PMax for Travel Goals: Maximizing direct bookings with AI-powered ads

In the battle for direct bookings, hotels face intense competition from OTAs’ marketing power in the online space. In 2024, the four largest players—Expedia Group, Booking Holdings, Airbnb, and Trip.com Group—spent $17.8 billion on sales and marketing. 

Beyond their vast budgets, OTAs also leverage powerful algorithms to optimize every aspect of their campaigns, consistently achieving higher ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) than individual properties. This leaves hotels scrambling to keep up.

Fortunately, there’s a way to help level the playing field. Google’s Performance Max for Travel Goals offers an AI-powered solution that automates ad placement and spend, allowing hotels to compete with OTAs and drive more direct bookings.

PMax uses AI to continuously optimize keywords, ad copy, channels, audience segments, budget allocations, bid placements, and make more accurate predictions about what elements perform best. 

This specialized version of PMax includes several features designed for hotels:

• Hotels can optimize for either return on ad spend or target CPA (cost per acquisition)

• Google’s AI applies travel-specific audience hints based on hotel attributes—such as location, amenities, and star rating—as well as guest data

• The system supports campaigns for up to 100 properties, providing performance metrics at both the hotel and campaign levels

• Ads display real-time room rates and availability

• The system continuously optimizes ads, bids, promotions, and audience segments based on performance data and user signals

How PMax for Travel Goals works

Let’s look at how a campaign with PMax for Travel Goals would work for a fictional hotel in Charleston, SC. 

Setting up the campaign

The hotel’s marketing manager sets up a Performance Max campaign through their Google Ads account, beginning with the creation of a hotel properties feed. They chose to connect their Google Business profile, which already showcases their downtown location and 4.7-star rating. 

Alternative ways could be linking a Hotel Center account, using Google’s hotel picker tool, or uploading Google Maps URLs. With the feed established, the manager sets a target ROAS of 400% with a $40 daily budget and uploads these assets: 

• Images of their colonial-style façade and modern rooms with traditional decor

• A short video showcasing the hotel’s veranda with garden views

• Copy highlighting their southern hospitality and walking distance to historic sites

• Details on their current promotion, “Historic Charleston Package with Carriage Tour”

Targeting the right audience with AI

PMax’s AI analyzes Google user data to serve ads to high-converting potential guests, such as:

• YouTube viewers watching “Top 10 Charleston Attractions” videos

• Travelers comparing accommodations in Charleston’s historic district in Google Hotel results

• People searching for “winter getaways” from the United States.

Optimizing bidding and budget

When displaying ads across Google’s network, PMax dynamically adjusts bidding based on:

Demand signals

The system monitors current search patterns and user intent for the hotel. When it detects high-intent searches related to the property or the Southeastern region, it analyzes conversion signals to determine booking likelihood and automatically increases bids for valuable potential reservations. The system also responds to competitive pricing, adjusting bids when competitor rates change.

Availability

As rooms fill and availability becomes limited for specific dates—for example, during the Wine + Food Festival in March—PMax detects the change in inventory through the hotel’s booking system, automatically reducing spend on those dates while maintaining visibility for shoulder dates. If a group cancellation suddenly opens multiple rooms, PMax immediately shifts budget allocation to target last-minute planners searching for accommodations.

Demand forecasting

PMax adjusts bids based on demand forecasting by analyzing signals such as historical booking patterns (like Charleston’s wedding season spikes), market trends (increased interest in historic districts), typical lead times, and external events (graduation weekends, corporate retreats) to predict occupancy. This allows the hotel to proactively adjust its bidding strategy weeks in advance.

Optimizing ad placement across all Google channels

To achieve conversion goals across Google-owned platforms, PMax uses machine learning to test different ad combinations, suggesting compelling headlines and descriptions. 

In our example for the Charleston hotel, the system discovers that the images of their traditional decor rooms showing updated pricing perform best in the search engine, while the video showcasing the hotel’s veranda and garden generates longer view times and higher click-through rates on YouTube.

Tracking & auditing performance

PMax provides detailed property-level reporting showing campaign ROAS and the highest converting channel, allowing hotels to make manual adjustments. In our example, the performance reports show that:

• The highest converting channels are Search and Maps, driving 65% of bookings

• The search term “romantic getaway Charleston” has increased 30% month-over-month

• The campaign ROAS is 610%, with $7,350 in revenue from $1,200 spend

Based on that, the Charleston Hotel manager makes adjustments, including:

• Setting higher bid caps for weekend stays, which have better margins

• Pausing underperforming assets, such as exterior night shots

• Adding more photos of their newly renovated bathrooms, frequently praised in guest reviews

• Adjusting targeting to focus more on the Midwest market, which shows strong conversion rates

PMax: A gamechanger for hotel marketing 

While the highly automated nature of PMax means relinquishing some control over exactly where and when ads appear, the benefits make it an essential tool for hotel marketing and revenue management teams.

Performance Max for Travel Goals:

Supports full-funnel optimization

Performance Max campaigns create ads in multiple formats that are automatically served across Google channels, including Maps, Search, YouTube, and Hotel Ads, reaching potential guests at every stage of their journey.

Reduces OTA dependency

PMax helps properties build their direct booking channel strategy without requiring OTA-level budgets. Google reports that Corissia Hotels & Resort in Greece achieved a “32% increase in revenue and a 26% increase in total direct bookings” within just one month of implementation. This direct channel growth decreases commission costs and reduces reliance on third-party distribution. 

Aligns revenue and marketing

Powered by AI, Performance Max creates a dynamic connection between pricing, inventory, and marketing tactics. It uses real-time pricing information to showcase current rates while integrating demand forecasts, length-of-stay restrictions, and occupancy trends to optimize bidding. When high-value dates or room types need additional visibility, the system automatically redistributes budget to prioritize those opportunities.

Focuses on quality traffic

After Google ended commission-based metasearch models in 2024 (where hotels only pay Google when a traveler completes a booking through their Google Hotel ads), Performance Max emerged as a valid alternative for hotels. Rather than focusing on click-through rate, it aims to deliver personalized ads based on search behavior and engagement patterns to get clicks from high-intent travelers who are more likely to end up booking a room. 

Driving more direct bookings

By strategically leveraging PMax for Travel Goals, hotels can take the guesswork out of digital marketing by leveraging AI to automatically optimize ad placements and spend. This means reaching high-intent travelers across multiple touchpoints with minimal effort required from hotel advertisers.