Gourmet Marketing is a hotel advertising agency that helps independent hotels increase direct revenue. This Expedia Travel Ads analysis demonstrates our data-driven approach to evaluating media strategies that influence profitability and long-term brand success.
Expedia Travel Ads are promoted as a powerful way for hotels to increase visibility, attract bookings, and boost revenue through the Expedia platform. The idea is straightforward: spend money to make money. However, when you consider the ad costs, the 20% plus commission fees, and the lack of guest data, the actual return becomes much less clear.
At Gourmet Marketing, we've spent a lot of time trying to figure out if Expedia Travel Ads actually help or hurt hotels trying to increase direct bookings. This is a crucial question since everything we do is focused on generating direct revenue through hotel websites. Does paying to boost your listing on an OTA undermine your long-term digital strategy?
Over the past two years, we have had the chance to examine Expedia Travel Ads with a select group of hotel clients who chose to use the platform. Although not widely adopted across our portfolio, these cases provided us with a controlled view of how Travel Ads impacted our direct business, especially during times when hotels needed more visibility or aimed to boost short-term bookings. Every time a hotel launched Expedia Travel Ads, we monitored changes across multiple platforms: Google Ads, Google Analytics, Hotel Metrics (our booking engine analytics software), and Google Hotel Finder data.
Before exploring the risks and case study data, it’s important to understand that Expedia Travel Ads offer real benefits, especially when used appropriately. When applied with clear intent and a well-managed strategy, they can greatly improve a hotel’s short-term results.
Although Expedia Travel Ads might appear to be a quick way to boost bookings, the actual story is more complex. Under the surface, there are hidden costs, including commission erosion, reporting blind spots, and long-term dependency risks that aren't reflected in the initial numbers.
Rising Costs & Higher CPCs
Expedia Travel Ads used to be a cheap option, but that’s no longer the case. Minimum bids and CPCs have gone up, making it more costly to stay visible, often for bookings that could be secured directly at a lower price.
Limited Reporting
Expedia's reporting is basic. You get impressions, clicks, and bookings inside its platform, but there’s no visibility into cross-channel impact, multi-touch attribution, or what was cannibalized from direct bookings.
Attribution Bias
Expedia uses last-click attribution, taking full credit for the booking even if the customer already searched for the hotel or visited the website directly. This inflates perceived performance and masks what marketing channels actually drove the demand.
Over the past two years, we’ve tracked a select group of Gourmet Marketing clients who launched Expedia Travel Ads. Although adoption has been limited, this has allowed us to accurately monitor the effects across campaigns using Google Ads, Google Analytics, Hotel Metrics (our booking engine analytics platform), and Google Hotel Finder data.
Impression Share indicates the percentage of times an advertiser’s ad is shown out of all the times it was eligible to appear. For example, if Expedia is eligible to show for 1000 branded searches and appears 400 times, its impression share is 40%. The higher the impression share, the more visibility Expedia gains — often at the expense of the hotel’s own ads.
The pattern wasn’t consistent in magnitude; results varied by season, market, and competition. However, the overall trend was clear: when hotels paid for advertising on Expedia, Expedia became more competitive on Google Ads for that hotel’s brand terms.This case study analyzes the impact of Expedia Travel Ads on the performance of a 24-room independent luxury hotel over an eight-month period in 2025. With consistent historical results and a strong 10:1+ ROAS on branded search, the hotel served as an ideal control group to understand the true cost of running paid OTA campaigns.
The study examines the period from April to July 2025, when the hotel decreased its Google Ads brand budget and simultaneously introduced Expedia Travel Ads. The analysis utilizes data from Google Ads, Expedia platform reports, and Hotel Metrics to track how paid OTA presence influences visibility, ROAS, and direct bookings.
While the hotel enjoys solid performance most of the year, summers tend to be seasonally soft. Historically, it maintained:
Over 10:1 ROAS on branded search
Strong revenue from Direct, Organic, Local, and Metasearch
Steady performance across all digital channels
In March 2025, two key changes were made:
Google Ads brand budget was cut from $6,600 to $4,800/month
Expedia Travel Ads launched, spending $1,000/month
This period also saw increased competition on brand keywords and higher CPCs across the industry.
|
Month |
Key Events |
|---|---|
|
Jan–Feb |
Stable baseline performance. Brand ROAS consistently above 10:1. |
|
March |
Brand campaign budget reduced from $6.6K → $4.8K. Expedia Travel Ads launched at $1K/month. |
|
Apr–June |
Expedia Absolute Top Share rises to 30%; hotel brand Impression Share drops to 23%. |
|
June |
ROAS collapses to 2:1, lowest in hotel history. Sharp declines in Direct and Organic revenue. |
|
End of July |
Expedia Travel Ads paused. Brand budget increased to $9K. |
|
August |
ROAS rebounds to 5:1. Direct channel revenue climbs significantly vs. June. |
|
September |
ROAS hits 12:1, nearing pre-Travel Ads baseline. Direct revenue continues upward trend. |
Using Absolute Top Impression Share from Google Ads Auction Insights, we observed Expedia's presence rise from 10-15% to 30%, meaning Expedia often outranked the hotel on its own brand name.
What is Absolute Top Share? It measures how often a domain shows in the very first paid position on Google. Expedia's increase here means it aggressively outbid the hotel for its own traffic.
This trend matched the period when the hotel reduced its own brand spend and funded Expedia Ads instead.
By June 2025, the hotel saw:
ROAS drop to 2:1, the lowest ever recorded
Direct and Organic traffic shrink, confirmed by GA4 and Hotel Metrics
Expedia still claiming credit for bookings—even those that may have started as direct intent
The depth of the drop can’t be explained by market softness alone. This hotel typically gets bookings up to 9–12 months in advance, yet future revenue was also affected, not just same-month revenue.
End of July, the hotel:
Paused Expedia Travel Ads
Increased brand budget to $9,000
Results:
ROAS climbed back to 12:1 in September
Direct revenue rebounded, increased by 42%
Expedia’s Absolute Top Share decreased
But the recovery wasn’t instant. Google Ads re-entered a learning phase. It took nearly two full months to regain performance, illustrating that the damage was deeper and longer-lasting than expected.
Expedia reported 17:1 ROAS during this period. But once you factor in:
20%+ commission fees
$1,000/month ad spend
Lost direct revenue
…the true ROAS is closer to 4:1, which doesn't compare favorably to Google Ads brand campaigns that had previously returned 10–15:1.
Expedia Travel Ads might make sense for large hotels — especially those with over 100 rooms — that have the scale and digital marketing infrastructure to handle the trade-offs. For these properties, the visibility boost can serve a purpose in a broader digital ecosystem.
But it's a common and repeated mistake for small and mid-sized hotels — especially those with fewer than 50–60 rooms.
The data we’ve gathered indicates that when smaller properties run Expedia Travel Ads, the outcomes are almost always unfavorable.
What’s worse, this occurs when brand keyword CPCs on Google are already higher, often double what they were in 2024, due to shifts in bidding dynamics and platform behavior. Expedia’s aggressive presence only speeds up that trend.
And despite what Expedia’s platform might show — like a 17:1 ROAS — that’s before commission. When you subtract 20% OTA fees and account for cannibalized direct bookings, the actual return is often closer to 4:1 or worse.
Expedia Travel Ads might seem appealing at first, but for small hotels, they’re usually not profitable and can often be harmful.
With the right digital strategy — especially one focused on protecting your brand and scaling direct revenue — you don’t need to pay an OTA to advertise your own name.
The question isn’t just “What do I gain by running Travel Ads?”
It’s “What am I losing by doing it?”