TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

This user guide is for the central team of your chain to manage Expedia Travel Ads optimization of the hotels on the Click Interface. All the following tasks will be completed in the Bidding > OTA Travel Ads section. 


Add a Central Fund for Hotels before Enabling Bidding

Step 1. Sign in Click and Click on OTA Travel Ads in the Bidding & Budget section


Notes:
If you can not find the chain in the list. Please contact your account manager to ensure that your account have been assigned access to the selected chain and hotels.

Step 2. Go to the Fund Management to View the Balance and Add the Fund

You can find the total balance on the left top of the page and the balance of each OTA channel in the detail list as below:


Click the Add Funds button for the Expedia channel and will turn to a page inputting detailed fund information. 


There are two steps:

  1.  select the hotels to add funds 
  2.  set the fund amount for each hotel


Notes:
Please be sure to select the Fund Source of Expedia/Corporate and set up the billing address as the central office if this is a central fund.

All submitted fund records can be viewed via the Fund Records button:



The fund records submitted from the HMP by an individual hotelier are also included in this list. The difference is the Fund Source of this type of fund record is labeled as Expedia/Hotel instead of Expedia/Corporate.


All fund records successfully applied to the channel will be returned with a Transaction ID in the list.


Step 3. Manage the Spending Rule for Hotel in the Channel List

Click on the Expedia link in the list, and you will be redirected to a hotel list page as below:

Click on the Fund Schedule column for any hotel, you can manage the spending sequence for this hotel. It can be either Priority or Proportional.

The Fund Schedule can vary among hotels. You can set it to spend the Corporate fund first and the Hotel fund second or vice versa.


Set up a Central Budget and Bid Strategy for Hotel

Step 1. Go to the Hotel list under OTA Travel Ads

The hotels that have been implemented will be set as Paused by default. 


Click Action > Settings and turn to the hotel bid & budget page.

You can view the basic information of this hotel and for now, the objective & budget can be set only on a specific channel of the hotel and both Manual CPC and ROAS are available for Expedia. 


Notes:
The status is set to Paused by default after the hotel is implemented successfully in Expedia.


Step 2. Set up the Central Budget/Total Budget per Month

There are three budget fields in the list: 

  • Hotel Budget
  • Central Budget
  • Total Budget


For those chains that manage hotel budgets via the HMP and central budget via the Click:

  • The Central Budget is editable to the central team.
  • The Hotel Budget is submitted from HMP and cannot be editable by the central team.
    (Please refer to User Guide for Hotel Management Platform (HMP)  to know how to use HMP to manage hotel budgets.)
  • The Total Budget, which is the sum of the Central Budget and Hotel Budget, is viewed only.

At the same time, all the existing balances of each fund source will also be displayed as a reference for you to set up the corresponding budget amount.

Notes:
Balance amount should be larger than the budget amount. 
Otherwise, when the balance is smaller than the budget and the amount reaches 0, the system will switch to another fund source. At the same time, the budget will be updated to the cost for this budget period.
When the total balance reaches 0 and the budget is depleted, the hotel status will turn paused on the channel.


For those chains that manage hotel budgets and central budgets via Click.

  • Your team can edit Total Budget directly, but the Central Budget and Hotel Budget are irrelevant in this case.


Step 3. Set up the Daily Spend Cap

You can set up a daily spending gap to accelerate the pace of spending. 

There are two options:

  • Separated
    You need to set up a spending cap separately for Hotel and Package.

  • Combined
    You will only need to set up one spending cap. It will apply to Hotel and Package at the same time. 


Step 4. Set up the Bid Strategy

You can either choose to use ROAS bidding or Manual CPC bidding.

  • ROAS bidding is powered by DerbySoft Algorithm and will automatically tune bids every day based on the ROAS target.

  • Aside from the ROAS target, users can optionally choose to set up a minimum spend target. DS Algorithm will ensure to achieve of the minimum spend if the ROAS target is difficult to achieve.


Set up the Base Bid and Bid Enhancers for Manual CPC Bid Strategy

  • You can also choose to use Manual CPC as the bid strategy, which means that all bids and bid enhancers will be set up manually.


  • Taking the market leader’s data as guidance to tune the bids:

  • You can also set up the on/off hours during the day to achieve cost-effective bidding:


Set up an Evergreen Ad for Hotel

Step 1. Click on the Ad Management to View the Ads Management Page

The performance of each ad is shown at top of the page. By clicking on the filter, you can select to view Evergreen Ad or Scheduled Ads.

Step 2: Select the Targeted Countries

Step 3: Choose the Ad Picture

Step 4: Set up the Ad Copies

Notes:
Available languages are corresponding to the countries you select in Step 2.


Set up Scheduled Ads for Hotel (Optional)

Aside from the evergreen ad, you can create a scheduled ad for promotion.


The difference between the evergreen ad and scheduled ads is you can set up a specific booking window and travel window for scheduled ads and also a Bid amount for the scheduled ads. This bid amount will be added up to the base bid.


Monitor the Performance of the Hotels via the Dashboard & Report Catalog

Here, you can view the performance of the whole chain via the overview dashboard.

You can also use Report Catalogue > OTA Travel Ads to create customized reports with customize metrics and dimensions.