Whoever is running the hotels.com ppc campaign should be fired. It is mine and my wives 10 year anniversary coming up next month so I am thinking we can go to Santa Barbara and have a nice long relaxing weekend. I decide to use my good friends at Google to help me with my quest.
Step 1: I type in: Santa Barbara Luxury Hotels. I think this has to be an expensive travel keyword, so there is a high probability that people paying for the ranking probably have some good results to feed me.
Step 2: I am presented with a really good ad from Hotels.com that compels me to click:
Step 3: I am presented with my landing page. I expect some really nice hotels (4 seasons, san ysidro ranch perhaps) but this is what I get: (clicking the image will take you to the landing page)
IF you cannot see the results, basically is is littered with best westerns and other mid-level hotels. Now, I am not trying to be snobby here. I don’t mind a best western for travel, and trust me, I appreciate the $100/night rate. But the second I added the word “Luxury” to my search query, and Hotels.com added “5 star” to their ad copy, the results that I should have been given should have been drastically different.
Hotels.com PPC department, you just lost yourself a really good conversion from me.
