Feb 3, 2015 | advertising, mobile technology, TravelShopping, visual tourism marketing, visual travel bookings
TripAdvisor Mobile Strategy: Forget Ads On Those Tiny Screens, Instead Optimize For Clicks And Commissions – Forbes.
Its an interesting and maybe accurate prediction that the advertsing business model will not work on Mobile. To some extend we are seeing it fail even on the d4esktop as travelers just are not click on links, banners and ads like they used to. They want value added. Not a list or an option to go to another site like Booking.com.. They know about them already.
So TA is putting bookings on its own site. The question is “Is that a value adds” The answer is no. Travelers want help in making decisions – like Visual Travel Planning and Visual Bookings technology.
TripAdvisorss CEO Stephen Kaufer believes Instant Booking will help. TA wants to offer the best experience, particularly on the mobile, which accounts for 40 percent TAs traffic today and that is growing. It used to be TAs mission of offer the best trip planning now it is moving to offering both planning and bookings. He says: “On the desk top it is a reasonable experience. It’s what all of our customers have been doing for years and years and years. On the phone it is certainly more painful because you’re clicking off onto someone else’s site and how do you get back? It’s not easy. There’s more friction in the process.”
TAs Booking was launched in May 2014; it will be fully implemented on mobile and partially on desktop early in 2015, TA visitors will still have meta-search options “because booking on TripAdvisor is just one option.”
As Kaufer says” “We have the most lodging choices of anyone , the most reviews to help you select which is the best property for you. We have the best price comparison. And then with Instant Book, we will offer the traveler the ability to finish the booking on TripAdvisor. But hey if you found a better price somewhere else, you are certainly welcome to click on that and book it somewhere else.”
See the article for more details
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Dec 8, 2014 | TravelShopping
ehotelier – Discounting vs Value Add offers.
It seems shoppers say they like to get extra value when shopping. However given the choice between getting a discount and an added value on a purchase, most choose e discount not the value add. Perhaps they just don’t want to do the maths and a discount is easier to compute.
In this study “When only a Value Added option is offered, sales were 73% higher compared to what would have been expected with a discount.” The study also claried by explaining that “The savings between 30% off room nights and a stay 2- get one free are essentially the same. On a 3 night stay at $100 a night, a 30% discount will net the hotel $210. The stay 2 get offer will net $200, so at $10 less how does this benefit the hotel?”
Importantly it noted that “presenting a guest with multiple options can lead to them taking the offer that seems to have the biggest savings even when it doesn’t.” http://ehotelier.com/insights/2014/12/08/discounting-vs-value-add-offers
Discounting can help increase occupancy, but there are other consideration. It typically results in higher turnover, higher operating costs and lower revenue. It can also effect the hotel’s reputation and impact standards and client value!.
Value Added and Discount Combined – Example
In a recent campaign Settlers Beach Villa Hotel has offered both a Discount and a Value Added tour. In this offer the marketers take great care to show the value add buy the discount and the tours. see the video below.
Hoteliers and tourism companies do not often specify the value of the offer with this amount of detail (as in this video). This is a mistake as shoppers need to have proof that it is, in fact, the best value. Just saying “BEST rate Guaranteed” is not enough for shop weary travelers
Travelers shop around a lot (see #travelshopping). They will look at 20 to 30 different sites and have difficulty comparing between options. The video also helps by showing them other villa holidays options. See details at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GiLSIpNtMk
Jul 14, 2014 | TravelShopping
Why TripAdvisor has a chance to eat the lunch of Booking.com.
Online travel agencies are massively outspending hotels in online marketing and customer acquisition, and their aggressive online and TV campaigns are driving consumer traffic to their websites, away from hotel’s official websites.
Specialized hotel OTAs do not only outspend hoteliers, they also seem to be outsmarting hoteliers with strategies to drive prices down and commissions up.
Prices are kept low by increasing available accommodation inventory with speciality lodging (bed and breakfasts, serviced apartments, hostels) and even thousands of individual apartments that can be rented on a daily basis.
“According to a spot check at some of our customers, we estimate that over the last two to three years average commissions paid by hotels to OTAs in markets like London, Barcelona or Lisbon have gone up from 20% to 30%.”
– See more at: http://www.tnooz.com/article/tripadvisor-bookingcom-eat-lunch.metasearch/#sthash.w1XoZ9mu.dpuf
Related see https://marketinghotelsandtourism.com/4-stages-of-user-search-behavior-for-travel-products-clickz/
Jul 14, 2014 | OTAs, travel bookings, TravelShopping
4 Stages of User Search Behavior for Travel Products | ClickZ.
My comment made on ClickZ “Its a changing landscape – destinations sites are still players and not long ago they were top of search engines and we even had hotels listed. Now most of that space is flooded with OTAs so travel planners tend to get there fast. Review sites like Tripadvisor and established local destination and tourism authority sites still make the first page and they are an import part of the search.”
May 23, 2014 | googletravel, TravelShopping
Google: talking straight or skirting the issues? | Travel Industry News & Conferences – EyeforTravel.
Google says it not planning to be in the bookings business. Its facilitating people to book with who they want says Nigel Huddleston, Google’s UK Industry Head, Travel,
Google controls 67.5% of the US search market, and over 80% of the US mobile search market. The closest competition in search is Microsoft Bing with 18.4% market share.
Recently Google has licensed Room 77’s software to push mobile bookings and more hotels signing up for Google products, so we have to wonder what exactly the plan to do with its steady encroachment of the travel industry.
In this interview Google spokesperson says no to Bookings, but is that for now? What do you think Google plans are for the future, There is much speculation the Google like Amazon business plan and wants to be a shopping site.
What do you think?
See How small hotel are falling off search
May 8, 2014 | mobile bookings, TravelShopping
Articles :: eMarketer.
Mobile penetration is causing travel companies to develop better mobile booking experiences.
The ability to purchase anything, anywhere, at any time via smartphones creates significant opportunities in the travel space in particular, given that its consumer base is by nature mobile.
Travel shopping is often a “lean-back” activity, conducive to the tablet user experience while consumers are at home on their couch. We predict this trend will drive up the dollar value of mobile travel sales overall.
– See more at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1010828#sthash.f89YkDXT.dpuf
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