Compete released some interesting data yesterday about how consumers view traveling off-peak in light of the current economic conditions.

The data was pretty interesting; most surveyed said they were more likely to travel off-peak in 2010 vs 2009, more than 50% were looking at traveling when the deals could be had and the destinations might be less packed.

What does this mean for hotel, resort and vacation rental managers? It means your off-season might not be as quiet, and your on-season might be a bit slower because your normal visitors are waiting for that off season deal to hit their social network or email box. (more…)

While this video is almost a year old, the data about Social Media is still astounding.

It’s worth a quick watch, and a dance party.

Thanks to Franklin at The Fox Hollow Inn for sending this our way.

Emarketer just released a study that doesn’t have many surprises:

Nearly 96% of Google clicks come from the first page

Google owns the world with 74% of search referrals:

Watching trends is searches is a great way to see what is on the minds of the masses. Back in 2006, the top searched terms in Google were mostly about this new thing called Web 2.0:

1. Bebo
2. MySpace
3. World Cup
4. Metacafe
5. Radioblog
6. Wikipedia
7. Video
8. Rebelde
9. Mininova
10. Wiki

Look how far we have come, here are the top searched terms in Google during 2009: (more…)

Exciting news came from Escapia last week when they released their Vacation Rental 2010 Annual report.

After about 18 months of bad news, it appears that the industry is looking up!  While numbers were down for 2009, they clearly were trending up during the fourth quarter.  This is partly due to the comparison to an absolutely miserable 4Q of 2008.  Nonetheless,  it looks like the market has stopped falling and is holding steady (at worse) and even improving a bit!

Here is their month-to-month comparison for 2009 VS 2008 bookings:

This report is a must-read for any student of the Vacation Rental industry.  They offer a free download with over 20 pages of data.

Thanks Escapia for making this data public!

Escapia is an industry leading provider of property management software, bookable websites, web distribution and yield management for the vacation rental management industry.  With over 300 active users, their on-demand software offerings are among the hottest in the VRM industry.

About two weeks ago a customer asked about the wisdom of buying PPC placements for keyword phrases they already rank for.  Good question!

The first part of the answer was easy… definitely buy your brand name keyword.  We recently shared some data about a boutique hotel that enjoyed a boost in ROI after adding brand-name keywords to a PPC campaign.

The second part of the answer was that older research had shown that showing up for both PPC and organic results increased overall click thru rates.  The problem is that I can’t find that research anywhere on the Internet.  So, I spent a few hours looking for new research that would show synergies between PPC and organic advertising.  Here is what I found:

The Search Synergy Report by ICrossing was the most promising research. It referenced a recent study done by Nielsen ReelResearch (which I couldn’t access): when both paid and organic search results appeared on the same page, that site got 92% of the clicks, while an organic listing alone resulted in a click 60% of the time.

The iCrossing Search Synergy took that research further, it also found that not only do the clicks increase, but the quality of visitor increases with more page views (44%), more visitors (41%), and more time on site (39%) and more orders (45%).   The single factor impacting the changes in online performance was the average position of they keywords.

Assuming you believe research… you have to conclude that online performance is dramatically improved if PPC keywords are also ranked in natural search.

I found some other nice pieces of paid search research if you want to do some of your own research:

The Atlas Rank Report: How Search Engine Rank Impacts Traffic: Studied Click-thru-Rates on PPC ads and found:

• Traffic drops significantly by rank.  While your sales may be costing you 10% less by maintaining 3rd
  rank, you could be losing nearly half of the customer acquisitions possible in 1st rank.
• The drop in traffic is consistent with each drop in rank, dispelling the myth that you must be in the
  top 3 ranks.
• While we have focused on pay-for-position search, the principles apply to paid inclusion and natural search as well. (more…)

Google and Compete hosted a webinar on May 19th titled: Travel Shopping Summer 2009 that was chock-full of timely data about the state of summer travel online.

Notabably:

• Online Traveling is stabilizing and even rebounding from Q4
• Consumers, no surprise, are seaking deals, staying closer to home  and more likely to revisit a destination.
• Traveler spends 2.6 weeks researching and the booking window is 15.5 weeks.  Compared to last year, the research phase is a day longer and the booking window is two days shorter… not a big difference!
• 30% of travel buyers spend less than a week researching, 20% take two weeks, 50% three weeks and above.

Bad news for print and traditional advertising:

Slide 25 was interesting… it broke down the travel consumer into a 7 phase decision making process:

• Thinking about taking a trip
• Thinking about type of trip to take
• Choosing a Destination
• Looking for Activities ideas for destination
• Deciding on accommodations& transport for destination
• Shopping for promos or discounts
• Booking a trip

And then asked which phase would the consumer use search for:

These are only a few pieces of information from a pretty informative set of slides and narritive: Listen to the whole webinar to learn more about this topic.