# Can ads really target people in the hotel round the corner? > An agency says it can put your salon in front of guests in the hotels nearby. Here is what Google Ads location targeting actually does. Source: https://salonadsstudio.com/blog/can-ads-really-target-people-in-the-hotel-round-the-corner/ Author: The Salon Ads Studio Published: 2026-08-31 --- Not in the way it sounds, no. Google Ads has no setting that puts your ad in front of the people currently staying in the hotel round the corner. The smallest circle it will let you draw has a radius of a kilometre, which is two kilometres across. Google's own help page says it does not allow radius targeting under 1 km, because a location target has to clear minimum privacy thresholds: a minimum area, and a minimum number of users. A target that does not clear them cannot be used in the interface at all. A hotel is a building. A kilometre in every direction from a hotel, in most British towns, takes in your salon, the other salons, the station, the retail park and everybody who lives in between. So when somebody sells you super targeting, what they are describing is ordinary location targeting in exciting words. Ordinary location targeting is worth having. It is not worth a premium, and it is worth understanding before you sign anything. ## What Google lets you point an ad at Read off Google's location targeting page today, the whole list is short. Countries. Areas within a country, which depending on the country means regions, cities or postcodes. A radius around a location. Or location groups, which can include places of interest, your business locations and tiered demographics. Google's own examples of places of interest are airports and universities. Notice what a place of interest is: an area on a map. Not a guest list, not a booking system, not the twelve people who checked in last night. Two more lines from that same page are worth having in your head while somebody pitches you precision. Google says that if you target a small radius or a very small location, your ads might only show intermittently or not at all, because small targets might not meet its targeting criteria. And it says location targeting is its best effort, built on signals that vary, and that 100% accuracy is not guaranteed. ![Google Ads location targeting sizes from a whole country down to a 1 km radius, with anything smaller unavailable](/images/blog/target-people-in-hotels-near-your-salon-floor.svg "The floor is a privacy rule, not a price tier: no budget buys a smaller circle.") ## How Google decides who is inside your circle Google works out where somebody is from the IP address, usually. Where that person's own settings allow it, Google can also use the device location, which comes from GPS, from Wi-Fi, from Bluetooth, or from Google's database of mobile cell tower locations. Accuracy varies with each of those, and Google says so on the same page. So staying at the hotel is not something Google knows about a person. It is a guess made from a phone, and the same guess covers the flat above the chip shop next door and the man waiting for a bus outside. There is no way to buy the first of those three and refuse the other two. ![A woman on a wet high street checking her phone, the local search Google Ads location targeting has to reach](/images/blog/target-people-in-hotels-near-your-salon-hero-04.jpg) ## Your circle leaks outwards, and that is the design Two things widen the audience past the shape you drew on the map. The first is related areas. Google says that when you target an area it may also show your ad to people in nearby, closely related areas that normally could not be targeted at all, because the population is low, or there is not enough data about the area, or that level of targeting is not available. Its own example is targeting the city of Portland and also reaching people in the suburbs. The second is the default setting, which Google calls presence or interest. It reaches people likely to be in or regularly in your area, plus people who have shown an interest in it. Google lists how it spots that interest: terms used in searches, past searches, a person's past physical locations, the content and context of a page where the ad appears, searches on Google Maps, and a custom location somebody has set for their own results. You can switch to presence only, and Google says most campaigns see fewer impressions when they move off the default. Exclusions work on presence too, and Google notes that people located outside the areas you exclude may still receive your ads. None of that is a scandal. It is how a system built on signals rather than certainty has to work. It is also the opposite of the picture in the pitch, where your advert lands on the phones of a dozen people in one lobby. ![A 1 km circle round a salon showing how Google Ads location targeting also reaches nearby areas and interested searchers](/images/blog/target-people-in-hotels-near-your-salon-circle.svg "The hotel is one dot inside the smallest circle you can buy, and the circle is not the edge of the audience.") ## Three things to ask before you sign Ask which product this actually is, and where the setting lives. If it is Google Ads, they can name the panel and show you the screen while you watch. If they cannot show you, you have your answer. Ask for the smallest area they will target, as a number in kilometres. On Google Ads there is a floor and the floor is a one kilometre radius. An answer smaller than that is either not Google Ads or not true. Ask what the click is. Somebody who typed hair salon near me into a phone is looking for you right now. A banner that appears beside something else is a different purchase, whatever story is wrapped around the targeting. ![A lit salon window a few doors from a hotel doorway, the short distance Google Ads location targeting cannot split](/images/blog/target-people-in-hotels-near-your-salon-hero-06.jpg) ## What actually reaches the woman in room 214 She still searches. When a guest wants her hair done before dinner she types something like hair salon near me, or blow dry and the name of the town, on a phone, in the ten minutes she has spare. Being there for that search does not need her room number. It needs four unglamorous things. A radius round the salon that you can actually serve, set in kilometres rather than drawn round a landmark. A campaign split by service, so the money goes towards the appointments you want more of instead of the ones you already have. The searches that look like demand and are not, blocked before they cost you anything: courses, jobs, apprenticeships, free models, cheap, DIY, wholesale. Ours starts with 536 of those blocked. And a Google Business Profile that is correct, which costs nothing and is the thing most likely to be quietly broken. There is nothing super about any of it. It is the boring version, run properly, week after week, and it is the version that fills a Tuesday. If you want to see your own local search numbers before you spend anything, the free assessment takes about forty seconds and tells you what your area looks like and what is wrong with your listing. No account and no card. Our own pricing is £15 to £149 a month depending on your ad spend band, with 14 days free, no commission on bookings ever, and one click to cancel. Everything above about Google's own settings was read off Google Ads Help on 31 August 2026. Settings change, so if you are checking a claim, check it there. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why can I not see my own ad when I search for it? Google says that if you target an area your business is not located in, you will not be able to view your ad when you search on Google yourself. It points you at its Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool instead, which is built for checking an ad you cannot trigger from where you are sitting. ### Can I target a single postcode instead of a radius? Depending on the country, Google lets you target regions, cities or postcodes as well as a radius. The same privacy thresholds apply either way, and Google warns that a very small target may show your ads only intermittently, or not at all, because small targets might not meet its targeting criteria. ### Can I advertise to people at the airport or the university? Google does offer places of interest, and its own examples are airports and universities. Be clear about what that buys: an area on a map that Google has drawn, reached through the same location signals as anywhere else. It is not a list of the people inside it. ### Can I stop my ads showing in a town I do not want? Yes. You can exclude areas in the same panel where you add them. Exclusions are based on where people are likely to be located, so they hold your ads back from people likely to be inside the area you excluded. Google notes that people located outside those areas may still receive your ads.