Pinterest for Hotels
This is a recipe, not a guarantee. How well any ad campaign performs depends on things no recipe can control: your budget, how crowded and expensive your industry's auctions are, the products you sell and what you charge for them, how well your website actually converts visitors, the quality of your customer support, your reviews and reputation, your creative, and plain timing. A perfect recipe on top of a weak offer or a broken website will still lose money — ads amplify what's already there, good or bad.
The budgets shown are suggestions only — yours could and should vary with your available funds and your goals. Follow this recipe with caution: make sure every step lines up with your budget and your business, and edit where necessary. We explain why each step exists, but nothing here is one-size-fits-all. Before you spend a dollar, be blunt with yourself about the list above — get your house in order, then use the recipe to learn and test. That's what it's for.
Check the rules that govern your industry before you run anything. Plenty of businesses carry advertising obligations that have nothing to do with the ad platforms: licensing boards, professional advertising standards, rules about what you may claim and how you must substantiate it, age restrictions, and consent laws covering email, texting, and calling. Those rules are yours to know, they vary by state and country, and they override any step in this recipe.
If you work in a licensed or regulated field — health and medical, legal, financial and lending, insurance, real estate, alcohol, firearms, cannabis, childcare, education, anything with a board or a license behind it — confirm what applies to you before you spend a dollar, and ask your attorney or your licensing body if you are not certain. Nothing on this site is legal advice.
This recipe uses Pinterest as the single platform, building in sequence: tracking foundation first, then a low-cost awareness campaign to seed audience data, then a conversion-optimized campaign once the pixel has real signal. Pinterest is chosen because hotel guests plan trips weeks or months in advance and actively save destination and accommodation inspiration — your ads appear inside that planning behavior, not interrupting it.
This recipe is for independent hotels, boutique properties, and small hotel groups with modest budgets and zero prior ad history. The core problem is that most hotels either overspend on OTA commissions or run ads on platforms where travel intent is passive; Pinterest sits at the intersection of visual discovery and active trip planning, making it a genuine fit rather than a reflexive choice.
What can you afford to pay for a customer?
Advertising can only cost what's left after everything else. Put in what a typical order looks like and this works out the rest.
These are your numbers as you've typed them. Connect your store and we'll work this out from your actual orders instead — including the costs most people forget.
Tracking Foundation & Pinterest Tag Setup
Install the Pinterest Tag via your website's <head> or through a tag manager (GTM recommended). Fire these standard events: PageVisit on every page, ViewCategory on room/suite pages, AddToCart if your booking engine supports it, and Checkout on the booking confirmation page. Use Pinterest's Tag Helper Chrome extension to verify each event fires correctly. Set up a Pinterest Business account if not already done, claim your website domain, and connect your booking confirmation URL as the conversion event you'll optimize toward. Create a baseline audience of all website visitors (minimum window: 180 days) — it won't be usable yet, but it starts accumulating. Note: hotels are not a restricted ad category on Pinterest, but verify that any rate claims or promotional offers in ad copy comply with your local consumer advertising standards and any tourism board rules in your market.
Before spending a dollar on ads, you need Pinterest to understand who visits your site and what they do there. This phase is about planting the tracking code, making sure it fires on the right pages (especially the booking confirmation page), and creating the audience lists that future campaigns will use. Nothing runs yet — you're just building the measurement layer.
Visual Asset Audit & Pin Strategy
Pinterest is a visual-first platform — ad creative quality is the single biggest lever you control. Before launching, audit your photo library against these minimums: vertical images at 2:3 ratio (1000×1500px), well-lit room shots, lifestyle imagery showing guests enjoying amenities, and destination/local-area content. Create at least 10–15 organic Pins across 2–3 boards (e.g., "[City] Weekend Getaways," "Hotel Room Inspiration," "Things to Do in [City]") before running paid campaigns — Pinterest's algorithm rewards accounts with organic engagement history. Write Pin descriptions of 100–200 characters with natural language and your destination keywords; avoid keyword stuffing. Honest note: if your property photos are dark, cluttered, or shot on a phone, ad spend will underperform regardless of targeting. Budget for a half-day photography session before scaling.
Reminder: budget figures are suggestions — scale to your funds and goals.
Pinterest lives and dies on image quality. This phase is about making sure you have the right photos and a real organic presence before you pay to amplify anything. Think of it as stocking the shelves before opening the store — running ads to a thin, low-quality Pinterest profile wastes money.
New to "funnel" talk? What top, middle, and bottom mean
Think of every person who could ever buy from you as water moving through a funnel. Top of funnel is strangers — people who've never heard of the business. Campaigns here buy attention and first visits, not sales, so expect cheap clicks and few purchases. Middle of funnel is people who've shown interest — they visited, engaged, or are comparing options. Campaigns here re-engage and build the case. Bottom of funnel is people ready to buy right now — searching for exactly what you sell or abandoning a cart. Campaigns here convert; the clicks cost the most because the intent is worth the most. Full funnel means automated campaigns that work every stage at once. One thing that surprises people: recipes usually start at the bottom — capture the demand that already exists before spending money creating new demand at the top.
Awareness & Signal-Seeding Campaign
Launch a Consideration campaign optimized for Traffic (Landing Page Views). This is your cheap data-collection phase — the goal is not bookings yet, it's getting enough pixel fires to teach Pinterest's algorithm what a real potential guest looks like.
Targeting: Use Pinterest's Interest targeting — stack: Travel > Hotels & Accommodations, Travel > Vacation Rentals, Travel > Beach Travel (or Mountain/City as relevant), Home Decor > Interior Design (captures aspirational planners). Layer in keyword targeting using terms like "boutique hotel [city]," "weekend getaway [region]," "luxury hotel room," "hotel with pool." Set audience to All genders, Ages 25–54 (Pinterest's travel-planning sweet spot). Geo: Target your top 3–5 feeder cities or regions based on your existing guest data or reasonable assumption (drive-market radius + 1–2 fly markets). Placements: Browse and Search feeds only — skip audience network at this stage. Budget: $15–$25/day. Bid strategy: Automatic (let Pinterest optimize). Run for 3–4 weeks minimum before evaluating.
Reminder: budget figures are suggestions — scale to your funds and goals.
This campaign introduces the hotel to strangers who are actively planning or dreaming about travel — pure top-of-funnel signal seeding before any conversion optimization.
- 1. In Pinterest Ads Manager, click 'Create campaign' and select the 'Consideration' objective.
- 2. Name the campaign clearly (e.g., 'Hotel — Awareness — [City] — [Month]') and set a daily budget of $15–$25.
- 3. At the ad group level, set targeting: Interests — Travel > Hotels & Accommodations, Travel > Vacation Rentals, and 1–2 destination-relevant subcategories (Beach, Mountain, City).
- 4. Add keyword targeting in the same ad group: enter terms like 'boutique hotel [city]', 'weekend getaway [region]', 'hotel with pool', 'luxury hotel room' — Pinterest keyword targeting accepts natural phrases, no special syntax required.
- 5. Set age range to 25–54, all genders. Set geo to your top 3–5 feeder cities or a drive-market radius around your property.
- 6. Under Placements, select 'Browse' and 'Search' feeds only — uncheck Audience Network.
- 7. Set bid strategy to Automatic.
- 8. Upload 3–5 vertical Pin creatives (2:3 ratio, 1000×1500px). Write descriptions of 100–200 characters each. Include your destination and a soft call to action like 'Plan your stay.'
- 9. Set the destination URL to your rooms or homepage with UTM parameters (utm_source=pinterest, utm_medium=paid, utm_campaign=awareness).
- 10. Launch and let run for at least 21 days before drawing conclusions — Pinterest's algorithm needs time to find its rhythm.
This campaign's only job is to get real potential guests to your website so the Pinterest pixel can learn. You're not expecting bookings yet — you're buying data cheaply. Think of it as paying for market research that also happens to drive some traffic.
Conversion Campaign (Once Pixel Has Data)
After 3–4 weeks and at least 30–50 PageVisit events (ideally 10+ Checkout events), launch a Conversions campaign optimized for Checkout (or PageVisit if Checkout volume is too low). This campaign does the heavy lifting — Pinterest now has enough signal to find people likely to book.
Targeting: Start with Actalike audiences built from your website visitors list (set to 1–2% similarity). Layer interest and keyword targeting from Phase 3 as a fallback if Actalike audience is too small (Pinterest requires ~100 matched users minimum). Geo: Same feeder markets as Phase 3. Budget: $20–$35/day. Bid strategy: Automatic for the first 2 weeks, then consider switching to a custom CPC bid if costs are running high. Creative: Test a new set of Pins — lead with your strongest room or amenity image, add a clear offer or reason to book (e.g., 'Book direct for best rate,' 'Free breakfast included'). Include a direct CTA: 'Book Now.' Honest note: conversion volume on Pinterest for hotels is real but slower than Google Search — expect cost-per-booking to be higher than branded search but lower than OTA commissions if your direct booking page converts well. Your booking engine's UX and pricing vs. OTAs will determine whether this campaign pays off, not the ad settings alone.
Reminder: budget figures are suggestions — scale to your funds and goals.
Actalike audiences span top-to-bottom — they find new people who resemble past visitors and move them toward a booking, making this a full-funnel automated campaign.
- 1. In Pinterest Ads Manager, click 'Create campaign' and select the 'Conversions' objective.
- 2. Set the conversion event to 'Checkout' (or 'Page Visit' if Checkout has fewer than 10 fires). Name the campaign clearly.
- 3. Set daily budget to $20–$35.
- 4. At the ad group level, under Audiences, click 'Actalike' and select your 'All Website Visitors' list. Set similarity to 1–2%.
- 5. If the Actalike audience shows a warning about size, add Interest targeting (Travel > Hotels & Accommodations) as a supplement — do not remove the Actalike.
- 6. Set geo to your same feeder cities/regions from the awareness campaign.
- 7. Set age 25–54, all genders. Placements: Browse and Search feeds only.
- 8. Set bid strategy to Automatic.
- 9. Upload 3–5 new Pin creatives with a clear offer headline and 'Book Now' CTA. Use your booking engine's direct URL with UTM parameters.
- 10. Run for at least 14 days before adjusting bids or pausing — Pinterest's conversion optimizer needs a full learning window.
Now that Pinterest knows what your potential guests look like, you switch from 'get traffic' mode to 'get bookings' mode. This campaign targets people who look like your past visitors and shows them a direct reason to book. Results here depend heavily on your booking page quality and whether your direct rate beats what OTAs are showing.
Measurement & Optimization Discipline
Track these metrics weekly in Pinterest Ads Manager and cross-reference with Google Analytics 4 (or your analytics platform):
- Outbound Click-Through Rate (CTR): Benchmark 0.3–0.8% for travel on Pinterest. Below 0.2% means creative or targeting needs work.
- Cost per Landing Page View: Should be $0.30–$1.50 for the awareness campaign. Higher means tighten geo or refresh creative.
- Checkout conversion rate: Divide confirmed bookings by landing page sessions. If traffic arrives but doesn't convert, the problem is your booking page, not the ads.
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Pinterest's reported ROAS will include view-through conversions — treat these skeptically. Focus on click-attributed bookings only for budget decisions.
Retargeting unlock: Once your website visitor list exceeds 1,000 users (Pinterest's minimum for a usable retargeting audience), you can add a dedicated retargeting ad group inside the Conversions campaign targeting past visitors who didn't book. Do not create a separate campaign for this at low budgets — fold it in as an additional ad group with a slightly higher bid.
Creative refresh cadence: Swap in 2–3 new Pins every 4–6 weeks. Pinterest audiences save and revisit content over long windows, but ad fatigue still occurs — watch for CTR drops as your signal.
Reminder: budget figures are suggestions — scale to your funds and goals.
Ads without measurement are just spending. This phase tells you what numbers to watch, what they mean, and when to act. The most important habit: separate Pinterest's reported numbers from actual bookings in your booking system. When they don't match, trust your booking system.
The recipe card
- Before anything else: confirm the advertising rules for your own industry and location — licensing board requirements, professional advertising standards, what you may claim, age restrictions, and consent rules for email, texting, and calling. They override every step below.
- Install the Pinterest Tag and verify Checkout event fires before spending anything
- Seed 10–15 organic Pins across travel boards before launching paid campaigns
- Run a Traffic campaign for 3–4 weeks to build pixel data cheaply
- Switch to a Conversions campaign using Actalike audiences once you have 30–50 PageVisit events
- Add retargeting only after your visitor list clears 1,000 users — fold it into the Conversions campaign, not a separate budget
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