A boutique hotel or hotel group should partner with a firm that grows direct bookings and shows where each one came from, inside accounts the hotel owns. That work starts with the search for your own name, tracks every booking on the booking engine's confirmation page, and keeps rooms, the restaurant and events on separate lines. We do this work for hotels and for the restaurants inside them.
Published November 12, 2026
Plenty of guests choose a hotel first and then search its name to book. Travel sites can bid on that name too. Google's trademark policy does not restrict anyone from using a trademark as a keyword, so a guest who already picked you can still click a travel site's ad and book there, and the hotel pays that site's commission.
An ad on your own name puts your website and your rate at the top of that search. Compare what those clicks cost with the commission on the same stay. Then report them on their own line. Those guests already knew the hotel, so their bookings say little about new demand, and they should never make the rest of the account look better than it is.
Two kinds of hotel search
Keep the first from flattering the second.
A booking becomes real on the confirmation page, and that page often belongs to a booking engine run by another company. Google's setup guide for hotel tracking says the booking engine has to carry the tag on every page of the booking flow, including the confirmation page. Find out early who can add it: your team, the booking engine's support desk, or both.
Send three things with each booking: its value, a confirmation number so it counts once, and the stay dates. Then check the totals against the booking engine's own report every month. Guests cancel and change dates after they click, and the booking engine sees that. The ad platform only saw the checkout.
| Room bookings | Completed bookings on the hotel's own site, with value and stay dates. Bookings from searches for the hotel's name get their own line. |
|---|---|
| Restaurant and bar | A reservation-link click and a completed reservation are different steps. Label the one you can actually track. |
| Weddings, meetings and events | Sent inquiries, qualified opportunities and booked events stay three numbers, apart from rooms and dinner. |
| Calls and directions | These show interest. They do not prove a stay or a meal. |
The hotel should own its Google Ads and Meta ad accounts, analytics, tag manager and Google Business Profiles. We work inside them with access you can remove. If you change partners, the booking history, audiences and tracking stay with you.
Then ask who controls your rates on Google. A connectivity partner, often the booking engine, sends your rates to Google. That feed is what lists the hotel in Google's free booking links, and hotel ads run on it. The feed connects through a Hotel Center account, and linking that account to a Google Ads account takes owner permission there. Whoever owns it decides who can run hotel ads and who sees the results.
Some booking engine companies also offer to run hotel ads for you, often paid as a commission on each booking. That can be a fair arrangement. Before you agree, know what you pay for each booking, what you can see, and what keeps running if the arrangement ends.
| Google Ads and Meta ad accounts | Owned by the hotel or the group. The partner is a user you can remove. |
|---|---|
| Analytics and tag manager | Owned by the hotel, so tracking survives a new partner or a new booking engine. |
| Google Business Profiles | One for each property, owned by the hotel or the group. |
| Hotel Center | Ask who owns it. Linking it to your Google Ads account needs an owner there and an admin in Google Ads. |
| Booking engine | Your contract. Ask who can place tags on the confirmation page, and ask for booking-level reports. |
A hotel group is several businesses under one name. A country inn that fills on weekends and a city hotel that sells weekdays need different budgets, different searches and different pages. Send a search for one property to that property's page, with its rates and a way to book, not to the group homepage.
Give each hotel its own budget line, its own booking tracking and its own report, then roll the group up. A strong property should not hide a quiet one. When the budget gets smaller, decide which property to protect first. Groups with hotels and restaurants in more than one city can read our guide for multi-city hospitality groups.
Most hotel restaurants need local diners, not only hotel guests. Those diners search the way they would for any restaurant, by cuisine, neighborhood or occasion. That is restaurant work: Search and Maps ads, an accurate Google Business Profile, and reservations tracked apart from room bookings. Our Google Ads guide for restaurants covers what to expect from that partner.
Weddings, meetings and private dinners are a third job. A planner with a date and a headcount needs an event page and an inquiry form that reach your events team, and the team needs to say which inquiries fit. Our private dining and buyouts guide walks through that inquiry path.
Three jobs inside one hotel
One building, three reports.
We work with boutique hotels and hotel groups, and with the restaurants inside them. Hotels and restaurant groups with six or more locations are our main focus, in any major U.S. city.
Nomada Hotel Group brings together boutique hotels and restaurants on California's Central Coast.
For a hotel, the work covers ads on the hotel's own name, Google Search, Maps and YouTube campaigns, Meta ads, booking tracking from the booking engine, and a report for each property. Founder Jarod Farchione sets the strategy and runs each account day to day. We do not build booking engines or set room rates. Scope and fees stay in a private conversation.
If you are still deciding between PR and performance marketing, start with hospitality PR vs performance marketing.
Usually, yes. Travel sites can bid on your hotel's name, so a guest who already chose you can still book through them, and you pay their commission. An ad on your name keeps your own site and rate at the top of that search. Report those bookings on their own line, because those guests already knew the hotel.
Tag the booking engine's confirmation page and send each booking's value, a confirmation number so it counts once, and the stay dates. Many hotels use a booking engine run by another company, so its support team may need to add the tag. Check the totals against the booking engine's own report every month, because guests cancel and change dates after they click.
The hotel or the group should. We work inside your Google Ads and Meta accounts, analytics, tag manager and Google Business Profiles with access you can remove. A new property is added to accounts you already own, so its history stays in one place. If you change partners, the booking history, audiences and tracking stay with you.
A connectivity partner, often the booking engine, sends your rates to Google. That feed lists the hotel in free booking links, and hotel ads run on it. The feed connects through a Hotel Center account, and linking that account to your Google Ads account takes owner permission there. Ask who the owner is before anyone talks about running hotel ads.
Yes, as long as the report keeps them apart. Room bookings, restaurant reservations and event inquiries come from different searches and are worth different amounts. We run the hotel and its restaurant with separate campaigns, budgets and tracking, so a busy dining room never hides a slow month for rooms, and a full hotel never hides an empty restaurant.
Boutique hotels and hotel groups, including hotels with their own restaurants and event spaces. Hotels and restaurant groups with six or more locations are our main focus, in any major U.S. city. The work happens inside your own accounts, and founder Jarod Farchione sets the strategy and runs each account day to day. Scope and fees are discussed privately.
Tell us about the hotels, the restaurants and where you need more direct bookings. We can talk through the work property by property and scope the engagement privately.
Published by Jay Street Media. This guide explains our approach and the work we fit. Examples describe decisions to consider, not client results or guarantees.