Google Analytics can provide hotels with insights into their online marketing efforts by tracking key metrics like traffic sources, landing pages, revenue, and conversions. The summary reviews setting up e-commerce tracking to see which channels generate the most revenue, using UTMs to properly attribute traffic sources, and setting up goals to measure non-revenue actions. Custom reports and segments can reveal details about visitors like demographics and interests to help hotels better understand and target their audience.

1. Google Analytics for Hotels

2. Roger Coryell, CTA
• Managing Partner and digital lead for Brandhound, a Sonoma County-
based marketing agency.
• VP/Marketing and Operations for California travel site DogTrekker.com.
Roger is Google Analytics certified.
Brandhound works with DMOs and visitor-facing businesses to attract
visitors to our region. We build mobile-friendly websites, plan and execute
ad campaigns and email campaigns, and produce print collateral.

3. Today’s Agenda
Using information from Google Analytics for insights to drive more
direct bookings, cost-effectively
Is the money I’m spending on TripAdvisor or Adwords being spent in
the most effective manner?

4. We will review:
• E-commerce tracking, and why it’s important.
• Best practices to make sure your analytics numbers are accurate:
• Make sure you have a secure site with https:// links
• Tag all incoming links with UTMs
• Review the GA interface, segmenting, filtering, custom dashboards.
• Key reports: Identify which channels and ad campaigns are bringing us the most
traffic, the most engaged users, and the most revenue.
• Setting up GA “Goals” to track non-revenue actions.

5. Learn About Our Visitors
• Who are they?
• Where are they coming from?
• What pages are they landing on?
• How do my converters compare with my overall audience?
• How can I improve the web experience for my customers?

6. Important Caveat
No tracking data is 100% accurate
As a result, the data in a GA report will likely not exactly match data from other
sources (e.g. AdWords, brand reporting, etc.)
It should be close. If it’s not close, there is a problem and you should
investigate.
What you should see is comparative proportionality… your biggest traffic driver
and revenue driver should be at the top of the report, and so on down the list.

7. Making Sure Your Data is as Accurate as Possible

8. Make Sure Your Site is “Secure”
If the URL on your website doesn’t say https:// incoming traffic may not
be properly attributed (and your search traffic will suffer)

9. Tagging Incoming Links

10. Tagging Incoming Links
Without some help from us, GA does the best job it can of guessing
where traffic comes from. It’s right maybe 80 percent of the time.
We can help with this simple practice. UTM tagging.
All incoming links, from ads or partnerships, should be tagged with a
UTM to ensure correct attribution.

11. What is a UTM?
A UTM code is what you will often see after a link, with information about where
the traffic came from.
https://myhotel.com?utm_source=brandhound&utm_medium=display&utm_camp
aign=spring_specials&utm_content=wine
Without a UTM appended to an incoming link, Google Analytics will try to figure
out where the traffic came from. The results are only about 70 percent accurate.
With the UTM, you’re passing critical, accurate info into the analytics, and ensuring
much more complete info about the traffic source. So you should append a UTM to
every incoming link that you control… ads, listings, etc.

12. How Do I Create a UTM?
Create and organize your own UTMs, and keep track of them on a
spreadsheet. Share them with ad vendors and publishers.
Google provides a handy tool to build UTMs.
https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Adwords campaigns create their own UTMs automatically

13. Fill in the Form

14. UTMs - Copy the Link

15. See the Data on Your Site

16. Setting Up E-commerce Tracking
With e-commerce tracking in Google Analytics, you are able to connect
the specific dollar value of each booking or transaction to your
analytics.
See how much revenue is generated by your hotel website, and where
the converting traffic is coming from, and use the revenue information
to find out what’s working.

17. Why E-commerce Tracking?
Incoming traffic by channel, sorted by revenue

18. E-commerce Tracking
• If you don’t have e-commerce tracking set up correctly, you are
missing a critical dimension. Some hotel groups don’t support e-
commerce tracking.

19. E-commerce Tracking
• We need to set up e-commerce tracking, with cross-domain tracking
(so we are able to see user behavior across your site, and conversions
on your booking engine site)
• If you have an independent hotel, make sure your Booking Engine
supports GA E-commerce. Some branded group hotels unfortunately
don’t.
• Google Analytics e-commerce setup can be tricky, but it’s worth it.

20. Google Tag Manager
• Recommended but not required: Best practices is for your hotel
website to integrate GA using a free tool called Google Tag Manager,
or GTM.
• GTM help you organize all of your tracking tags in one place: your
TripAdvisor tag, your AdWords tag, etc., and gives you tools for
setting up specific tracking events easily. Ask your website manager if
you are using GTM.

21. Step One: Set Up E-commerce
in Your GA Account
1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Navigate to the desired account, property and view.
3. In the VIEW column, select Ecommerce Settings.
4. Click the Enable Ecommerce toggle ON.
5. Click Next step.
6. Click Submit.

22. Set Up E-commerce
in Your GA Account

23. Set Up E-commerce
in Your GA Account

24. Step Two
• Modify your GA code on your website (preferably within GTM) to
support cross-domain e-commerce tracking.
• The script you will need varies by booking engine. Check with your
booking engine support team for specifics.

25. Example Script
<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('create', 'UA-4XXX30X8-2', 'auto');
ga('require', 'linker');
ga('linker:autoLink', ['worldweb.com', 'webrezpro.com', 'webrez.com'], false, true);
ga('require', 'displayfeatures');
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>

26. Step Three
• Plug your GA ID into the provided field in your booking engine admin.

27. Success! Reports Include Revenue

28. The GA Dashboard

29. The GA Dashboard

30. Audience Reports

31. Custom Dashboards

32. Real-time View

33. Segment Tool at Top of Page

34. Key Reports for Hotels

35. Key Reports
Traffic Per Channel
> Acquisition > Channels

36. Traffic By Channel
(Sorted by Revenue)

37. Key Reports
Source/Medium
Acquisition > All Traffic > Source/Medium

38. Source/Medium Report

39. Source/Medium Report

40. Source/Medium Report
Filtered: Traffic from SonomaCounty.com. Note there’s no revenue captured
because this is a small hotel with no booking engine

41. The Campaign Report
Acquisition > Campaigns > All Campaigns
This is all information that is coming from UTMs
Adwords campaigns usually generate their own
UTMs unless you override that setting.

42. The Campaign Report
What campaigns are working (from your UTM tags)

43. Landing Page Report
Where is your traffic landing first?
Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages

44. Landing Page Report

45. Adwords Campaigns
• If you use Google Adwords for PPC or display ads, this will give you a
lot of information
• Acquisition > Adwords > Campaigns

46. Adwords Campaigns Report

47. Revenue Increase Report
Let’s look at March revenue vs last year same time
Conversions > Ecommerce > Overview

48. Revenue Increase Report

49. Setting Goals in GA
If you don’t measure it, you can’t grow it
GA lets you set up “goals” for non-revenue conversions … email signup,
brochure download, and other actions that have value.
Using Google Tag Manager is a good idea if setting up goals.

50. Using GA “Goals”
Measuring non-revenue objectives using “goals” we set in GA.
• Meeting inquiries
• Wedding inquiries
• Spa booking
• Brochure downloads
• Email signups
• Incoming phone calls

51. Setting Goals in GA

52. Objective: More Wedding Business
Micro Objectives
• Increase engagement with website wedding content
• Increase downloads of the wedding brochure
• Increase views of the wedding gallery
• Increase wedding inquiry forms submitted

53. Set Up Goals to Track
Behavioral goals
• User views 3+ pages of wedding content
• User spends 5+ minutes on wedding content
• User shares wedding content on social media
Conversion goals
• Downloading wedding brochures
• Viewing wedding gallery images
• Completing a wedding inquiry form
• Phone calls to a customized wedding number

54. Set Up Goals to Track

55. Set Up Goals to Track

56. Look at Your Goal Results
Conversions > Goals > Overview

57. Look at Your Goal Results

58. Look at Your Goal Results

59. Audience Insights

60. Where Are Your Customers From?
Geo report by cities
Audience > Geo > Location
Primary dimension CITY

61. Where Are Your Customers From?

62. Demographic Overview
• Audience > Demographics > Overview

63. Demographic Overview – vs Last Year
• Audience > Demographics > Overview

64. Demos – All Users vs Revenue Users

65. Interests – In-market Segments
• Audience / Interest / In-market Segments

66. Interests – In-market Segments
(Revenue producers only)

67. Thank You!
Questions?

68. Brandhound
Roger Coryell
(707) 892-3953
roger@brandhound.com
This deck at:
http://brandhound.com/analytics