The launch of the Google Travel Insights platform is intended to help those in the travel industry by providing a single location to access important market data, industry insights, and relevant tools. In this article, you can learn more about the service and the numerous ways it can help travel companies improve business performance.

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What is Google Travel Insights?

Google Travel Insights is a section of the wider Google platform geared toward those operating within the travel and tourism industry. It offers up a variety of online tools, along with useful data and other information, allowing businesses, marketing professionals, and others to gain real insight into the state of play at any given time.

According to Google, the platform is intended to help businesses develop a deeper understanding of current levels of travel demand, see how this demand is evolving over time, pinpoint exactly where travel demand is coming from, and view key performance data and analytics from a single access point.

The Google Travel Insights platform launched in 2020, and its creation was partially motivated by a desire to help the industry recover from the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic and the resulting restrictions on travel.

Why is Google Travel Insights Useful for Travel Companies?

The launch of the Google Travel Insights platform was welcomed throughout the travel and hospitality industry, mainly because it provides businesses with access to important information and useful data.

By using the market insights provided through the service, companies can identify patterns in demand, see precisely where demand is growing and shrinking, and adjust their business strategies accordingly. For example, the insights can be invaluable in helping businesses to plan marketing strategies and annual budgets.

The potential knock-on effects include better allocation of resources and improved business performance.

The Three Components of Google Travel Insights

Google Travel Insights provides tools, data sets, and insights for those in the travel and tourism industry. These services are currently divided into three main components, which are as follows:

1. Destination Insights by Google Travel

As the name indicates, the Destination Insights by Google Travel component is focused on global destinations. On a basic level, this means different countries around the world. Yet, within each country, the service also offers a breakdown of the specific towns, cities, and locations travelers are most interested in visiting.

This component primarily offers useful data about current and historic levels of demand for traveling to particular destinations around the world, as well as information about where that demand is coming from. To provide this, Google looks at domestic and international travel and information on flights, hotel bookings, and searches.

As such, this component is useful for any travel company with connections to a particular destination. It also allows individuals and businesses to understand how demand for their local destinations compares to years gone by.

2. Hotel Insights by Google Travel

The Hotel Insights by Google Travel component focuses squarely on accommodation. It utilizes data gathered from hotel searches by Google’s users to provide hotels with important information.

In particular, hotel owners and marketing experts can learn more about the travelers who make searches indicating they are interested in a particular travel market. This allows hotels to optimize their marketing strategy and target spending and efforts at the travelers most likely to stay with them.

Hotel insights of this kind are predominantly going to appeal to hotel owners. That said, the information and tools provided may also be useful for those in other parts of the travel or hospitality industry.

3. Google Travel Analytics Center

Finally, unlike the previous two components, the Google Travel Analytics Center is only available to those registered as a Google commercial travel partner. This includes Enterprise partners and similar groups.

The main benefit the Analytics Center offers is the potential to import your data and combine your company information with Google’s unique insights. The service also provides a convenient means of exploring your performance across the various Google travel platforms.

As a result, it is a useful service for monitoring your marketing performance, understanding how that performance relates to wider industry trends, and then using it to make more strategic business decisions.

How to Incorporate Google Travel Insights in Marketing

It is important to use relevant data to assist marketing efforts within the hospitality and travel industries. Google Travel Insights allow you to achieve this by providing information about demand levels and where that demand is coming from. This data can then be combined with your own internal insights.

Once you have built a full picture of demand, you can use this information to plan your marketing efforts. For example, suppose your Google Travel Insights report indicates that you are generating much interest from one location. In that case, it makes sense to use this to inform the keywords you bid on, the regions you target, and the amount of your advertising budget you allocate to each location to maximize your marketing outcomes.

Google Travel Insights and TripAdvisor Plus

Google Travel Insights can help hospitality businesses quickly access market data, and this information can be used to plan marketing and distribution efforts. One of the best ways for hotels and similar businesses to boost online visibility is to participate in the TripAdvisor Plus program, aimed at high-value customers.

In the article “TripAdvisor Plus: What Are the Advantages for Hotels?” you can learn about the service, explore benefits for customers and hotels alike, and better understand why you should consider signing up.

Google Hotels: Gain Visibility and Attract More Bookings

The Google Travel Insights offering is not the only Google service that can benefit those in the travel industry. Another good example comes in the form of Google Hotels; a service fully integrated with Google’s core search engine, along with Google Maps, Google Assistant, and more.

Read “Google Hotels: Tips on How Hoteliers Can Grow Bookings With Google” for more information about how Google Hotels works and what it can offer hotel owners. Beyond this, you will also find some useful tips on using Google Hotels to increase room demand and bring in more revenue.

Travel Marketing Tips to Improve Your Results

Businesses in the travel industry can live and die based on their marketing. While Google Travel Insights is a valuable tool, you should be aware of several additional travel marketing tips and practices. These can include everything from focusing on personalization to using the latest technology.

Check out “The Latest Travel Marketing Tips to Optimise Your Results” for a complete overview of travel marketing and its importance, along with 11 specific tips that can help to enhance your strategy and improve business outcomes.

The Key Travel Trends You Need to Be Aware Of

The Google Travel Insights platform is ideal for keeping up with the latest data trends, but there are also some more general travel trends you need to be aware of. Examples include the rise of ‘bleisure‘ (business and leisure) travel, the growth of eco-friendly travel, and the growing use of virtual reality (VR) technology.

Read our “Travel Trends: 12 Opportunities for the Travel Industry” article to learn more about these trends. Along the way, you will also discover how some of these trends can benefit travel industry professionals.

List of Distribution Channels to Sell Your Travel Inventory

Being aware of trends and demand through Google Travel Insights can be hugely beneficial for businesses in the travel industry. Still, it is equally important to know how to sell your inventory. In particular, online travel agencies (OTAs) and hotel metasearch engines can play a vital role, and most companies should aim to maximize direct bookings too.

Our article, “List of Travel Agencies for Travel Companies to Increase Bookings“, offers a detailed list of the various OTAs and hotel metasearch engines available, broken down according to the travel sector they focus on.

A Complete Overview of the Travel Industry

The travel industry is one of the world’s largest and most diverse service industries, catering to billions of customers annually. The industry includes businesses and other organizations linked to accommodation, transportation, food and beverages, entertainment, tourist information, and more.

Read “Travel Industry: An Overview of One of the Largest Service Industries” if you would like to learn more about precisely what the travel industry is, how it is defined, the distinction between the travel and tourism industries, and the various different sectors and business types that exist.

Google Travel Insights forms part of the wider Google offering and is intended to be used by those involved in areas like travel, tourism, and hospitality. It provides businesses, marketers, and Google partners with valuable insights into the current demand for travel, allowing trends to be identified and more strategic decisions to be made.

More Tips to Grow Your Business

Revfine.com is a knowledge platform for the hospitality & travel industry. Professionals use our insights, strategies and actionable tips to get inspired, optimise revenue, innovate processes and improve customer experience. You can find all hotel & hospitality tips in the categories Revenue Management, Marketing & Distribution, Hotel Operations, Staffing & Career, Technology and Software.

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This article is written by:

Martijn Barten

Hi, I am Martijn Barten, founder of Revfine.com. With 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry, I specialize in optimizing revenue by combining revenue management with marketing strategies. I have successfully developed, implemented, and managed revenue management and marketing strategies for individual properties and multi-property portfolios.