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.

Escapia has published “Vacation Rental Market Trends” for the First Quarter 2009.  This is worth reading twice!  I recommend you download.  This data should provide a helpful industry comparison point for vacation rental managers… and their online marketing strategies should benefit.

The report compares vacation rental bookings for 2009 to 2008. Some regional breakdowns are included.  Clearly, the start of 2009 was brutal for many.  Noteworthy:

• Rentals (Gross Bookings) down 25% in February compared to Feb 2008
• Rentals in Rockies down almost 40% (Jan 2009 vs Jan 2008)
• Last Minute bookings up 14% in February

The report also breaks down sources of business with some great industry statistic:

• 41% of all booking sourced to web
• “2/3rds of all the new guest that vacation rental managers find who don’t come from their owners are finding their vacation homes on the web.”

Other tidbits in the 10 page report that stand out:

• Demise of print and direct mail
• Low bookings from email (from failure to track?)
• High importance of listing homes on 3rd party sites
• VRMs generally enjoyed good reviews from guests

After reading through this marketing trend report a few times I am struck by how rare data and research like this is made available to the rental agency market.  Thanks Escapia!

From an online marketing strategy viewpoint, a few thoughts come to mind: [Read more...]

Peter Yesawich had some interesting data in his March Insights report at the Ypartnership Blog.  There is bullish data on people planning to take a trip.  That is nice to see.  He shares some data about how consumers are still planning travel BUT are looking to spend less money.   Here is how consumers plan on saving money:

• Use booking packages to save money
• Stay shorter
• Comparison shop
• Take more daytrips.

There are many challenges here:

• How do you convince your guests to lengthen their stay?
• Do you want to cater to shorter stays?
• Do you have a compelling packages that help your guests save money?
• Are you willing to discount?

Also, keeping in mind the recent post about the shrinking booking window: Do last minute packages and discounts make sense?

These are tough questions for many clients.  There is a general resistance to giving consumers what they want.  Resort managers are rightly fearful of  teaching guests to look for deals, at the last minute for shorter stays.  IF you do decide to start playing this game, build your strategy around giving consumers what they want: packages, discounts and shorter stays booked at the last minute.