Retargeting
Retargeting (also called remarketing) is a digital advertising technique that shows ads to users who have already interacted with a brand — visited the website, viewed a hotel page, started a booking, or abandoned a cart — but did not convert. The goal is to bring them back to complete the booking.
How it works for hotels
A typical retargeting funnel:
- A guest visits the hotel's brand website and browses room options for specific dates
- The hotel's tracking pixel captures the visit (anonymized via cookie or device ID)
- As the guest browses other websites, ads featuring the hotel — sometimes with the same dates and rate they were viewing — follow them
- A subset of those guests click back and complete the booking
Where retargeting ads run
- Google Display Network — banners across millions of websites
- Facebook & Instagram — feed and story ads
- YouTube — pre-roll and in-stream
- Programmatic display — through DSPs like The Trade Desk
- Native advertising networks
Why it's effective for hotels
Hotel booking has a unique feature: travelers research extensively before booking, often across many devices and sessions. A typical hotel booker visits 5–10 different websites before completing a reservation. Retargeting catches them after they've researched and brings them back to the brand site instead of letting an OTA close the sale.
Cost and measurement
Retargeting is typically one of the lowest-CPA channels in a hotel's marketing mix because the audience has already shown intent. It is measured by return on ad spend (ROAS) and incremental bookings — being careful to credit only bookings that wouldn't have happened anyway.