In this blog, you’ll discover how YouTube Ads can boost your guest bookings when integrated into your hospitality online marketing campaign.
Is your current hospitality online marketing approach failing to deliver your ideal number of guest bookings? Take that as a sign to explore a new strategy for advertising your hotel or B&B. To stay on top of the game, it’s time to get to know a new method for marketing that you may want to explore: YouTube ads!
From having 2.70 billion active monthly users (as of 2024) to its compatibility for crafting narratives, YouTube is undeniably a gateway for hospitality online marketing to succeed! It’s just a matter of turning its potential into an overflow of room revenue.
Keep reading to learn expert YouTube advertising tips that can make your accommodation a popular and memorable place to stay in!
Table of Contents
Why YouTube Ads Are an Ideal Marketing Choice
One integral aspect of hotel and bed and breakfast marketing campaigns is the choice of media for ad content. For most hospitality and tourism campaigns, print advertising, travel agents, room listings, and word-of-mouth are the go-to advertising strategies.
While these traditional methods are considered time-tested, they can be too costly or yield unsatisfactory results. In addition to that, their reach may be limited due to geographic restrictions (for print ads) and less stellar targeting capabilities to engage with tech-savvy prospects. Enter YouTube ads.
According to statistics, YouTube users stream an average of 694,000 hours of video per minute (clearly beating Netflix’s average of 452,000 hours per minute). The data also shows that YouTube ads can maximize exposure, especially for those interested in hospitality online marketing, such as yourself.
That’s why adding YouTube ads in your marketing approach can mean you’ll benefit from a constant opportunity to market your hotel or b&b!
Fill up guest bookings much faster with YouTube ads—your gateway to reaching millions!
Finding the Right Audience with YouTube’s Targeting Options
But then again, what’s the use of such a broad reach when your hotel or bed and breakfast ads land on an uninterested audience?
Thankfully, YouTube is well-known for its ever-persevering algorithm. With interest-based targeting, the platform takes notes of each user’s preferences and search history across the Google ecosystem to personalize the content that will reach each user.
On top of that, YouTube has a targeting setting that allows marketers to input their preferred audience. That ensures your hospitality online marketing ads will engage with affinity audiences (users with a long-term interest in hospitality) and in-market audiences (users actively considering a place to stay). A custom segment is also available where you can input the specific keywords, websites, or apps your prospects have likely used.
Now that marketing with YouTube ads has reassured you of a steady influx of audience members, how can hospitality marketers like you convert these viewers into future guests and patrons?
How Visual Storytelling Improves Hospitality Online Marketing
Why settle for static images of your guesthouse or hotel rooms when you can highlight your amenities within a 15-to-20-second video? With YouTube ads, you can structure your hospitality ads in a very visually engaging way—going beyond the standard photo dump offered by room listings.
To maximize the promise of hospitality online marketing on YouTube, never overlook the platform’s capability for visual storytelling.
Hence, aside from a virtual hotel (or B&B) tour, based on our experience as a YouTube marketing agency, we suggest including guest testimonials and behind-the-scenes footage to make your potential guests feel like they’ve already experienced a stay—stimulating their interest even more.
Another approach to hospitality online marketing through storytelling is making the most of your accommodation’s location and the current climate. Consider these examples for your planned YouTube ads: hotels can offer summer deals with spa treatments and market their sauna once winter comes.
A Quick Dive Into Different YouTube Ad Formats
Before investing in YouTube ads, it’s best to fully understand the YouTube ad formats available so you’ll know which one best suits your online marketing approach:
Skippable In-Stream Ads
Ideal for brand awareness and promoting website traffic, this format of YouTube ads comes before, in between, or after videos. Viewers can skip the ads after the 5-second mark, and advertisers don’t have to pay for every skipped ad. Payment only happens when the ad plays beyond the 30-second mark or when the viewer finishes the whole ad (if it’s shorter than 30 seconds).
Non-Skippable In-Stream Ads
This YouTube ad format is meant to capture the viewer’s attention by removing the skip option. While this format is best for sharing impactful messages, it’s rarely an ideal choice for hospitality online marketing as it may bring about unfavorable sentiments among viewers. We suggest only using this format for YouTube ads intending to showcase a full house tour.
Bumper Ads
This 6-second format is best utilized when crafting memorable branding. While the ad format is still unskippable, many viewers consider its brief timeframe bearable, and thus, as claimed by YouTube, will boost brand lifting. It is also a cost-effective YouTube advertising approach as it charges advertisers by CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), meaning the costs rise only when the ad has been displayed to viewers a thousand times.
In-Feed Ads
In-feed ads appear on search results and feeds. It is ideal for promoting hospitality videos as it features a headline and thumbnail to heighten brand awareness. When implementing this ad format, YouTube charges advertisers by CPC (cost-per-click), which initially sounds costly but has the most minimal expense (per click) compared to the other ways of charging.
YouTube’s diverse ad formats ensure a variety of ways for hospitality online marketing video campaigns to make their mark.
Ready to Showcase Your Business Through YouTube Ads?
Now that you’ve learned how to use YouTube ads for hospitality marketing, your team may be itching to start your YouTube video campaigns. However, we’ve only touched the surface of YouTube advertising and more closed doors lie ahead, waiting to be unlocked.
Fortunately, our YouTube marketing agency holds the key that will help your marketing campaign move forward! With over 20+ years of relevant experience, Zero Company can help you set up YouTube video campaigns that will reach the screens of prospective guests, uplift your online presence, and fill your rooms with new faces!
Book a free consultation with our experts to learn the best practices when integrating YouTube Ads into your hospitality online marketing campaigns!
