Yandex - Russian Google, which will help you attract foreign guests

According to statistics from 2018, more than 23 million people annually travel from Russia abroad. Half of them use the Yandex search engine to find hotels. Learn what Yandex is and what opportunities does it offer to hotel owners who use its services.

Yandex is a Russian-Dutch IT company that combines over 50 different websites and portals. One of them is the Yandex search engine, which is used by over 50% of Russians. That is why Yandex search engine is often called the Russian Google.

Which hoteliers can profit from working with Yandex?

Russians mostly choose to stay at 3- and 4-star facilities, resorts and hotels that offer SPA services. Among the most popular locations are the Polish mountains, the Baltic Seaside, Gdańsk, Cracow and Warsaw. But there are also business guests among Russians who travel to Poland, so this list can be significantly expanded.

Before creating a marketing strategy, it's always a good idea to check your website’s visit statistics by location and number of bookings by nationalities to see which markets are worth advertising in. If you see that your facility attracts interest of Russian guests, Yandex can become an effective tool for obtaining reservations.

What possibilities does Yandex offer?

Yandex is very similar to Google. The types of ads available on Yandex are analogous to those on Google - text search engine advertising , banner advertising on the advertising network, video advertising, dynamic advertising, remarketing advertising, smart banner advertising and many other.

The payment for advertising campaigns is also similar to Google Ads campaigns - you can set a strategy and pay for clicks, for impressions, and you can also use automatic bidding.

More than Google

One of Yandex's main pros is the ability to target your ads accurately. Yandex uses its services to collect much more detailed data about its users than Google, e.g. marital status, occupation, income, how many children the user has and how old they are.

This means that Yandex gives you the opportunity to display ads exactly to those users who are the target group of your hotel.

Another advantage of Yandex is the fact that the competition on the Polish market does not use it. The number of facilities using this search engine is negligible, which is why hotels that decide to start operating in Yandex have the opportunity to stand out and conduct very effective advertising campaigns.

How much does it cost?

The minimum monthly advertising budget for an effective advertising campaign should not be less than 1,500PLN. It's a budget that allows you test different types of ads.

Where to start?

The most important condition for starting a campaign on Yandex is a website in Russian. You must also remember to include Russian language in the booking engine.

In short, Yandex is:

• an ideal advertising channel for hotels that have guests from Russia or would like to start advertising on the Russian market,
• a great option for resorts, hotels by the sea, in the mountains, as well as in Gdańsk and Warsaw,
• more than Google - enables accurate targeting and your competition mostly does not use it yet,
• an affordable option - to start advertising on the Russian market, all you have to do is have a website in Russian and an advertising budget of at least 1,500PLN.