Hotel Marketing Podcast: Episode 187 – Are You Missing The Boat With These 7 Data Points?
Critical Analytics From Your Hotel’s Booking Engine Custom Data:
You should be tracking some critical data that comes from what website visitors are searching AND what they are booking. If your booking engine doesn’t make this possible, it’s time for a new booking engine. We’ll talk more about best practices for data capture of these items in a bit.
1 – Searched Arrival Date
2 – Booked Arrival Date
3 – Searched Booking Window
4 – Confirmed Booking Window
5 – Length of Stay
Other Options:
Depending on exactly how you are using this data, and how important it is, you can also look at things like day of arrival or departure (what day of the week), number of adults, number of children, etc.
How to Collect the Custom Data:
In order to collect the custom data on bookings, the best method in Google Analytics is to use custom dimensions. You would use one dimension for each item you want to report on.
CAUTION: The free version of Google Analytics has just 20 custom dimensions available. You should very carefully plan exactly what information is critical to track here.
Once you have your custom dimensions set up, you’ll need to build custom reports in Google Analytics to see the data within the interface. For booking data, you will choose Transactions, Revenue, and possibly Quantity, as your metrics.
Search data collection method can be more your personal preference. This information can either be stored in a Google Analytics event, or in a custom dimension, as we did with the booking data. Depending on how many custom dimensions you used for the booking data (and any other information you are already collecting there), may dictate whether you use events or the dimensions. One advantage of using events is that you don’t need to build a custom report to see the data…it’s already there in the events report. However, in terms of implementation, if you are tracking several different dimensions, you’ll need a separate event tag for each one of them vs. firing one tag with all of your custom dimensions.
Critical Analytics From Your Hotel’s Standard Data:
6 – Landing Pages
Why are landing pages important to look at regularly? You may find some nuggets of information you weren’t aware of before, or that have changed due to consumer behavior. For example, we have been seeing on a very regular basis in the last few months, that pages like hotel policies, FAQs, or COVID-specific information are seeing more entries from natural search than before…AND they are converting. You’ll want to keep an eye on lower level pages to catch any change in behavior, and make sure your user experience, and content is optimal for those pages that might suddenly be getting attention.
7 – Location by City
Because various feeder markets are in a constant state of flux in terms of quarantine status, it is important to keep an eye on both who is looking at the site, and who is actually booking. This can help you spend your targeted marketing dollars in the most effective way.
Possible Reporting Techniques:
- Export the data from Google Analytics to a spreadsheet
- Set up an automated email in Google Analytics
- Build a spreadsheet template, and copy/paste data into it
- Use a data aggregation tool like Supermetrics in a spreadsheet
- Build a report in Google DataStudio
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In The Newsaroos:
Hilton Reports Significant Increase in Bookings & Occupancy
https://www.costar.com/article/1813575645/hilton-reports-%E2%80%98significant-lift%E2%80%99-in-forward-bookings-and-occupancy
Surprise, Surprise.. Microsoft Ads Copies Google Yet Again. Rolling BMM into Phrase Match
https://searchengineland.com/microsoft-advertising-to-treat-phrase-match-the-same-way-google-ads-does-348411
We covered this in depth in Episode 177 when Google announced it back in February (minute mark 10:00 – 20:10)
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Stat Of The Week:
- No stats this week, check back for more in episode 188
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Submit your questions and topic ideas on Twitter to @_travelboom or info@travelboommarketing.com.
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