Recently, several clients have brought us a flashy brochure from an advertising agency, raving about display advertising campaigns on TripAdvisor. Display advertising involves placing a banner for your hotel on TripAdvisor, allowing visitors to click through to your website. The pitch? Hundreds of millions of visitors monthly and the promise that, for just €350 per month, your banner will be displayed at least 3,000 times in a “visibility campaign.”
Sounds like a great deal, right? Or… is it?
What does it actually mean to have 3,000 views on a banner? Recent research shows that the average Click-Through Rate (CTR) for display banners is currently about 0.14% in the Netherlands (source). This means that 3,000 views × 0.14% would result, on average, in just 4.2 visitors to your website. What??? €350 a month for 4 visitors?
Yes, and it gets even worse. The average conversion rate (number of people who make a booking) is around 2.2% (source). This means you would need about 45 visitors to make a single booking. So, with 3,000 banner views per month, your return after a year would be just 1.1 bookings, with an average booking value of €450 (source).
This means that a yearly investment of €4,200 in a display campaign would yield an alarmingly low return of only €450. That’s probably why they call it a “visibility campaign”, meaning your hotel is being viewed, but not being booked!
How Does This Compare with Guest & Co’s Meta Campaigns?
With Guest & Co, you can advertise on a no-cure/no-pay basis on platforms like TripAdvisor. Your hotel is displayed with your direct price and a link to your booking engine in the price comparison section of your hotel listing.
You only pay a 12% commission for stayed bookings, plus a monthly campaign management fee. Let’s compare: taking that same monthly advertising budget of €350 and allocating it to Guest & Co Meta campaigns would look like this:
- €350 – €69 (campaign management) = €281
- €281 ÷ 12% (commission fee) = €2,342 in bookings monthly, or €28,100 in turnover annually.
Conclusion: The Meta campaigns of Guest & Co deliver 6,000% better results from the same budget compared to a display advertising campaign.
Disclaimer: The example provided assumes the hotel receives sufficient bookings to fully utilize the €350 monthly budget. If the number of bookings is lower, the actual budget spent will also be lower due to the commission-based model. This ensures you only pay for the bookings you receive.
Check out here how a Meta campaign looks online, showcasing our wonderful client Landgoed Lauswolt.