Hotels are next in line for Google's AI ad engine

Google moved Search campaigns into AI Max in September without an opt-in. Hotel Ads already sits in the same format, where Google's AI decides when your hotel pays for a click.

by Markus Busch

Driving the news. Between September 1 and 30, Google switched two kinds of Search campaigns to AI Max, its automated ad system: those using automatically created assets, and those using the campaign-level broad match setting. Google told advertisers by email on August 5. The only way out was to turn the old settings off before September 1. Dynamic Search Ads follow in February 2027, according to Google's own post.

Take a hotel that runs ads on its own name with either setting. Since September, Google has been matching those ads to searches the hotel never picked. Where automatically created assets were on, Google also writes ad text nobody at the hotel approved.

Why it matters. It is the second forced move into AI Max in travel this year. Things to Do advertisers went first. Google moved their old Travel campaigns into a new type called Search Campaigns for Travel, built the new campaign for anyone who did nothing, and copied their settings across. We covered that step in July.

Hotels are in the same new format. Google announced it on April 30, and for hotels it is still a closed beta. It folds Hotel Ads booking links and ordinary text ads into one campaign. Google's AI picks the searches, writes the ad and chooses the landing page. It bids against a target return the hotel sets. And it reads the hotel's live rates and availability to decide when to show the hotel at all.

The catch. Google has set no date for hotels. It hasn't said Hotel Ads campaigns will be moved automatically, the way Things to Do campaigns were. "Next" is where the pattern and the shared format point. Google hasn't said it.

The loudest voices on the format so far belong to vendors inside the beta. Cendyn, which sells the feed connection the format runs on, published its own guide this month. And the only independent evidence on hotel ad spend comes from the older Hotel Ads setup, not the new one.

What it means for hotels. That evidence is still the best test a GM has.

Cornell researchers Frances Wang, Jeff Larson and Chris Anderson ran a field experiment with 26 independent hotels. They switched paid Google links on and off and tracked what got booked. Their research brief came out in December 2025. Paid links brought in more bookings overall and moved more of them to the hotel's own website. That held when the hotel had rooms to sell and few travelers were seeing it yet. When the hotel already showed up well, or was nearly full, the paid click added almost nothing. Part of the spend went on guests who would have booked through Google's free link anyway.

The researchers' advice: run paid ads in soft weeks, pause them when the house fills. That call belongs to whoever reads the forecast on Monday morning. Under AI Max, Google's bidding makes it auction by auction, unless someone at the hotel steps in. Google aims for conversions at the return you set. A booking for a night that would have sold anyway still counts as one.

Three things to check this week:

• Was the brand campaign upgraded in September? Ask the agency for the campaign settings.
• What has the search terms report shown since? Read every query Google matched and every line of ad text it wrote.
• Who watches the bid on nights the hotel is nearly sold out?

Read also: Google stops filling in your hotel rate on September 30 · The OTA is not your competitor on Google

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