Google Posts are now available in to use in Hotels Google Business Profiles, albeit with some limitations.
After months of posts appearing and disappearing, right up until our PE Fri 10th meeting, this was classed as unintended. However Saturday morning Joy Hawkins noticed that Google had updated support docs with post for hotels.
Whoa, Google’s help center just added a section about posts for hotels. So maybe it’s not a bug? https://t.co/NlZCuFsomF cc @GuideTwit
— Joy Hawkins (@JoyanneHawkins) December 11, 2021
Hotel Posts
Hotel businesses can create local posts to provide relevant, timely info to customers. Examples of helpful posts include COVID-19 protocols, updates to amenities or renovations, and events that take place on the property.
Hotels can’t create “offer” posts, or any post that suggests the existence of or that links out to deals, promotions, special offers, or discounts. This ensures that customers don’t get confused about where to navigate on the hotel placesheet to find organic and ad prices from partners.
After seeing this update, I checked posts in hotel profiles and sure enough they had updated the posts options to remove Offers & Product posts, leaving What’s New & Events.
How Google is going to enforce their new policy of “any post that suggests the existence of or that links out to deals, promotions, special offers, or discounts” is unclear.
Not Exactly New
A coding quirk (another bug) allowed hotels to use posts if you had created a business.site for your hotel property since July.
Yes, I kept this very close to my chest, with two properties closed permanently due to COVID and the loss of 400 jobs, I was not going to jeopardise this bug from being fixed before the countries and industry recovery.
Create your Hotels First Google Post
- Log into Google Business Dashboard
- Select the Business
- Select Posts in Navigation
- Create a Post
- Add an Image (800 x 600 ideal)
- Write the Post (100 – 300 words)
- Add a Call to Action Button
- Publish
Online Ownership offers a Google Business Consultancy to hotels globally, feel free to contact us for a no obligation chat about your hotels business profile.