As big Hotel Finder fans, we’ve been waiting for the mobile launch for some time. When using a mobile device to load the web application – which acts as a travel meta search site by aggregating pricing and availability data from OTAs, CRSs, and large hotel chains – you’d receive a sorry message saying that the experience wasn’t available on mobile devices. With the new launch today (which also includes a refresh of the desktop experience,) Hotel Finder now boasts full mobile support!

The design is clearly in line with Google’s other mobile properties and is very responsive. Saving a property for future comparison is extremely quick and easy, and the basic information required to choose a hotel and room is all there including total price, photos of the property, location on the map, and most importantly, reviews.

There are also some flaws in the experience:

• Hotel Finder’s mobile implementation is missing the map view. When looking at multiple properties, you’re forced into a list view of properties. This means as a user, I’m missing out on some really important context. There is an option to filter by distance. On a broad search like “Dallas, TX” the city center is relatively irrelevant. If I’m in Dallas for business there’s a good chance I want to stay a bit north. If I’m a foodie, I probably want easy access to Bishop Arts and will be staying south.
• Even as a huge fan of white space, the calendar has a bit too much of it. When you’re scrolling to book into the future, it’s easy to pass the month because there is no visual separation between months beyond the small text. To be fair, the text is red, and mobile users booking hotels probably aren’t researching into the future as often, but still…
• There is no way to sort, search, or filter reviews. Right now it appears that reviews are being shown by recency. While there are times that this is relevant, we usually prefer to see the most helpful reviews when making a booking decision.
• The active filters on Hotel Finder mobile are Price, Hotel class, User rating, and Distance. For some reason, Brand, Amenities, and Location are accessible through the desktop experience only. There is a way to refine your search to get a better chance at the hotels you’d want, but…
• The UI is a bit buggy still. Notable bugs that we’re consistently seeing:
  • Many maps on the hotel details pages are showing up with big red x’s. Not like “x marks the spot,” either. Like, there’s an error.
  • Clicking on the search bar to change your query only keeps the keyboard active momentarily. Even if you are quick enough to start typing, the keyboard disappears. To do a new search, you have to back out to the main page and start all over. (iPhone 5 v6.1.4 10B350 + Safari, for any Google folks reading.)
  • There appears to be a script included that is designed to customize the scrolling behavior. Usually this is used in mobile web apps to make things more smooth, or to keep the experience uniform across devices. In the cases that we’ve tested, the settings used in mobile Hotel Finder results in over-scrolling, even when using small gestures. When the user stops scrolling by touching the screen, it can result in an errant button press.

Running Hotel Price Ads? Read on…

Even when considering that there is still some progress to be made on the experience, we’re still excited about the implementation because it shows that Google is serious about providing a good travel search, research, and booking experience to users. If you’re an OTA or hotel chain advertising on Hotel Finder, there are a few things to be thinking about.

First, if you’re running Google HPAs, you are already live on the mobile site. These are not separate ads requiring a separate integration. For the next few weeks, traffic coming through the program will be free. There currently isn’t any reporting on mobile traffic, but we’re told it is coming shortly.

Second, now is a great time to double check on a few things to make sure you’re poised to make the most of the opportunity this change presents.

1. Are both your config file and your site set up in such a way that users clicking on your ads from a mobile device will automatically be taken to your mobile site?
2. Extending that, when a mobile user does click an ad, are they seeing the correct deep linked content, vs. just being redirected to the home page of your mobile site?
3. Are you set up to be able to track mobile users separately from your desktop users?
4. Assuming mobile multipliers are launched in the coming months, do your reporting, bidding, and optimization solutions allow for you to understand performance across sites and segments, set intelligent bids, and expose opportunities to improve your reach and return?

HPA advertisers have a bit of time to get some of these details worked out. Right now we’re tracking very little traffic coming from Hotel Finder mobile, but we definitely expect it to increase as Google adds paths in to the product from mobile search and potentially even other channels. Smart advertisers will take this opportunity to ensure a great user experience, share feedback with the Google Travel team on the platform, and gear up to beat out competitors with granular efficient campaign management.

What do you think about the changes? Any questions you’d like feedback on? Feel free to comment below or to email us directly.