Setting Up Your First Google Ads Campaign as a Hotel: Step by Step

You can set up your first Google Ads campaign for your accommodation in half a day, without an agency, and with a budget starting from $5 a day. You just need to know which buttons to press in which order.

The Problem

Say you have 6 rooms in Friesland and now get 72 percent of bookings via Booking.com. Someone searches Google for 'bed and breakfast Friesland'. What does that person see at the top? Booking.com, Bedandbreakfast.nl, and a few larger chains advertising for that search term. Your own website is somewhere on page two, or nowhere.

Google Ads is the fastest way to appear at the top for exactly those searches. You pay per click, so you only spend money if someone actually clicks through to your site. It's not a replacement for organic visibility, but it works from day 1, while SEO takes months.

The hurdle isn't the technology. It's the idea that you need an agency, or that you'll accidentally burn your entire monthly budget in one day. Neither is true if you set up the campaign right. Why advertising on Google is worth it for an accommodation at all and when it isn't, read in Google Ads for hotels: when it pays off. This article is the practical follow-up: how to actually set up your first campaign.

The Math

A Google Ads campaign has a fixed three-layer structure: the campaign (where you set budget and location), the ad group (a bundle of keywords with the corresponding ad), and the keywords themselves (the terms someone searches for). Here's what a simple setup for a B&B looks like.

At a daily budget of $10 and an average cost per click of $1.20, you get roughly 8 clicks per day, or around 240 clicks per month. If 1 in 30 clickers books, that's 8 bookings. At an average booking value of $240, that's $1,920 in revenue against roughly $300 in advertising costs. That ratio is an estimate to start with, not a guarantee. You get the real numbers only from your conversion tracking after a few weeks.

What you should mainly take from this: the structure is small and manageable. One campaign, two groups, a handful of keywords per group, and one ad. Nothing more. The complete cost side, including cost per click by region and how much budget you really need, is in what Google Ads costs a hotel.

Action Plan

1. Create Account

Go to ads.google.com and log in with the Google account you use for your Business Profile. When creating the account, choose expert mode, not the guided "smart" mode. That smart mode gives Google too much control over your budget and keywords, exactly what you want to avoid as a beginner. Skip the offered first campaign and go to the empty dashboard.

Link your accommodation to your Google Business Profile right away if you haven't already. That profile is the foundation for your local visibility and your ads pull location data from it. How to set up that profile completely, read in Setting up Google Business for hotels and B&Bs.

2. Choose Campaign Goal

Create a new campaign and select "Search Network" as the campaign type, not "Display" or "Smart". The search network shows your ad to people actively searching for an accommodation with concrete intent. That's exactly your target audience.

For the objective, choose "Website traffic" or "Leads," depending on what you offer. More important than the label: set your daily budget right away to an amount you're comfortable with. Start with $5 to $10 a day. You can always raise it later, but you can't get money back that's already spent.

3. Choose Keywords

A keyword is the term someone searches for and that you want to appear for. Start with how a guest would search for your accommodation, not how you describe yourself. Someone types "b&b Friesland with breakfast," not "small-scale accommodation."

Create a list of 5 to 15 keywords per ad group around one theme. Group them logically: region searchers in one group, activity seekers (cycling, hiking) in another. Use phrase match (the keyword in quotes, for example, "bed and breakfast friesland") instead of broad match, otherwise Google shows your ad for loosely related searches and wastes your budget.

Add a few negative keywords right away: terms you specifically don't want to appear for, like "cheap," "free," "jobs," or "for sale." How to build and expand a complete keyword list, read in keyword research for hotels.

4. Write Ad Copy

Google works with responsive search ads: you provide multiple headlines and descriptions and Google combines them. Provide 8 to 12 headlines and 3 to 4 descriptions.

Ad copy for an accommodation works when you do three things:

• Mention the location concretely in the headline. "B&B in the heart of Friesland" works better than "Welcome to us." The searcher wants to see that you're in their region.
• Give a reason to book with you instead of through Booking. "Book direct, best price guaranteed" or "Free cancellation up to 24 hours." That distinguishes you from OTA listings (online travel agencies, booking platforms like Booking.com and Expedia).
• End with a call to action. "View availability" or "Book now." Not vague, but concrete.

Avoid exclamation marks in every headline and empty superlatives. An ad that reads like a colleague making a recommendation performs better than one that shouts.

5. Set Location Targeting

This is the most important button for an accommodation. Set your ad to appear only for people searching from or toward your region. For a B&B in Friesland, set a radius of 30 to 50 kilometers around your location, or select the province.

Pay attention to one detail: Google offers for location the option "Presence or interest" versus "Presence." Choose "Presence or interest." Someone searching from Utrecht for "overnight stay Friesland" is planning a trip to your region, even though they're physically elsewhere. You want to reach them. The "Presence" option would exclude them.

6. Measure Conversions

Without conversion tracking, you don't know which click results in a booking and which just costs money. Conversion tracking connects a click to an action on your site, usually a completed booking.

Practically: in Google Ads you create a conversion action and get a piece of code. You place that on the thank you page a guest sees after completing a booking. If you have a booking system (the reservation system on your site), you can often turn on that tracking with just a few clicks without pasting code yourself. Check with your provider.

Common Mistakes

• Leaving broad match on. The default setting shows your ad for all sorts of things loosely resembling your keyword. You pay then for clicks from people searching for something completely different. Use phrase match and build out your negative keywords as you see what you incorrectly appear for.
• Not setting up conversion tracking. Without tracking, you're flying blind. You see clicks, but not which click became a booking. After a month you still don't know if you're making money or burning it. Turn on tracking from day 1.
• Daily budget too high and then panicking. Start low, with $5 to $10. Too high a starting budget without knowing which keywords work costs you hundreds of dollars before you learn anything.
• Linking to the homepage. Send clickers to a page where they can directly look and book, not to a general homepage where they have to find their own way. A click that lands on a dead end is wasted money.
• Leaving the display network on. As mentioned at step 2: this spreads your budget over banners on random sites with low quality. For a first campaign, you want Google Search only.

What You Can Do Now

A first Google Ads campaign is not a weeks-long project. Create an account, two ad groups, a handful of keywords per group, one ad, and your location targeting. It's set in half a day.

The sequence that works: first read Google Ads for hotels: when it pays off to decide if this channel fits your situation. Then build your keyword list with keyword research for hotels. Calculate your expected costs with what Google Ads costs a hotel. And make sure your Google Business Profile is in order, because your ads rely on it.

Want to first know what you're currently paying in Booking commission and how much a shift to direct bookings brings in. You calculate that in the savings calculator. That calculation often makes clearer than anything else why your own advertising channel is worth the effort.