Performance Max, or PMax, puts AI behind the wheel to drive customers to hotel websites and increase direct bookings. To be successful, hoteliers must understand how to use PMax to its full potential by guiding ad placements and audience targets.
This AI-powered tool’s advanced automation, powerful bidding strategies and enhanced reporting may take some time to master. But your efforts aren’t lost: according to Google, PMax drives incremental conversions and advertisers can, on average, achieve 18% more conversions at a similar cost. If you’re ready to start, read this breakdown of PMax features and how to guide its AI controls to maximize your results.
New PMax Features for 2025
Google announced changes for PMax in 2025, and hotels should use the new brand guidelines, negative keyword functions and Demand Gen campaign format to improve campaign performance. We incorporated these latest PMax features into the guide below, but here are the highlights:
- Brand Guidelines: All PMax campaigns for hotels will require business names and logo assets to improve brand consistency across PPC ad placements. This presents an excellent opportunity for hoteliers to update — or verify the quality of — brand creatives for maximum impact.
- Negative Keywords: Google added negative keywords directly to PMax campaigns, giving hotel marketers increased control over where their PPC ads will appear and reducing irrelevant placements.
- Video Action Campaigns: Video Action campaigns will transition to Demand Gen campaigns, expanding ads that were solely focused on YouTube to Discovery and Gmail placements for a more audience-driven experience.
Guiding PMax Campaigns
PMax uses AI to streamline ad placement and find cost-effective locations across Google’s platforms, from Search to Hotel Ads and Gmail. This doesn’t mean that you can’t influence PMax for hotels, though. Hoteliers can strategically set campaign goals and signals to guide PPC ad targeting through:
- Campaign Goals: Select an advertising objective to steer Google’s automated system to optimize toward.
- Audience Signals: Add audience suggestions to help Google AI optimize ads for your target guest and selected goals; improvements for segmentation tools will enhance personalization across channels.
- Exclude Audience Segments: Make unrelated or unprofitable segments off-limits to increase qualified traffic.
- Negative Keywords: Add terms to your campaigns to alert Google which terms — such as ‘cheap’ or ‘luxury’ — you do not want your property to show for.
Enhancing PMax Performance Tracking
Though Performance Max uses AI to optimize bids and placements, hoteliers still must analyze the metrics to understand the tool’s decision-making and look for opportunities to optimize with audience segments and signals. PMax offers placement reports and insights on rising search trends, but marketers may prefer to use external tools to gather more comprehensive data. As you fine-tune PMax for hotels, explore analytics solutions to strengthen actionable insights.
PMax and GA4 Reporting
Advertisers want full-funnel measurements and PMax’s integration with Google Analytics 4 expects to improve this reporting. Google Ads metrics offer limited tracking for user behavior across the customer journey. This GA4 integration allows hoteliers to track PPC ad performance and drop-offs to optimize campaigns accordingly and keep guests moving from awareness to conversion.
Floodlights Tracking for Hotel PMax Campaigns
Google Ads PMax campaigns support Floodlight data tracking, which can offer more transparency for a hotel’s cross-channel metrics. Hotel marketers can use this tracking tool to see exactly where revenue is attributed and understand how each campaign contributes to your hotel’s ad goals. Sharing Floodlight data with Google Ads campaigns also gives Google’s automation tools more information to set better bids and improve ad spend. Here are some insights to gain from Floodlight tracking to optimize campaigns:
- Average Daily Rate (ADR): Analyzing the ADR of bookings generated by a hotel’s PMax campaigns and the audience that converts most allows marketers to allocate resources to target those segments.
- Conversion Windows: Floodlight records conversions for users who previously saw a hotel’s PPC ad or clicked on one within a predetermined period to understand booking trends and adjust campaigns.
- Average Booking Value (ABV): Insights for ABV can help hoteliers create audiences for targeted ads to increase revenue and maximize resources.
Improving PMax Performance
Audience guidance and tracking aren’t the only areas where hoteliers can take control of their PMax ads. Branding and assets are two areas where hoteliers can create consistency across campaigns to increase brand recognition. While the new branding guidelines will require some updates for businesses (a preferred name and logos for campaigns), hoteliers should prioritize dynamic, well-designed creative assets (images, logos, videos, headlines and descriptions) and ad element parameters. This helps PMax campaigns reflect the hotel brand and attract qualified searchers.
The 2025 transition from Video Action campaigns to Demand Gen is another area where advertisers should prepare to optimize campaigns for better performance. Demand Gen is an upgrade from Video Action, but the AI model still needs time to learn about your property and audience. Upload various assets and aspect ratios so your library offers creatives for customers at every stage of the funnel. Google reported that advertisers who uploaded video and image assets to Demand Gen saw 20% more conversions at the same cost per action than those who uploaded video only.
Complementary Strategies for PPC Campaigns
Even Google recommends using PMax to complement keyword-based ads rather than as a standalone solution. Because PMax and traditional PPC ads for a hotel offer different benefits, hotels can experience a positive lift in overall performance when these are run side-by-side. PMax captures new audiences and its smart bidding keeps your budget in check, while PPC keeps existing customers engaged with your brand.
Hoteliers must manage these campaigns carefully to avoid cannibalization between traditional PPC and PMax, but excluding brand terms and adjusting audience parameters helps.
A hotel’s CRM data offers additional insights to inform PPC campaigns. Use booking history to create specific segments for campaign optimization and better understand which asset signals may lead to conversions. CRMs also track offline conversions to account for all leads and booking patterns, filling in gaps from PMax.Google Hotel Ads are evolving and if you’re not up-to-speed, it’s time. AI-powered advertising opportunities streamline manual tasks and let you focus on complementary campaigns and customer service. If you need help getting up and running, contact TravelBoom.
About TravelBoom Hotel Marketing
TravelBoom specializes in developing and executing customized data-driven marketing solutions that drive direct bookings and growth for its clients. With over 25 years of experience in digital marketing for travel and hotels, TravelBoom leverages advanced data science and analytics to uncover insights and develop strategies that greatly enhance results for our clients and reduce reliance on third-party channels. TravelBoom is also host of the world’s #1 ranked Hotel Marketing Podcast and its quarterly Traveler Sentiment Study both of which can be found at www.travelboommarketing.com.
