“Google Analytics for hotel websites” is a topic that our readers have asked us to cover here on the trivago Business Blog. And we’re more than happy to oblige. Because we know just how powerful a tool Google Analytics can be for a hotel property. It provides must-have data for understanding how your property’s website is performing, as well as insights for improving and enhancing your hotel marketing with better targeting, optimized campaigns, and new activities.
But before we dive in, first things first. Set up a Google Analytics account for your hotel website right away, if you haven’t already. This Google Support page explains step by step how.
As soon as you have your Google Analytics account for your website ready to go, you can start improving your hotel marketing in the following easy ways:
1. Track the overall performance of your property’s website
It’s important that you have a solid understanding of your website’s performance, and that you’re monitoring this performance over time.
This will give you important information about how effective your hotel marketing is at bringing traffic to your site, which is crucial if you want to improve your marketing and track the results of your activities and campaigns.
It’ll also give you a good idea of how effective your site is at keeping travelers interested in your offerings, and how effective your overall booking journey is at converting potential guests into confirmed guests. Both equally important if your overall marketing strategy is to be a success.
There are three key metrics you’re going to want to look at:
Acquisition metrics — such as Sessions — measure how travelers arrive at your property’s website.
Behavior metrics — such as Bounce Rate — measure how travelers engage with your property’s website.
Conversion metrics — such as Goal Conversion Rate — measure how travelers complete an action on your property’s website.
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2. Understand who’s visiting your property’s website
In addition to tracking your website’s overall performance, you can also gain invaluable insights into your online audience in Google Analytics.
To find out where visitors to your hotel website are located:
- Click on “Audience” on the left
- Then click on “Overview” on the left
- On that page under the “Demographics” section, click on “Country”
This will show you where travelers interested in your property come from — and the markets where you may want to consider running marketing campaigns. This will also help you decide which languages to translate your website content into.
To find which age group visitors to your hotel website belong to:
- Click on “Audience” on the left
- Then click on “Demographics” on the left
- Finally, click on “Overview” on the left
This will show you the breakdown of your website visitors by age. Based on these insights, you’ll know, for example, how good you are at attracting millennials and if you need to work on reaching this lucrative and influential travel group with social media marketing and other tactics.
Extra tip: You can also find out who is visiting your property’s listing on trivago using Visitors’ Profile.
3. See which channels are bringing travelers to your property’s website
A powerful tool, Google Analytics can also be used to identify your main channels for attracting travelers to your property’s website. These may include Organic Search (from your SEO activities), Social (social media), Referral (direct links to your site), and Direct (when no tracking data is available).
To track your website’s traffic per channel:
- Click on “Acquisition” on the left
- Then click on “Overview” on the left
This will show you how effective your hotel marketing is across various digital channels, and which channels need more work.
For example, if your Organic traffic is low, you can consider developing a stronger SEO strategy for your property.
If you don’t see any Email traffic, or if there is some but you’d like to see more, you can think about running some hotel email marketing campaigns.
One way to improve your Referral traffic is by making sure your hotel website link is available on the most important online sites across the web. To have your official website link available on your trivago profile, post a Special Offer. Find out how to get it here.
And if you want to see more traffic from Social, boost your social media marketing with an active and engaging Facebook Business Page and, increasingly important, an attractive Instagram account.
Have a question about trivago’s products? Check out the FAQs on our Support Center.
Feature image credit: Lukas Blazek on Unsplash
