IN 2017 TRAVEL A Digital Marketing Perspective - Hitwise
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TRAVEL IN 2017 A Digital Marketing Perspective Getting more out of your online data sets
Introduction British travel companies face an array of challenges and opportunities in 2017. Whilst consumer confidence held up well last year, uncertainty around Brexit, Trump’s presidency and currency fluctuations have led many to remain cautious for the year ahead. New digital platforms continue to challenge traditional business models; Airbnb keeps hoteliers on their toes, and the rise of aggregator and peer review sites create additional complexity for airlines and travel agents. As a result, travel companies are becoming more sophisticated with their customer data, social media and data-driven decision making. In this report, we detail key shifts and trends in online behaviour across the travel & tourism industry, and provide tactics for digital marketers to act on these findings. We focus on the following groups: airlines, hoteliers, online travel agents (OTAs) and aggregators, and detail how these players can get more out of their online data sets.
1
Use Video
Intelligence
Track & Target Travel Audiences
2
Get More
Out of Your Affiliates
Benchmark Traffic & Audience Quality
3
Creative Ways to
Grow Market Share
By Route & Destination
Travel Report 4
1 Use Video Intelligence Track & Target Travel Audiences Video has been a hot topic in the travel & tourism industry in the past few years. According to Cisco VNI, video is predicted to account for 79% of global internet traffic by 2020. YouTube data also shows that people are watching travel videos more than ever before, up 118% year-on-year in 2015. Tracking YouTube search behaviour reveals emerging destination trends, and provides key insights for targeting travel audiences.
Video Searches Searches within video platforms provide an indicator
of emerging (and declining) destinations. For this
Reveal Rising peak season* (calculated as the 30 days from Boxing
Day), destinations associated with adventure and
Destinations unique experiences have had incredible growth on
YouTube, such as Iceland and Vietnam.
Youtube Internal Search Share:
Top Growth Destinations Ranked by Relative Difference
Peak 2015/2016
Peak 2016/2017
118 %
Relative Difference
75% 72%
60%
50% 50% 50%
Iceland Vietnam Sri Lanka Thailand Canada Philippines Norway
* Peak 15/16 = Defined as 30 days from Boxing Day 2015. Peak 16/17 = Defined as 30 days from Boxing Day 2016.
Travel report 6YouTube Searches
In terms of keyword optimisation, search
behaviours on YouTube differ largely to that
Skew Shorter Than
of Google. In searches related to Iceland,
78% of searches are 1-2 words (e.g. “Iceland”,
Google
“IcelandAir”, “Iceland Holidays”), compared to
greater length variation on Search Engines (e.g.
“Best Time to Visit Iceland”, “Whale Watching
Iceland”).
›› 1-2 word
searches are more
often used on
YouTube, compared Iceland-Related Searches:
to longer search
strings Number of Words on YouTube vs. All Search Engines
Youtube Share
47 %
Search Engine Share
31 %
24% 26 %
18% 16% 16% 16%
5%
1%
1 word 2 words 3 words 4 words 5 words
Video can also be used to better understand and
engage audiences. On YouTube, travel companies Profile Subscribers
can profile their subscribers and analyse the types
of content that drive subscriptions to their to Drive More
Traffic From
channel. This tactic seems to be successfully
implemented by top aggregators, such as
YouTube
Booking.com and Skyscanner, which have seen the
largest rise in traffic.
Traffic from Youtube:
Top Aggregators Ranked by Share
Peak 2015/2016
Peak 2016/2017
Relative Difference
59%
42%
31 % 27%
11%
Travel Report 72 Get More Out of Your Affiliates Benchmark Traffic & Audience Quailty Most travel brands benchmark affiliate performance by tracking the percentage (or volume) of traffic they get from their affiliates over a given period. The next level of affiliate benchmarking is to understand the quality of the audience coming from each affiliate, and the affiliate performance of your competition.
Measure Who Drives Hotels.com vs. Booking.com:
Audience sizing opportunity
More “Converting”
Traffic
To illustrate this point, we look at the battle
between aggregators, Hotels.com and &
Booking.com, and compare audiences that 197,708 3,127,912
are driven by Trivago. We look only at the people people
audiences who went on to convert on these
345,565
people
aggregator sites.
Hotels.com vs. Booking.com:
Converting traffic
Both aggregators have similar
6.1 % conversion rates of 4-5% (i.e.
proportion of visitors who hit the
5.4%
4.6% booking confirmation page),
4.4% although Booking.com is more
4.1 %
3.6 % reliant on Trivago for converting
traffic than Hotels.com is. This would
be good news to Hotels.com, who
has a higher proportion of traffic
from direct / non-affiliate channels.
Any Direct (non-referral) Trivago
Travel report 9Identify The Unique Upon analysing the audiences behind the
converting traffic, you see that Hotels.com
Attributes of
actually taps into a different audience through
Trivago. Their converting Trivago audience is
Your Converting
skewed toward females (53% vs. Direct – 42%)
and captures a younger profile of 18-24 years old
Audience
(13% vs. Direct – 9%).
Hotels.com:
Trivago vs. Direct Converting Audience
Gender Split
Female Male Female Male
53.4 % 46.6 % 41.9% 58.1%
Trivago Converters Direct/Non-referral Converters
Age Split
33 % Trivago Converters
Direct/Non-referral Converters
25 % 24%
21 % 22%
19% 18%
16%
13 %
9%
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+
With this insight, Hotels.com could then assess This can help them determine whether to
the ROI of their converting Trivago audience, continue or grow their partnership with Trivago,
while keeping Booking.com’s affiliate strategy in in order to open up to new or untapped
mind. audiences.
Travel report 103 Creative Ways to Grow Market Share By Route & Destination With a 51% rise in visits to sites like Skyscanner and Trivago over the past 3 years, it’s clear that more travellers are using aggregators across all stages of their pathway to purchase. Understanding users’ journey from search to route selection can offer both the supplier and aggregator the opportunity to capture new market share.
Track Your Route
Take Skyscanner as an example. Airlines and
OTAs could track their market share by route. For
Market Share From
instance, airlines and OTAs received an even share
of re-directed traffic from Skycanner for London-
Aggregator Sites
to-Orlando searches, with Thomson Airways and
BudgetAir leading the way.
Skyscanner “London-to-Orlando” Route
Share of Redirected Traffic
Airline = 49% Share
Thomson Airways
Delta
Air France
Norwegian
Cook Airlines
RyanAir
British Airways
Virgin Atlantic
Easyjet
Travel Agent = 51% Share
BudgetAir
GotoGate
Netflights.com
Travelup
TravelTrolley
Carlton Leisure
Tripsta
Omegaflightsore.com
Travel report 12“Route Flexibility” Offers Opportunity
to Capture Market Share
An airline or OTA with low market share for the London-to-Orlando route, such as Omega Flight Store
in the previous example, may decide to look into new route opportunities.
How could they go about that? When we track the user journey from search to actual route selection,
we find there is often quite a bit of “route flexibility”. Depending on a number of factors, such as price
or flight time, a user’s original search may differ from the route they ultimately select on an aggregator
website.
For example, of all original searches for London-to-Orlando, only 44.5% of users went on to select this
specific route on Skyscanner. Over half (55.5%) of users ultimately ended up selecting a different route
than London to Orlando—many were willing to fly from Manchester or Birmingham, or fly to Miami or
Dubai.
Skyscanner “London-to-Orlando”
Original Search to Selected Route
3.0% chose ‘London-to-
Miami’ Instead
Miami
5.7 % chose ‘Manchester-to-
Orlando’ Instead
Manchester
London
44.5 % chose original
‘London-to-Orlando’
Orlando
Birmingham
chose ‘Birmingham-to-
4.6% Orlando’ Instead
2.2 % chose ‘London-to-
Dubai’ Instead
Dubai
Omega Flight Store could then analyse the market share of these alternative routes, and determine
whether any would be worthwhile to invest in. Aggregators could also use this information to
strengthen relationships with suppliers.
Travel report 13Key Takeaways For Travel Companies ›› Track video search and viewership on channels like YouTube to identify emerging destinations. ›› Identify who your subscribers are and what content they engage with to drive engagement. ›› Benchmark your competitors’ converting traffic to see which affiliates are working well or not. ›› Understand your market share on aggregator sites, as granular as route or destination level. ›› Identify new opportunities by tracking not only popular route searches, but alternate route variations selected on aggregator sites.
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