Expedia Travel Ads was released earlier this year as an alternative to search engine pay per click advertising. It allows lodging establishments the option to bid for placement when searching for hotels on expedia.com and hotels.com. When i was introduced to the idea, I didn't care to bother with it much because Google, Yahoo and MSN seemed to have a tight grasp on the Pay Per Click market. It seemed redundant to spend money on more pay per click advertising when the brand does that for you. After speaking with a marketing representative from Expedia, they highly recommened participating in Travel Ads. Currently, there were no other properties in the market so the bidding would be minimum (10 cents per click).
I decided to call another property in a nearby marketing and see how they were doing with Travel Ads. To my suprise, the General Manager said it was the best ROI he has ever had. Shortly after the conversation, we created our travel ad and immediately saw results. Our return was over 500% for the first week. However, this did not last for long once the other properties caught on. Unfortuneately, this happens in most markets, but remember that Travel Ads works on a bidding model and you can always out-bid your competitor for the top spot. Travel Ads only allows 2 featured listings for each market.
If you notice there are no featured listings in your market, i would highly advise taking part in this program. go to http://www.expedia.com/travelads for more info. Prepare to see immediate results!
Hospitality marketing professional.
