Set up Vacation Rentals in Google Ads

When users search for Vacation Rentals on Google Search or Maps, they'll be presented with a list of rental options that best fit their itinerary and needs. Partners set up their Hotel Center account to pass their Vacation Rentals data to Google, but the Hotel Center account should be connected to a basic Google Ads account (with a hotels campaign in it) in order to show properties to users, and track user traffic to their website. Learn more about how to integrate with Vacation Rentals

Before you begin

• Although you will not be charged for bidding on Vacation Rentals campaigns, you're still required to set up a Google Ads account with your billing information, which will be linked to your Hotel Center account. This will enable performance reporting for your campaigns.
• User targeting is not supported. Vacation Rentals campaigns will have only the most basic settings.
• All properties in your current listing feed will be eligible for serving in Google Ads after you link your Google Ads account to the existing Hotel Center account.

Instructions

To set up Vacation Rentals campaigns in Google Ads:

1. Create a new Google Ads account for Vacation Rentals under your Google Ads manager account.
   • You can either use a current manager account or create a separate manager account for Vacation Rentals, but you have to create a new Google Ads account for your Vacation Rentals campaign.
   • It's recommended to give a unique name to the new Google Ads account (for example, “VR-PartnerName”) to separate it from your other Hotel Ads account(s) or regular search ads account(s).
2. Set up your billing information within the new Google Ads account. Learn more about setting up your billing information
3. Link the new Google Ads account to your Hotel Center account under Account Settings. (Only one account should be linked.)
4. In your new Google Ads account, navigate to “Campaigns”.
5. On the "Campaigns" page, click the plus icon to create a new campaign, and set up Manual CPC bidding in Google Ads. Learn more about creating a hotel campaign
   • Set “Budget” to $1000/day.
   • Set the “Location” to “All countries and territories”.
6. Create one Ad Group of type "Hotels - Booking Link".
   • Set “Max. CPC” to $0.10.
     • Make sure the CPC is not set as a %.
     • These settings are for fraud detection purposes only. You will not be charged.

7. Set the “Hotel Group” to "All hotels".

Tip: To exclude hotels from serving, either remove them from your listing feed or set a price of $-1 for those itineraries. There's no need to change the campaign in Google Ads.

When setup is complete, your Vacation Rentals campaign should look like this:

Note: This is a placeholder campaign that will only be used for activating your Hotel Center account, serving Vacation Rentals to users, and gathering related data such as clicks and impressions. Other campaign and bidding settings will not be used for serving Vacation Rentals to users. Don't create any additional campaigns or change any other settings in the campaign.

Now that you've set up your Vacation Rentals campaign in Google Ads, you can take advantage of the Google Ads data/graphs/API for performance reporting and data analysis. View our Google Ads API for hotels for more details.

Related links

• About Vacation Rentals
• Integrate with Vacation Rentals
• Google Ads API for Hotel Ads