Google Adds Vacation Rentals to Hotel Search

Google is getting into the vacation rental space by adding specific vacation rentals to their popular hotel search.  Now, when you do a hotel search for some locations, Google will add a prompt asking if you’d rather search for vacation rentals instead.

This is a huge change and could have a huge impact on the vacation rental market – for advertisers, it won’t be a significant change to divert some of their ad spend to appear here.  But for vacation rental sites that cover many locations, such as VRBO or Flipkey, this could impact those sites if people start using Google hotel search for vacation rentals instead.  Searchers typically needed to use one of these third party sites in order to find a larger selection of vacation rentals in specific cities.

Here is how Google is prompting searchers to search for vacation rentals instead of traditional hotels.

When you click on the vacation rentals link, it changes from listing hotels to listing vacation rentals instead.

They also add notations for vacation rentals that are listed as a deal.

When you click through to an individual vacation rental, it looks similar to a hotel knowledge panel with the relevant information including ratings, as well as the notation that it is an advertisement.

It allows you to also select dates to check availability, similar to the hotel search.  There is also the added “accommodation type” selector on the top right that allows you to swap between vacation rentals and all types.

You can also select vacation rentals under “accommodation type” within the local hotel pack in the main Google search results too.

This seems to be available to all users but in a limited number of destinations.  So Google could possibly be trialing, or simply doing a slow rollout.  But it has the potential to shakeup vacation rentals, especially if searchers begin using Google hotel search for these types of listings rather than third party listing sites.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post

Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland.She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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