What Does Google Ads Cost for a Hotel or B&B? Calculated

A small accommodation usually spends $5 to $15 a day on Google Ads, so roughly $150 to $450 a month. What you get back depends on three numbers: your daily budget, your cost per click, and the percentage of clickers who actually book.

The Problem

Say you have 6 rooms and now get 70 percent of bookings via Booking.com. You want more direct bookings and hear that Google Ads helps with that. Only you don't know what it will cost. The numbers you find online range from "a few dollars" to "hundreds per month," and nobody tells when it pays for itself. The result is many owners either don't start at all, or set too high a budget and stop disappointed after a month.

The real problem is that Google Ads costs money with every click, not every booking. Someone clicks your ad, looks around, doesn't book, and you still pay. That's fundamentally different from Booking.com, where you only pay commission if a guest actually comes. With Booking, the price is predictable: a fixed percentage of what the guest spends. With Google Ads you pay upfront for attention, and only afterward do you know if that attention led to bookings.

Whether Google Ads pays off depends on how many clicks you need for one booking. That's three concepts you need to know before you spend a dollar.

The daily budget is the maximum amount you let spend per day. Set it to $10 and Google stops showing your ad once that amount is used, and starts fresh the next day. Over a whole month, Google never structurally spends more than your daily budget times the number of days.

The CPC (cost per click, the cost per click) is what you pay each time someone clicks your ad and comes to your site. How high that CPC is is determined by competition: in a tourist region where many accommodations bid on the same keywords, the cost per click is higher than in a quiet area. For accommodation keywords in the Netherlands you're usually between $0.80 and $2.50.

The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who actually book after the click. If 3 out of 100 visitors book, then your conversion rate is 3 percent. Those three numbers together, the daily budget, the CPC, and the conversion rate, determine what one booking costs you. What this channel precisely involves and how it fits in your broader approach, read in Google Ads for hotels.

What Pushes Your CPC Up or Down

You have more control over cost per click than you think. Three things determine whether you pay $0.80 or $2.50 per click.

Competition in your region weighs most heavily. In a busy tourist destination like the Veluwe or the Wadden Islands, many accommodations bid on the same keywords simultaneously, and that drives up the price. In a quieter area without much competition you pay less per click for exactly the same keyword.

Season matters. Leading up to summer vacation, more people search for accommodation, so more advertisers bid, and the CPC rises. Outside season, a click is often cheaper, while that's exactly when you need bookings most.

And the keyword itself makes a difference. A broad term like "hotel Netherlands" is expensive and delivers few targeted visitors. A specific term like "B&B Gaasterland with breakfast" is cheaper because fewer parties bid on it, and the visitor already knows exactly what they're looking for. That raises your conversion rate and lowers your cost per booking at once.

The conclusion: the more specific your keywords, the lower your cost per booking usually is. Read more about that in setting up a Google Ads campaign.

The Math

Here you see how those numbers work out together for a B&B with 6 rooms. The CPC and conversion rate are realistic ranges for the Dutch accommodation market, not guarantees. Your own numbers appear only once your campaign has run for a few weeks.

A direct booking costs you $50 in advertising costs in this example. That's the number everything revolves around. Not your daily budget, not your number of clicks, but what one booking costs at the bottom line.

Compare that to Booking.com. At an average booking value of $250 for two nights and 18 percent commission, you pay Booking $45 for that same booking. In this scenario the costs are roughly equal, and then via Google Ads you get a direct guest you can reach again for a repeat booking, a newsletter, or a review. That guest is yours after the first time, not the platform's.

The outcome shifts quickly if your numbers change. At a conversion rate of 5 percent instead of 3 percent, the same $300 budget delivers 10 bookings, and a booking costs only $30. Then Google Ads is clearly cheaper than Booking. At a CPC of $2.50 and a conversion rate of 2 percent, it turns the other way: you get 120 clicks for $300, about 2 or 3 of them book, and a booking costs $100 to $150. In that case Booking is cheaper and you need to adjust or stop your campaign.

The calculation itself is simple. The tricky part is that you know your own CPC and conversion rate only after the campaign has run for a few weeks. The numbers in the table are a starting point, not a promise. What they do show: small shifts in conversion rate have a much bigger effect on your cost per booking than your daily budget.

There's one more number you need in this calculation: the average booking value. A B&B with two themed suites at $145 per night has far more margin per booking than a hostel with beds at $35. At a high nightly rate a booking can therefore cost more before it becomes a loss. So don't calculate with cost per booking alone, but with cost per booking relative to your average booking value. A booking that costs $50 and brings in $500 is a good deal. That same $50 for a booking of $90 is not.

A handy rule of thumb: as long as your advertising costs per booking stay under 15 to 20 percent of your booking value, you're around the level of an average OTA commission and doing well. Go above that and you're paying more for a direct booking than for a booking via the platform, and that's the point where you act.

Action Plan

You don't have to be a marketing bureau to start this yourself. Three steps, in this order.

1. Determine your maximum cost per booking. First calculate what you currently pay in OTA commission per booking. At 18 percent over $250, that's $45. That's your upper limit: as long as Google Ads stays below that amount per booking, you win. Don't know your current commission load exactly. Calculate it in the savings calculator before you go further.

2. Start with a low daily budget and measure everything. Begin with $5 to $10 a day. Set up conversion tracking so Google registers which click led to a booking. Without that tracking you see only what you spend, not what it delivers, and you navigate blind. How to set this up technically is in setting up a Google Ads campaign for your hotel.

3. Adjust after two to four weeks. Look at your cost per booking, not the number of clicks or impressions. Below your upper limit? Raise the daily budget step by step, for example $2 at a time, and keep measuring whether the cost per booking stays low. Above it? Pause the poorly performing keywords, sharpen your copy, or stop the campaign. Never adjust the daily budget on gut feeling, only based on measured cost per booking. The amount you set is no indication of success, the result below it is.

Common Mistakes

• Setting a too high daily budget without tracking. You see clicks coming in, but not whether people book. At $30 a day you burn $900 a month without knowing if it delivers anything. Start low.

• Not connecting conversion tracking. This is the most expensive mistake. Without tracking you can't calculate cost per booking and you're optimizing the wrong number (clicks instead of bookings). The campaign seems to run while money leaks away.

• Advertising on keywords that are too broad. If you bid on "vacation Friesland," you pay for clicks from people who don't yet know where they want to sleep. Bid on "B&B [your place]" and "hotel [your region with date]," where the search intent is concrete and the conversion rate is higher.

• Concluding too quickly that it doesn't work. A campaign needs two to four weeks before the numbers are reliable. Bookings for accommodations also have a long decision time: someone clicks today and books maybe two weeks later. Stopping after three days with zero bookings says nothing except that you looked too early.

• Running at the same budget all year. In your peak months you're booked anyway, you don't need to pay for clicks to fill rooms. Set your budget in slow periods and shoulder months, October to April for most B&Bs, where you really need the extra bookings. Advertising in July while you're already at 90 percent occupancy is throwing money away.

• Not testing the booking button. If you send paid clicks to a site where the guest can't book smoothly, you pay for visitors who drop off. A phone number and an email address don't count as a booking button: whoever lands on your site as a paid visitor wants to reserve immediately. Click through your own booking process on your phone before you advertise, and see if it works within three screens.

What You Can Do Now

Google Ads isn't a button you turn on and bookings appear. It's a calculation you track each month: advertising costs divided by bookings, weighed against your OTA commission. As long as a direct booking through Google costs you less than that same booking via Booking, you win twice: you pay less and the guest is yours after that.

Start with the number that determines everything. Calculate what a booking costs you now via Booking.com in the savings calculator. That amount is your upper limit. Then read Google Ads for hotels for the complete picture of when this channel fits a small accommodation and how it compares to your Booking.com bookings.

Don't want to rely on ads alone? Also check how you get free visibility in Google with Google Hotel Ads for independent accommodations, where your live rate appears alongside the OTAs. And if you take the step, do it right with the action plan in setting up a Google Ads campaign.

Would you rather have someone handle the tracking and adjustments so you don't have to look at the dashboard every week. We discuss that at marketing for hotels.