Booking Engine: Google Analytics Setup Guide

Google Analytics

Google Analytics allows analyzing usage data from the Booking Engine, with a relatively easy setup and powerful tools. This allows you to get insights into your Booking Engine’s performance so that you can improve it and get more direct reservations.

Key Advantages ✨

Tracking user behavior and seeing them in Google Analytics provides these key advantages:

📊 1. Understand Your Visitors

See which pages users visit, how long they stay, and what actions they take. Discover where users drop off or engage most, helping you optimize your content, images, and overall experience.

🎯 2. Smarter Ad Performance

Platforms use conversion events to train and optimize your ads automatically, making your advertising budget work harder and deliver better results.

💰 3. Track What Actually Works

Know exactly which ads or traffic sources are driving real bookings and sales - no more guessing where your best customers come from!

📈 4. Compare All Your Marketing
Easily compare performance across all supported platforms like Google Ads, Meta Ads, and more in one convenient dashboard.

💡 Bottom line: Google Analytics turns your website data into actionable insights that help you make smarter decisions and grow your booking business! 🚀

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Set Up Google Analytics

You can follow the steps in this Google guide, view this Walkthrough Video, or follow our recommended Hostaway steps below.

1. Create a Google Analytics Account

2. When setting up Google Analytics, use your Booking Engine's domain - either your custom domain or the default Hostaway domain

3. After setup, navigate to Hostaway Dashboard > Booking engine > Settings > Advanced > Enter the Google Analytics Measurement ID in the Google Analytics Tracking ID > Save
   
   
   
   
   
   

4. Go to Google Analytics, press the admin button on the bottom left, and then press custom definitions
   
   

5. Here, you can use the data that Hostaway automatically sends to Google Analytics so that it appears in reports. For that, we need to set up custom dimensions and metrics

   • Dimensions are mostly text-based, but not always. For example, both the listing name and listing ID would be dimensions.

   • Metrics are numbers that can be calculated. For example, the total reservation price or the total extras amount.

   • This is the data that Hostaway provides and can be used in Google Analytics:
     
     

     Parameter	What does it mean	Dimension/metric	Unit of Measurement
     listingName	The name of the booked listing	Dimension
     listingId	The ID of the booked listing	Dimension
     guestEmail	The email address of the guest who booked	Dimension
     reservationCouponId	The coupon code that was used in the reservation, if any	Dimension
     arrivalDate	The reservation check-in date	Dimension
     departureDate	The reservation check-out date	Dimension
     numberOfGuests	Number of guests in the reservation	Metric	Standard
     reservationTotalAmount	Reservation total amount	Metric	Currency
     extrasTotalAmount	The total value of upsells in the reservation	Metric	Currency

      

6. Let’s start by creating a custom metric. Press the Create custom metric button 
   
   
7. Enter the details as shown below. Use the parameters table above to determine which parameters you want to track and how to set them up. The following screenshot shows how to set tracking for the reservation total amount.
   
   
   
8. Now let’s use the custom dimensions we created in a report. In the left-hand menu, press Explore, and then create a blank report.
   
   
   
9. Press the + button next to metrics, select custom in the menu that opens, and add the custom metrics we added earlier. Press import to save.
   
   
   
10. Choose the type of graph you want to see  visualizationand add the relevant metrics under values. You will see the report on the right. Note that data in reports appears only a day after the event.
    
    

FAQs

1. Which version of Google Analytics does Hostaway use?
   Hostaway uses Google Analytics 4, the next generation of Analytics, which collects event-based data from both websites and apps.
   
   
2. What events is Hostaway sending to GA4 by default?
   • Listings Search
   • Book now click
   • Send inquiry click
   • Purchase
   • booking_engine_language_${lng}
     
     
3. Why are there duplicated events, one with static appended to the end of the name?
   It will be sent only to Hostaway GA, but currently, it's being sent to both customers and Hostaway's GA.
   
   
4. Why do we have two Google tags installed on our website?
   One is Hostaway's, and the other one was installed by you.