Why does your hotel's price on Google only show Booking.com? Add your own website to Google
· Hostopus · 5 min read
A guest who searches for your hotel's name on Google sees your hotel card and, below it, a list of prices. That list usually shows Booking.com, Agoda and Hotels.com, and your own website is missing. The guest clicks the row that looks best and books on that platform. You end up paying commission on a guest who already found you and typed your name. This article is for hotel and guesthouse owners.
How does the price list on Google get built?
Google fills this list with the sites that send it prices and availability. Your own website only gets a row if someone sends Google that website's prices. Google calls these free booking links, and its help page says there is no cost for clicks on them. The link shows your site or hotel name together with the room rate for the dates the guest picked. A click takes the guest to the landing page you provide.
Google also gives hotel owners, and the technology partners that send prices on their behalf, an “Official site” badge. Under Google's rules this badge does not appear for online travel agencies, and only one partner per hotel receives it. It is how a guest can tell which row is the hotel itself.
How to do it yourself
- Claim your Google Business Profile and correct its details. Google matches the hotel data it receives with the Google Maps listing by name, address, phone, website and location. If Maps shows wrong details, the business owner fixes them in Business Profile.
- Set up a booking website on your own domain. Google sends the guest to the page you give it. That page has to show dates, rooms and prices, and the guest has to be able to complete the booking there.
- Find a connectivity partner to send your prices to Google. Google's starter guide for hotel owners says direct integration with Google is currently unavailable due to high demand. Prices go through a partner such as a booking engine, channel manager, PMS or central reservation system.
- Keep prices and availability accurate. When Google decides which links to show, it also looks at the landing page experience and how accurate the prices have been in the past.
A Business Profile alone is not enough. According to Google's guide, a completed profile shows your hotel on Maps and Search, but without prices. The price row needs all three pieces above working together.
Why it gets hard
In most hotels these pieces live in different places. The website is with one company, the booking engine with another, and Booking.com and Agoda in their own extranets. When you change a room rate or a Booking.com reservation comes in, your website calendar and the price sent to Google have to change at the same moment. If they don't, Google shows an old price or a room that is already sold, and the guest lands on your site to find a different number.
Then there is the wait. According to Channex's documentation, Google checks for new properties once a week and matches them by property name, address and phone number. If those three don't match your Business Profile, matching takes longer.
How it works in Hostopus
In Hostopus, the channel manager that sends prices to Booking.com, Agoda and your other channels (Channex) also sends your hotel's prices and availability to Google. Google sends the guest to the hotel website you set up with Hostopus. The steps:
- Set up your hotel website. You do this on a computer from Menu > Website. Your hotel appears in the wizard as a single card and all your rooms go on the site. The site is published only on your own domain and goes live once your domain's DNS records are in place.
- Turn on instant booking. The Google connection requires every room on the site to be on instant booking. The guest picks dates and the number of guests, completes the booking and sees the confirmation screen right away. No payment is taken on the site, and a phone number is required so you can reach the guest.
- Open the Google card on your hotel's Channels page. Before connecting, Hostopus checks what is missing and lists each item: website, domain, instant booking, at least one photo, description, address, phone, map location, time zone, check-in and check-out times and rules, cancellation policy, amenities. This list matches what Channex asks for when it activates the Google connection. Your hotel's photos, amenities and cancellation policy are filled in automatically from your rooms.
- Press Connect. The hotel owner sets up the connection. All your rooms are combined in one Google connection. You can take a room you don't want to sell on Google off sale from the same card, and a room you hide on your website is removed from Google too.
Once connected, the Google card shows “Waiting for Google approval”. According to the note on the Hostopus screen, Google processes new connections weekly and this usually takes 1–4 weeks. In the meantime, make sure the hotel name, address and phone in your Google Business Profile are correct.
When matching is done, your hotel gets its own row in the price list in Google's hotel search. For a hotel connected through Hostopus, this row appears in Turkish-language Google search as “Resmi Site · ₺… · Siteye git” (Official site · price · Go to site). When the guest clicks, your website's home page opens with the dates and number of guests chosen on Google, and the rooms available on those dates are listed with their prices. A booking that comes this way is recorded in Hostopus under the Google channel, so you can see which bookings came from Google and which came straight to your website.
In short
To put your own website's price in front of guests who search for your hotel on Google, you need an accurate Business Profile, a booking website on your own domain and a connection that sends your prices to Google. Google does not charge for clicks on these links. In Hostopus, the website and the Google connection are set up in the same place as your hotel's other channels. You can try Hostopus for your hotel free for 30 days.