Expedia and AirBNB FAILED me on my honeymoon.

Over the past few months I’ve been planning a wedding and a honeymoon (I just got married last month!)

As such, I’ve been doing a ton of Google searches. I searched for everything from wedding venues, to florists, to DJs, to honeymoon locations.

In the process, I’ve clicked on a LOT of ads. Way more than I normally do.

What instantly became apparent to me was the lack of good practices in ads and ads management.

One of the biggest culprits was in my search for a honeymoon location. In searching for a location for our honeymoon, I googled all kinds of terms around “honeymoon” and “romantic”.

And let me tell you something, the results were awful.

The paid ads space is dominated by companies such as Expedia, AirBnb, VRBO, and other big players in the travel market.

And they are aggressively bidding on keywords around “romantic” and “honeymoon” (as they should).

But the problem is what happens after I clicked on the ad.

As soon as I clicked on the ad, I instantly got redirected to the generic search page for hotels and lodging.

They bid on the “romantic” keyword, but they redirected me to the exact same experience I would’ve had if I had just looked for “hotel rooms”.

This is a huge miss. And it’s very frustrating to me as a user.

I was willing to pay a premium for a luxury suite for my new bride and me to enjoy. I was willing to purchase almost any “romantic” upsells (chocolates, flowers, etc.) that I was offered.

But I wasn’t offered anything.

The solution for this is simple: create great landing pages. My intent as someone looking for a honeymoon suite is vastly different from someone looking for a generic hotel room. I was willing to spend more and pay for highly profitable upsells with just a click of a button.

Instead these big brands just pushed me into their generic funnel assuming I had the same price sensitive, bulk search mindset that the rest of their searchers had.

What a huge miss! Not only did I leave disappointed, but my online experience was awful. I’m sure that I clicked on so many ads I single-handedly lowered their quality score.

So let me ask you: Are you using landing pages correctly?

If you’re bidding on a “honeymoon suite” keyword, are you sending the user to the same crappy user experience that everyone else is getting? Or are you taking the moment to sell what makes you unique and promote your own brand?

I was looking to be sold. I was ready to spend the money. But the landing pages didn’t deliver.

So I ended up just booking a room through the general engine. And it was a disappointing experience all around.

Please don’t do this to your customers. Please do awesome marketing.

Use landing pages well.

P.S. Get more awesome content like this weekly by subscribing to our blog. We seek to provide massive value and respect you deeply. We won’t spam you.