Online Marketing Data for Summer Travelers 2009
Trent Blizzard | 29 May 2009 | 2 Reviews »
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.
June 3rd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
It’s just like anything else these days. I heard 94% of major purchase start with a Google search these days. Crazy.
June 24th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Thanks for the stats, especially:
“Traveler spends 2.6 weeks researching and the booking window is 15.5 weeks.
30% of travel buyers spend less than a week researching, 20% take two weeks, 50% three weeks and above.”
Although its a difficult year for travel, marketing budgets should be invested (not cut) in getting exposure at the early stages and late stages of the buying cycle.
What content do you advise for the 7 phase decision making process – resort guides, good restaurants, things to do etc?