners to pay only when a guest stay has actually occurred, removing any risk of cancellation.
Among the new commissions ("per stay")-related changes is the launch of a "per-booking report," which Google said can help advertising partners easily review bookings and report which were canceled as well as stay updated on their post-cancellation performance metrics.