Why UK Hotels & B&Bs Should Run Paid Ads Now

The Hospitality Industry Has Changed – Have You?

The UK hospitality sector has faced a rollercoaster of changes in recent years. From economic shifts to evolving traveller behaviour, the landscape is more competitive than ever. Yet, many hotels and B&Bs are still relying on outdated marketing strategies, hoping that organic traffic and word-of-mouth will keep bookings flowing.

The reality? That approach is no longer enough. If you’re not running paid ads, you’re missing out on direct bookings, higher occupancy rates, and increased revenue. Here’s why paid advertising should be a non-negotiable part of your marketing strategy right now.

1. OTAs Are Eating Into Your Profits

Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) like Booking.com and Expedia take a significant cut of your revenue. Sure, they bring in bookings, but at what cost? With commission fees ranging from 15% to 30%, your margins shrink fast. Paid ads, on the other hand, give you full control over your marketing spend and allow you to drive direct bookings, bypassing the middleman.

Imagine reallocating just a fraction of your OTA budget into Google Ads or Meta Ads. You could target high-intent travellers, showcase your best offers, and keep more revenue in your pocket.

2. Your Competitors Are Already Doing It

Search for “hotels in [your city]” on Google. Chances are, the top results are all paid ads. If you’re not running ads, you’re giving your competitors an open field to capture your potential guests before they even consider your property.

Paid ads ensure your hotel or B&B appears at the top of search results when potential guests are actively looking. Even better, you can outbid competitors on high-converting keywords, ensuring your property stands out when it matters most.

3. Seasonal Demand Requires Instant Visibility

The UK hospitality sector is heavily influenced by seasonality. Whether it’s summer holidays, bank weekends, or Christmas getaways, demand fluctuates throughout the year. Paid ads allow you to ramp up visibility exactly when you need it most.

Instead of waiting for organic SEO to kick in (which can take months), PPC ads can place your hotel in front of thousands of potential guests overnight. This is especially crucial for last-minute bookings, where travellers are searching for accommodations just days before their trip.

4. Hyper-Targeted Advertising Maximises ROI

Unlike traditional advertising methods, digital paid ads allow laser-focused targeting. You can reach potential guests based on location, travel intent, interests, and even past website visits.

For example, if someone visited your site but didn’t complete a booking, retargeting ads can remind them why your property is the perfect choice. You can also target travellers searching for “hotels near [landmark]” or “pet-friendly B&Bs,” ensuring your ads reach the right audience at the right time.

5. Google Hotel Ads Give You an Unfair Advantage

Google Hotel Ads are a game-changer for UK hotels and B&Bs. These ads integrate directly with your booking engine, showing real-time availability and pricing in Google search results.

This performance-based model means you’re investing in visibility right where guests compare rates and dates. If you’re not leveraging this yet, you’re leaving serious money on the table.

One important update: Google has moved on from the old commission-per-stay bidding for hotels (those commission-based bid strategies were retired for new campaigns in 2025). Today there are two things working side by side. Free booking links let your direct rate appear in Google’s hotel results at no cost, sitting right alongside the OTAs. Paid Hotel Ads, now bought through Performance Max for travel goals, buy you more prominent placement across Search, Maps, YouTube and Display. Both need your rates and availability feeding into Google through an approved connectivity partner, which we walk through below.

6. Paid Social Ads Drive High-Intent Traffic

While Google Ads capture active searchers, social media ads introduce your property to potential guests who may not have considered a stay yet. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram allow you to showcase your property with stunning visuals, special promotions, and compelling storytelling.

A well-structured social media campaign can target:

• Couples looking for romantic getaways
• Families searching for kid-friendly stays
• Business travellers needing weekday accommodation

By combining Meta Ads with compelling content and exclusive deals, you can drive bookings and build brand loyalty at the same time.

7. Data-Driven Decisions Mean More Profit

One of the biggest advantages of paid advertising is the ability to track performance in real time. Unlike traditional marketing methods, where you rely on gut feeling, digital ads provide concrete data on what’s working and what’s not.

You can measure:

• Cost per booking
• Conversion rates
• ROI on ad spend

This data allows you to optimise campaigns, cut ineffective spending, and double down on what delivers the best results.

Which Channels Should a Hotel or B&B Actually Use (Including When TV Makes Sense)?

“Paid ads” isn’t one thing. A city-centre boutique hotel and a four-room coastal B&B need very different mixes, and yes — that includes the question of whether a hotel should ever advertise on television. For most independents the honest answer is that traditional TV spots are still expensive and hard to measure, but Connected TV (CTV) has changed the calculation. CTV runs on the same programmatic infrastructure as digital ads, so you buy specific audiences by location, travel intent and demographics rather than a blanket slot, and inventory now reaches price points that work well below enterprise level. So brand-style video on the big screen is no longer only for the big chains.

Here’s how the main options compare.

Channel	Best For	Typical UK Cost Model	When a Hotel/B&B Should Use It
Google Hotel Ads	Travellers comparing rates and dates directly in Google’s hotel search and maps	CPC or ROAS-based bidding via Performance Max for travel goals, fed through a connectivity partner	When your booking engine is connected and you want to compete with OTAs on your own listing
Google Search	High-intent searches like “hotels in York” or “dog-friendly B&B Lake District”	CPC — you pay per click	Always-on for brand and non-brand terms; the baseline channel for direct bookings
Meta / Instagram	Inspiring and retargeting travellers with photography before they’ve chosen dates	CPM or CPC — cost per thousand impressions or per click	Leisure properties that sell on visuals, and retargeting people who visited but didn’t book
CTV / YouTube	Big-screen brand awareness and video, now affordable below enterprise level	CPM or CPV (cost per view), bought programmatically or through Google Ads	Groups, destinations or launches wanting TV-style reach with proper audience targeting rather than a scattergun spot

If you sell on visuals, our guide to how local service businesses can dominate with Meta ads applies directly to hospitality, and if video is where you’re headed, growing with YouTube ads is a good next read.

The OTA vs Direct-Booking Maths

The whole argument for paid ads comes down to one comparison: what a booking costs you through an OTA versus what it costs you to win it directly.

Take a straightforward example. A three-night stay at £150 a night is a £450 booking. Booking.com and Expedia commissions for independent UK properties typically run 15–30%, so that single booking hands roughly £68 to £135 to the OTA. Win the same guest directly and that commission stays with you — minus whatever you spent on the ad that brought them in.

That reframes your target. You don’t need direct advertising to be “cheap” in the abstract; you need your cost per direct booking to sit below the commission you’d otherwise pay. If an OTA would take £90 on that £450 booking, anything under £90 to win it directly puts you ahead — and you keep the guest’s data and the relationship for next time. Google’s free booking links help here too, because they can capture direct bookings at no commission at all. This is exactly the kind of number you should be tracking, in the spirit of the “data-driven decisions” point above.

How a Small B&B Gets Started With Google Hotel Ads

The post above calls Google Hotel Ads a game-changer, so here’s the actual path from nothing to live — you don’t need a big team.

1. Get a booking engine that Google can read. Your rates and availability have to reach Google through an approved connectivity partner. SiteMinder and Cloudbeds are two of the best-known, and SiteMinder’s Little Hotelier is aimed specifically at very small properties. This is the piece most B&Bs are missing.
2. Switch on free booking links first. Once your feed is connected, your direct rate can appear in Google’s hotel results commission-free, right next to the OTAs. There’s no reason not to have this live.
3. Add paid placement through Performance Max for travel goals. With free links running, layer paid Hotel Ads on top to buy more prominent positioning when demand is worth it.
4. Match or beat your OTA rate on your own site. If your direct price is higher than Booking.com’s, you’ve undercut your own campaign before it starts. Keep rate parity, or make direct the best deal.
5. Track direct bookings as conversions. Tag bookings properly so you can see your true cost per direct booking and judge it against OTA commission.

If you’re also newer to search advertising generally, our ultimate guide to Google Ads for small businesses covers the fundamentals that sit underneath all of this.

A UK Seasonal Campaign Calendar

Hospitality demand in the UK is anything but flat, so your budget shouldn’t be either. A rough calendar to plan against:

• January: capture early summer-holiday planners and “new year getaway” searches while everyone else is quiet.
• February–April: ramp for Easter and the May bank holidays; start building retargeting audiences from site visitors.
• June–August: peak season — highest budgets, plus last-minute campaigns for travellers booking days before arrival.
• September–October: shoulder season — lean into short-break and midweek-value messaging to fill the quieter nights.
• November–December: Christmas getaways, party nights and New Year stays.

The practical rule: start increasing budget and warming up audiences around six to eight weeks before each peak, not the week before. If you want strong occupancy over the August bank holiday, your campaigns and retargeting pools should be building through early-to-mid July.

FAQ

Should a hotel advertise on TV? For most independents, traditional TV spots are still costly and hard to attribute, so they rarely earn their place. Connected TV (CTV) is the modern alternative: it runs programmatically, lets you target by location, travel intent and demographics, and now reaches budgets far below enterprise level. If you want the impact of the big screen, CTV and YouTube get you there with measurement that old-school TV can’t.

What is Google Hotel Ads and how is it different from a normal Google ad? Google Hotel Ads show your live rates and availability directly in Google’s hotel search and maps, so a traveller sees your price for their exact dates. A standard Google Search ad is a text ad triggered by a keyword. Hotel Ads need your booking engine connected to Google through a connectivity partner, and paid placements are now bought through Performance Max for travel goals, alongside commission-free free booking links.

How much commission do OTAs like Booking.com take? For independent UK properties, commissions typically fall between 15% and 30% of the booking value, depending on the platform, your location and how much volume you send them. That commission is the number your direct advertising needs to beat.

Do paid ads replace Booking.com entirely? Rarely, and that’s fine. OTAs are useful for visibility and reaching new guests. The goal isn’t to switch them off overnight but to shift your mix towards direct bookings, so you keep more margin and own the guest relationship instead of renting it.

How much should a small B&B budget for paid ads? Start small and tie spend to occupancy goals rather than picking a round number. The discipline that matters more than the figure is keeping your cost per direct booking below the commission an OTA would have taken — win a booking directly for less than you’d have paid Booking.com and the campaign is already paying for itself.

Final Thoughts: The Time for Paid Ads is Now

Running a UK hotel or B&B in today’s market without paid ads is like trying to fill rooms with a “vacancies” sign and hoping people walk in. It’s outdated, ineffective, and leaves money on the table.

Investing in paid advertising isn’t an expense – it’s an opportunity to take back control, drive more direct bookings, and increase profitability. If you’re ready to move beyond OTAs and take charge of your marketing, now is the time to act.

Need expert help setting up high-performing paid campaigns? Let’s chat. At HOC-Digital, we specialise in helping UK hotels and B&Bs scale their revenue with results-driven digital marketing.