Google Booking Links

Created by Alex Savchuk, Modified on Fri, Mar 15 at 6:51 PM by Alex Savchuk

Introduction

innRoad’s Google Booking Links integration allows properties to distribute their property’s rates, availability, and inventory directly to Google Maps and Google Search. Guests can click your property’s official site link and complete their booking on your booking engine. It is a great way to get more direct bookings without paying advertisement costs, or commission to OTAs.

How it works – guest experience

When guests are looking for hotel stays in Google Maps, Google Search or Google Hotels, your property will also appear in the search results.

Typically, a guest will see promoted rate options for your property, for example, prices from Booking.com or other OTA providers.
The Google Free Booking Link for your propertywill appear in the All options section with an “Official site” badge.

The Guest clicks the Google Booking Linkand lands directly on your innRoad powered Booking Engine to see rooms and rate plans for their selected stay criteria.
In this example, the guest selected 2 adults andstay dates of April 12 – April 15 which are passed to theBooking Engine to show the relevant rooms and rates.

The guest continues the normal booking process, and the referral field of the reservation is marked asGoogle Booking Links.

Pre-requisites to use Google Booking Links

There are a few requirements that you need to meet to use Google Booking Links and show your properties’ availability, rates, and inventory.

Property Type

Google provides free booking links for Hotel properties. This includesinns, hotels, bed and breakfasts, motels, resorts, farm stays and other types of Hotel properties.

Your property is eligible for Google Booking Links if:

The property has a front desk or on-site management
The property accepts overnight guests
The property and business address are listed publicly

Check the list of properties that Google considers Hotels here.

In other cases, your property would be considered a Vacation Rental, and not a Hotel.

Google Business Profile

Google Booking Links requires a Google Business Profile, which controls the way your property appears on Google Maps and Google Search. The information in your Google Business Profile is used to map your property on Google to your property in innRoad.

Your property might already have a Google Business Profile. Otherwise, create a new Google Business Profile here, or request ownership of your existing Google Business Profile.

Find more information about Google Business Profiles here.

Google Booking Links Setup

You will need to take a few easy steps to connect your booking engine to Google Booking Links:

Click Setup in the top navigation and then click Google Booking Links Setup

Step 1: Select a Booking Engine

Most properties only have 1 innRoad Booking Engine. If you only use a single Booking Engine, the system will pre-populate the booking engine for you and you can move on to the next step.

Multi Property clients

If you have multiple properties, you might have multiple booking engines as well. For example:

One booking engine showing all properties;
Then, a specific booking engine for each property in your portfolio.

Steps to select a booking engine:

Select the property you want to configure in the top right corner.
Go to Setup > Google Booking Links Setup.
Click the booking engine dropdown. You will only see booking engines that are linked to a specific property in the dropdown.
Choose the booking engine that matches the property you are currently configuring to use Google Booking Links:

Make sure you have selected the correct booking engine for your property or contact us at [email protected] for assistance.

Step 2: Complete property details

Provide information about your property so Google can match your innRoad property data to a Google Business Profile. Editable fields are highlighted in blue below:

Editable fields

The fields are pre-filled with data from your innRoad account.

Name	Description
Property Name on Google	Should be identical to your Google Business Profile name.
Website	Should be identical to the website in your Google Business Profile.
Email	Should be identical to the email in your Google Business Profile.
Phone number	Should be identical to the phone number listed in your Google Business Profile.

Non-editable fields

The fields below are pre-populated using information in your innRoad account. To edit those fields, go to Setup > Properties and change the details there.

Address
City
Country
State/Province
Postal Code
Latitude
Longitude

Optional information - Description

Optionally, add a description of your property. This description is only used to match your innRoad Booking Engine to a Google Business Profile and will not change information in your Google Business Profile.

Step 3: Saving information and publishing

You can click Save while filling out the details on this page to save your progress.

The details below are the most important to match your property information to a Google Business Profile.

Property name on Google
Website
Email
Phone number
Latitude
Longitude

Click Publish when the details on the setup page match your Google Business Profile.

Google will match data from your innRoad property to a Google Business Profile. This may take up to 2 business days.

Once the innRoad property and Google Business Profile match, your availability, rates, and inventory will appear on Google Maps and Google Search.

Congratulations, you have completed the required steps to start using Google Booking Links!

Timeframe for Google Booking Links data to go live

After you save your details and click Publish, innRoad will send data about your property to Google.

Matching property details to a Google Business Profile may take up to 2 business days, based on Google processing the details and comparing them to their records.

If Google finds a match in its records, your data will be shown in Google Maps and Google Search results.

Supported Room Classes and Rate Plans

The Rates and Room Classes sent to Google will closely match the rates and room classes shown on your Booking Engine.

This ensures the best user experience, because people will see the same price on Google Maps and Google Search as shown on the Booking Engine during the reservation process.

Supported rates

Rate Type	Description
Nightly rates with season-level restrictions	Nightly Rate Plan distributed to the innRoad Booking Engine. Season-level restrictions include: Minimum stay No check-in days No check-out days
Derived rates with season-level restrictions	Derived Rate Plan distributed to the innRoad Booking Engine. Season-level restrictions include: Minimum stay No check-in days No check-out days
Override rates	Override rates applied to the innRoad Booking Engine.

Unsupported rates

Some Rates are not currently supported. This may change in the future, as we develop further improvements to the Google Booking Links integration.

Rate Plan Type	Description
Rates with Rate Plan-level conditions	Length of Stay condition You can apply a Minimum Stay to a Season, but not as part of the Rate Plan. Booking window conditions: You can not apply advanced purchase rules to Rate Plans.
Interval Rate Plans	This rate plan type is not currently supported.
Rate Plans with a Promo Code	Goolge only supports publicly available rates. This means all Rate Plans that are only available via promo code are not publicly available.
Package Rate Plans	Google does not accept information about items included in a Package Rate Plan.

Connecting to Google Hotel Ads

You can connect your property data to Google Ads. Those work in a similar way for the guest booking a stay. After clicking a Google Ad link, the guest lands directly to your innRoad booking engine.

The difference between Google Ads and Google Free Booking Links is that Google Ads will show up in a different section of the interface, based on ranking.

Google Free Booking Links are free to use and are ranked based on user behavior. The offer that most people find attractive will appear first on the list.
Google Hotel Ads are paid and are ranked based on an ad auction. The highest bid for the ad placement will appear first in the list.

You can see the differences in Hotel Ad and Free Booking Link placement on the screenshot below:

If you have a Google Ads account, you can link your Google Booking Links and bid in the auction to get higher placement in Google search results.

Here is how you can connect Google Booking Links to Google Ads:

Sign in to your Google Ads account.
Click the tools icon in the upper right corner.
Under "Setup", click Linked accounts.
Under "From Google", find "Google Hotel Center", then click Details.
If you are linking Google Ads to a Hotel Center account for the first time, click Link. If you've linked a Hotel Center account previously, click the plus button to link a new account.
Enter 1529610680 as the innRoad Hotel Center Account and click Send.

The innRoad team will review your request and link the associated property from Google Hotel Center.

Note: Linking your Google Ads account to Google Hotel Center and Google Free Booking Links data may take up to 72 hours, as stated by Google.

Learn more about linking Hotel Ads on this support article from Google.

FAQs

Which rate will be shown on Google Maps or Google Search?

For Google Free Booking Links, guests will see the lowest available price for the dates, and number of adults or children available.

What happens if I apply a blackout to certain room classes or rates?

If you want to blackout rates and stop showing your availability on Google Booking Links, the easiest way is to blackout the relevant rooms and rate plans within innRoad.

If you apply the blackout to the innRoad Booking Engine source that is associated with Google Free Booking Links, this will make the rooms unavailable on Google Free Booking Links and Ads, too.

Can I use the Google Free Booking Links for multiple properties?

Yes.

You will need to follow the same steps for each property:

Make sure it is a Hotel property;
Check if that property has a Google Business Profile;
Log in to innRoad;
Select the other property in the property selector dropdown in the top right corner;
Click Setup in the top navigation;
Click Google Booking Links Setup;
Select a booking engine;
Fill out your property details;
Click Save and then Publish.

Google will then process this property’s data within 2-3 business days.

Do Policies I set up within innRoad show up in Google?

Currently, Policies are not yet supported. They will not show up on the rate shown on Google.

However, the Guest will still see the same policies that apply to the Booking Engine rates while making the reservation.

Are Fees added to the price shown on Google Maps or Google Search?

Yes, fees will be part of the price appearing on Google.

Are Taxes added to the price shown on Google Maps or Google Search?

Yes. Taxes that are set to apply to Room Charges will apply to the price sent to Google. This will include VAT, flat amount taxes per night, flat amount per person per night.

Tiered taxes are not currently supported.

Can I control which rates are sent to Google?

Currently, the integration will send data about the rates and room classes that are distributed to the selected booking engine.

However, it is possible to exclude certain rates from being sent to Google. You would need to contact the innRoad support team.

We will create a separate Booking Engine and send that Booking Engine’s data to Google. You can then source certain rates and room classes to that Booking Engine, and innRoad will send data accordingly.

This also means that Google will need to re-process your data, so this change may take up to 2 business days.

How can I stop using Google Free Booking Links?

Please reach out to the innRoad Support team and we will remove your availability, rates, and inventory data from Google as part of Google Free Booking Links.

Your Google Business Profile will not be affected.

How will Google use my data?

Google will use the data from this page to match your property to a Google Business Profile on Google Maps and Google Search.

All the data in Google Booking Links Setup is only used for matching purposes. This means the data sent to Google is compared to existing Google Business Profiles to find a Hotel property with identical or similar details.

This also means that data you provide to innRoad will not overwrite information in your Google Business Profile.

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