Google Analytics 4

Created by Alex Savchuk, Modified on Fri, Mar 15 at 6:50 PM by Alex Savchuk

Google Analytics provides vital insights into how visitors discover and interact with your booking engine. You can monitor your site’s performance and understand your property's guest profile.

Google Analytics can measure:

Number of booking engine visitors;
Booking Engine visitor locations;
Desktop visitors compared to mobile visitors;
Pages where visitors drop off;
Marketing campaign performance;

This guide will show you how to set up your account on Google, connect it to your innRoad Booking Engine, and understand your booking engine’s traffic.

Installing Google Analytics

Create a free Google Analytics account. If you have a Google account that you use for other services like Gmail, Google Drive or YouTube, you can use that account to set up your Analytics account.

If a web developer or designer manages your website, it is critical that you create your own Google Analytics account. Otherwise, if you stop working with this developer or designer, you will lose all your Google Analytics data.

How to create a Google Analytics account:

Log in to your Google account.
Then, sign up for Google Analytics on this page.

Provide information about your booking engine.
If you run other websites, set them up as separate properties within your Google Analytics account.

Click Next and Create to continue.

How to get a Measurement ID

Create a Google Analytics 4 property using the steps below:

Click Admin in the bottom left corner.
Click Create Property in the Property column:
Enter your property name, select your Reporting time zone and currency, and click Next.
Click Continue.

You now have a Google Analytics 4 property.

How to get a Measurement ID

Create a Web Data Stream to get a Measurement ID and start tracking data in Google Analytics 4.

Enter a URL and add a Stream name:

To track your website and booking engine using the same Measurement ID, set up cross-domain tracking.

If you want to measure the Booking Engine performance separately, add your Booking Engine as a new property.

Connect Your innRoad Booking Engine

Connect Google Analytics to your innRoad Booking Engine:

Log in to your innRoad account
Click Setup in the top navigation
Click Properties
Click the Property you want to edit
Click the Options tab
Scroll down to the Booking Engine section and click Configure Booking Engine
Click the Options tab
You will see Google Analytics Measurement ID on the right-hand side.
Enter Google Analytics 4 (G-XXXXXXX) into the GA4 field;
Click Save.

Your Google Analytics account will begin gathering data in real-time when users visit your Booking Engine.

In Google Analytics 4, you can see real-time data in the Reports tab:

Understanding Your Data

Acquisition Reports

Acquisition Reports show how visitors find your site. You can use this to understand how marketing channels perform and see which sources send you the highest quality traffic.

Some common mediums in Acquisition reports are:

Name	Description
Referrals	Visitors from another website online. Most of the traffic to your booking engine will be a referral from your corporate website unless you have cross-domain tracking setup.
Organic	Visitors from a Google search.
Cost-per-click (CPC)	Visitors from paid ad campaigns like Google Ads
Email	Visitors from an email marketing campaign
None or Direct	Visitors who typed your URL directly

Unless you have Google Analytics set up for your corporate website, this data will only show how visitors reach your booking engine. Then, most of your booking engine traffic will appear as Referral as well:

You can see the guest journey from your corporate site to your booking engine continuously if you use cross-domain tracking.

You can also see your user's Lifetime Value, which is a strong indicator of your booking engine performance.

Engagement Reports

You can see a breakdown of Behavior data in Engagement Reports.

Here is a quick overview of Engagement reports in GA4:

Name	Description
Engagement Overview	High-level summary of how users interact with your site over time.
Events	Drill down into user-generated events.
Conversion	Data about events marked as conversions. You can see every purchase here as GA4 considers completing the reservation a conversion.
Pages and Screens	Replacement for All Pages report in Universal Analytics. You can see how frequently visitors view each page on your site.
Landing page	Shows the effectiveness of the first page that website visitors land on.

Retention Reports

The Retention reports help you understand how frequently and for how long users engage with your website and booking engine their first visit. This helps you understand how valuable visitors are based on the additional revenue you generate after their first visit.

Demographic Reports

Demographic Reports help you understand your website visitor profile. You can see the following information about website visitors:

Age
Gender
Location
Browser language

Here is an overview of how Demographic reports work:

Name	Description
Active Users	Number of people who had at least one session on your site in the last day, 7 days, 14 days, and 30 days.
Users by Country or City	Detailed analysis of where your site’s visitors are located, broken down into countries or cities.
Users by Gender	Breaks down your user groups based on gender.
Users by Age	Breakdown of website visitors by age.
Users by Language	Website visitor browser language settings.
Demographics and Interests	Broad demographic data about the visitors coming to your site. These reports are inactive by default.

Activate Demographics and Interests

Activate Google signals to enable Demographics and Interests reports. You can find more information about Google signals here, and steps to activate Google signals here.

When you first enable the feature, it may take a few days before data begins to appear.

Tech reports

Tech reports show information about the technology your website visitors use:

Operating Systems
Devices
Browsers
Screen resolution

Monetization reports

Reports in this category show you revenue that your Booking Engine and website generate.

Event Tracking

You can measure pre-determined User Events in Google Analytics 4. Click Reports and click Real-time or Engagement sections.

Both Universal Analytics and Google Analytics 4 measure the events below out of the box:

User clicks"Search for Rooms" on search page
User clicks"View More Info" on room results page
User clicks "search for rooms" on room results page
User clicks"Back to rooms" on room details page
User clicks"book room" on room details page"
User clicks"Search for rooms" on room details page
User clicks"No Thanks" on Extras pop-up
User closes the Extras pop-up
User adds an Extra
User removes an Extra
User clicks “Book Stay” on the checkout page
User’s Reservation is successful
User sees Credit Card error message
User enters Promo Code
User enters value for Number of adults
User enters value for Number of children
User selects check in Date
User selects check out date
User changes language to English
User changes language to Spanish
User clicks $/Night button on room results
User clicks View policies on room details

Monitoring Growth with Ecommerce Tracking

You can measure the purchase activity and revenue from your Booking Engine.

You can run reports that show:

Product and transaction information
Average booking value
Conversion rate
Other valuable e-commerce data

How to start using Ecommerce Tracking

In Google Analytics 4, Ecommerce tracking is active by default. You will see reservations as purchases, and any Products you set up in innRoad as Add-to-Carts:

This can help you understand what Products are in higher demand on your Booking Engine.

Cross-Domain Measurement

Cross-domain measurement allows you to see traffic from your corporate website to the booking engine as a single session. On top of that, cross-domain measurement ensures continuity of the user’s experience from your corporate website to the booking engine.

Benefit 1: Session count accuracy

A guest that visits your website and then opens the booking engine is considered 1 session, and not multiple distinct users. This prevents double counting sessions, which would negatively impact your conversion rate.

Without cross-domain tracking:

Website visitor (User X, Session 1) opens booking engine (User X, Session 2).
If UserX makes a booking, your conversion rate is 50% (2 sessions / 1 conversion)

With cross-domain tracking:

Website visitor (User X, Session 1) opens Booking Engine (User X, Session 1)
If User X makes a booking, your conversion rate is 100% (1 session / 1 conversion)

Benefit 2: Source continuity

When guests land on your corporate website from a source like email marketing or Facebook campaigns, then open the booking engine, the same source is used.

For example, your guest clicked a Facebook ad, scrolled through your website then landed on the booking engine. If cross-domain measurement isn't enabled, Google Analytics considers the session source as your website:

Facebook (source for corporate website)
- Corporate website (source for booking engine, session 1)
  - Booking Engine (session 2)

If you enable cross-domain measurement, the original source is stored. Thus, you would still see Facebook as the booking source:

Facebook (source) > Corporate website (session 1) > Booking engine (session 1)

How to set up cross-domain measurement

In Google Analytics 4, the process is simple. You only need to change settings in your Google Analytics property.

Step 1: Use the same GA4 ID on your website and innRoad Booking Engine

To activate cross-domain tracking, your website and innRoad Booking Engine must use the same Measurement ID.

If your website uses G-XXXXXXX, then the innRoad Booking Engine must also use G-XXXXXXX.

Find your Measurement ID in Google Analytics 4.
Check the ID used on your Booking Engine.

Make sure your website and your innRoad Booking Engine use the same Measurement ID.

Step 2: Configure cross-domain tracking

Change the settings of the Google Analytics 4 Web Data Stream used on your Booking Engine:

Open your Google Analytics account.
Click Admin.
Click Data Streams in the Property column.
Click the Web Data Stream used on your website and the innRoad booking engine.
Click Configure tag settings (at the bottom).
Click Configure your domains.
Add your website domain.
Add your booking engine domain.

For example:
1. your website is oceanvillas.com
2. your innRoad booking engine is oceanvillas.client.innroad.com
Add both as separate conditions.
Click Save.