Google Hotels Integration
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This! Yes! Makes me so happy! I can stop interviewing other systems! Thank you!
Shelley @ The Victorian Inn
I also second that remark about you being able to gobble up the entire boutique hotel / inn market with a few upgrades in this direction. I looked at 18 hotel PMS’ and had plans to move our inns/hotels to them but the market is either deeply antiquated or more modern and robust while pricing out any hotels with less than 25 rooms. There were literally 3 hotel PMS’ that I felt would meet our standards.
OwnerRez could absolutely blow the top off of this market if they take the time to integrate with Google Hotels, Expedia, and a channel manager like SiteMinder. OwnerRez’ engine connected to those sites would change the game for that industry. Or should I say…. INNdustry
Does this mean that you may consider Expedia too?
Unfortunately, we have no estimates or additional information to provide for Expedia at this time. We have the world's best partnership with Vrbo, of course, and some of their STR traffic is co-hosted on Expedia, but I know that's not what you need and won't help the boutique hotel/BnB market at all. It looks like the Expedia request doesn't have a lot of traffic or votes. Make sure to be noisy over there too! There may be administrative/partnership obstacles on that one, though.
Paul, I will be absolutely over the moon happy to be your first tester!
This is awesome - Put me down as a beta tester too! Should have 8 eligible units at a boutique hotel
Hi Paul,
I hope you're doing well. This is Shelly from The Victorian Inn Bed and Breakfast in Marblehead, Ohio. We currently have 10 listings with OwnerRez.
I just wanted to check in to see if there have been any updates on the Google Hotel Integration. It's been several months since we last spoke, and I wanted to see where things stand.
As I mentioned before, October is the timeframe I'm considering for making a final decision about our property management platform. I truly don't want to leave OwnerRez. We've invested a lot into the platform, and I'd much rather stay. Unfortunately, I feel like my business is suffering without the Google Hotel Integration, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to justify waiting much longer.
I'm really hoping you're getting close to at least beginning beta testing. Even knowing that progress is being made would mean a great deal to me.
Any update you can share would be sincerely appreciated. Thank you for taking the time, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Shelly McCoy-Morgan
The Victorian Inn Bed and Breakfast
Marblehead, Ohio
Good timing, Shelly. I was close to dropping another update here, so now's a good time, and it's not good news... Yes, there has been a lot of development work on our side all throughout the last several months, but unfortunately, we've hit some walls that may force us to shut it down. We're not there yet (and if it happens, I'll come back here quickly), but Google is fighting us - the business side, not the tech side - on our "hotel inventory" not being enough and our landing pages/websites not being hotel style. We've given them examples of many of your properties and websites, but they have rejected a lot of it as not hotel-worthy. In some cases, that is the properties themselves. In other cases, it is the lack of a hotel-style "Pick your room" with "king bed or queen bed" style hotel selection. Like I said, we are still battling through it and are in a review round right now, but we just got hit with this in the past few weeks. Google has two teams - a tech team and business team - and we were cleared for both (we thought) a while back. The tech side is progressing fine. It's the business side that is turning the screws and may stop the integration. Just trying to be transparent here, given our commitment to this.
I'm jumping in too to say thank you for the update. We have a hotel/motel licensed in Wisconsin, but like you alluded to, it's not set up like a typical hotel with identical rooms. Oye. Then there's Booking.com, treating all properties like they're identical hotels, when so few are. We don't envy your job, but really appreciate you carrying the torch with Google on behalf of us all.
Bummer. I’m really praying you’re able to make this happen. I know how much work and commitment has gone into it, and I truly appreciate you being transparent with the update. I’m rooting for you and hoping Google sees the value in what you’ve built and gives it the green light. Please keep us posted—we’re all pulling for you!
That's a bummer... Why are they pushing back so much? Booking.com and Expedia still push our inventory to Google Hotels, we just don't have a way to do it ourselves and avoid the fee 😅
Appreciate the update. This is the #1 reason we are considering leaving OR. We want to pour money into Google Ads and right now it pushes them to book on a third party doubling the marketing costs.
Good news to report here. We were able to get past the hurdles we were previously facing, and development is well underway!
This will take time, but the wheels are turning again and we're making very good progress. We'll post more updates as they become available.
That’s amazing news! Do you believe this will happen by year end?
Bri, this is great news. We appreciate the work being put into this - Thank you