In order to set up GA, first, you should create a GA account by signing up on the GA page. You should enter a name for your account and website and also fill in your website URL. Then you can select the industry of your business and your timezone to use in your reports.

Once you accept the Terms and Conditions, you'll be given your tracking ID and your tracking code.

Then you should implement your tracking ID through Google Tag Manager (GTM), if you don't have a GTM account yet, see our help article here about how to set up GTM.
​

3. Give a name to your tag such as GA tag and below the name you'll see two areas to customize. Click on Tag Configuration and choose Google Analytics: Universal Analytics

4. On the new page select New Variable, this will ask your tracking ID.
​

5. Put your tracking ID in as shown below and Save this page.

6. Once this is done, go to Triggering to choose a trigger and select All Pages.
​

7. Then click Save and publish your tag. That's it!

If you don't want to install GA through GTM, then simply share the tracking code that you received after creating your GA account with your web developer or copy and paste it into the code of every page yourself.

In order to provide you with your monthly performance report, we require the "edit" access to your Google Analytics.

In order to be able to connect your GA (Google Analytics) account to Hotelchamp platform, you should add your GA view ID from the settings.

To find your view ID, go to your Google Analytics Account >> Click on “Admin” >> Click on “View Settings” >>

Then find the same view ID and in the dropdown menu on the Google Analytics Integration page (Settings > Integrations > Google Analytics > Configure)

To make sure that all Hotelchamp metrics will be tracked correctly to Universal Analytics, you need to add an extra dimension in Universal Analytics.
​

7. Select “Dimension Drill Down” and search for Hotelchamp. Add the Hotelchamp

Dimension.

Quick Summary

This guide can be used to set up Google Analytics tracking on a hotel level for chains. By tracking GA on a hotel level, Hotelchamp reports can also be automatically generated on a hotel level. Many chains already have this setup, however some do not.

Chains tend to collect all of their data in one global view that includes all their hotels.

This view looks something like the below diagram:
​

Each column of H's corresponds to a hotel.

The above setup does not allow us to easily see the data per hotel without using complex segmentation. It is therefore difficult to use for hotel-level reports and analysis.

To generate hotel-level reports, each hotel needs its own unique view. This view will capture all the activity happening on that specific hotel's web pages, and will exlclude all other activity made on other hotels' pages. This looks like below:
​
​

1. Go to the Google Analytics (GA) view for the chain

2. Click on the cog icon in the bottom left of GA to open settings

3. You will see three columns: Account, Property, and View. Next to View, click on "Create view"

4. Create the view and name it after the individual property. (The timezone should be set to the time zone used for the parent view for consistency in your reporting).
5. After creating the view, go to this new hotel view. (Important: make sure it is the new view and not the chain view).
​

6. Settings page > Filters > Add a filter

7. Under Filter type, click on "Custom"

8. Select "Request URI"

9. Tick the circle "include"

10. Here you need to provide the unique part of the URL(s) for the hotel.

For example, the url for Hotel de Veluwe is:

Therefore the unique part of each URL is:

This is entered as hotel-de-veluwe|58330 (see below).

The | is called a half-pipe, and means "OR". Essentially, if a visit is made to a url that contains "hotel-de-weluwe" OR "58330" then it is tracked in this GA account.

11. Checks: please be careful that there are no spaces and that a half pipe operator is used. Please also check that include is ticked and not exclude. If these are done wrong you will not get correct tracking.

12. Save the filter!
​

Please give it a few days, then check each view data to make sure it is coming in correctly.

Problem of Cross Counting

It is not possible to sum the sessions and bookings of each individual property together, this is because if someone visits two properties, they will be recorded as a unique visitor in both, and therefore counted trice. Consequently, if the data is added up across hotels within the chain, there will be double or even triple counting of the same session.

The conversion rate in the hotel level GA views will be generally higher than normal. This is because many visitors will enter the website via the chain homepage, and then enter the booking engine for a particular property. On the hotel level GA view, only visitors entering in the booking engine will be picked up, while those landing on the chain home page will not be recorded. This will lower the real visitor count, while including the same amount of bookings, inflating the conversion rate.
​

In order to provide you with monthly performance reports, we require the version of Google Analytics (GA) which is called Universal Analytics. Here is a step by step guide on how you can check which GA version you are currently using.

This means you need to update your Google Analytics to Universal Analytics

This is the most up-to-date version of Analytics.

Enabling e-commerce tracking is important and requires working together with your booking engine provider. Once your booking engine installed Google's e-commerce script you can see how much revenue your website is generating. Without e-commerce tracking, you would only see clicks but no revenue generated through these clicks.

The following code can be copied and pasted directly into your booking engine’s confirmation page. Just forward this to your booking engine provider.

⚠️ Replace all the variables in bold with your specific variables ⚠️

​<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
​
ga('require', 'ecommerce');
​
ga('ecommerce:addTransaction', {
'id': '546473035949', // Add the Transaction ID Booking Confirmation Number Here
​'affiliation': 'Hotel Name', // Add the name of the hotel here
​ 'revenue': '12.34', // Input the Grand Total of booking - before tax
​ 'shipping': '' , // Shipping cost - leave blank
​ 'tax': '13.69' }); // Add the total tax for the booking
​
​ ga('ecommerce:addItem', {
'id': '10426', // Transaction ID or Booking Confirmation number
​ 'sku': '122201', // If you assign an ID for room types you can add here
​ 'name': 'Studio, Standard' // Input the room category booked
​ 'category': 'Best Available Rate', // Input Rate Typed Booked
​ 'price': '98.1', // Average daily rate of booking before tax
​ 'quantity': '1'}); // Number of nights booked
​
​ ga('ecommerce:send');
</script>

To track your performance, please make sure you have e-commerce and cross-domain tracking in place.

Enabling e-commerce tracking is important and requires working together with your booking engine provider. Once your booking engine has installed Google's e-commerce script you can see how much revenue your website is generating. Without e-commerce tracking, you would only see clicks but no revenue generated through these clicks in your Google Analytics data and also your Hotelchamp reports.
​
Go to your Google Analytics account and look for Conversions > E-commerce > Overview. Do you see data on the screen?

(photo: correct e-commerce)

That's great! Your e-commerce is set up correctly. Now make sure you check if you have cross-domain tracking as well (go to step 2).
​

If you see the text as in the image above, this means your e-commerce section has to be enabled in your GA account. Follow the video to enable your e-commerce:

If after you have enabled the e-commerce you still can't see data being tracked, this means you need to implement the e-commerce script in your booking engine's backend. Click on the button below to learn how to conduct this implementation.
​

Cross-domain tracking allows you to track a visitors journey from your website to your booking engine accurately. Without cross-domain tracking, a visitors journey would end once they leave your website and they would be counted again as new visitor once they land on your booking engine. Implementing cross-domain tracking is important for the reliability of your Google Analytics data and requires working together with your web developer and booking engine provider to implement the script.

That's great! This means you have completed your tracking enablement!

This means that the cross-domain tracking script needs to be implemented on your website's backend and also on your booking engine's backend. Click on the button below to access a step-by-step on how to proceed.

There are a number of ways to see if the cross-domain script isn't in place yet on your website and booking engine. One of the quickest ways is to search within the "Inspect > Elements" of your website for the cross-domain script and choosing a phrase from the script such as "allowlinker" to check for results.