Jun 16, 2016 | New & Press, OTAs, reviews, trends
18%
Source: Online paid search and display ad marketing spend down in travel
This is the latest statistics on 2016 trends in traffic for travel. Organic search is strong, it is growing at the expense of paid adverting and hugely more now than referrals, which has taken a dive in 2016.
Hotels and Travel Accommodation see More Organic Traffic
Organic Search is the Top Source of Traffic for Hotels Accommodation: Is has jumped 19% from 21% to 25% in March 2016 from march 2015. Referrals are down 27% and Paid ads are plummet a whopping 70%.
Referral Traffic Down
Referral traffic is interesting, it is significantly down; the reason may be related to the fact tahat OTAs and TripAdvisor are pushing more onsite bookings and the billboard effect is note happing as much. It used to be that nearly every OTA shopper would look for the hotel but today that seems to be not happening as much. Perhaps they have grown accustomed to completing the shop on the OTA site.
TripAdvisor once a great source of referrals has almost dropped out of the business model wit their instant booking and links with booking.com. Also the new sharing economy models of AirBNB, VRBO, are negatively impacting the referral. (also see story on TripAdvisor).
The top 25 websites account for just over half (54%) of all traffic in the sector, although their combined traffic has decreased by 18% between March 2015 and March 2016.Tnooze has provided a good summary of the full report by Similarweb. You may also download the full report at the Similarweb link below.
The study covers all major sectors in travel from lodging to flight search and cruising. In also looks at distribution with latest stats on Online Travel Agents (OTAs), mobile and Review Sites.
https://www.similarweb.com/corp/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Online-Travel-Sites-Benchmark-and-Trends-Report.pdf
Get the Latest eBook On Hotel Marketing
To know more about making your website rank in organis search check out the latest book on proven strategies for website optimization
Get the #1 Amazon bestseller on hotel marketing.
How travel has changed
Dec 30, 2015 | Marketing, trends
Stanley Damon emailed me this today. It is a chart created by Moz and based on their inside knowledge, their testing and finally it captures the insights of over 150 experts interviews on the future factors that’ll affect rankings in the next 12 months.
Its a lot of data to simulate all at one time so i am going to send out a 7 tweets on those that I think are most relevant.
Mobile is Hot
I think we all know that by now, but it tops the chart for influence in 2016. Responsive Webdesign we believe will lead the pack as the web continues to gain in performance that is getting close to matching what a native app can do. At the same time people don’t really use more that 5 apps and they don’t care to download lots of apps. Travelers especially are just not going to download a hotel website app, especially as they will view 20 or more sites before they book. Apps are great for special service but they are not essential for the typical website RWD is a better solution for websites if it is done well.
Paid Links fail
What is not working is my number 1 interest. So I’ll start of with the demise of paid links. They just are not going to work as they once did! Google knows most of the time which are paid and which are not. Its OK to advertise, advertising paid links are part of normal commerce; but links that are bought are not. It’s a fine line but, Hey, you know who makes the rules!
45% of the respondents said that topical relevance of links will have an increased impact, while 14% agreed that raw incoming links based on domain authority will have a significant impact on Google’s algorithm.
OnPage SEO is up
It is no surprise that on-page SEO and mobile friendly web design are key factors for the future.
Speed is another factor that is gaining in influence so be sure to optimize your images. https://tinyjpg.com/ is fast and very effective – its also free so drop your large images in and see how they dramatically decrease in size with little loss in clarity.
Social Media Influence is down, sort of!
A bit surprising is the fall off of Social Media. But as Moz says “Social and brand features including Facebook total count and shares on Google+ (both at 0.27) show some positive correlation with rankings, and Moz notes that “although there is strong reason to believe Google doesn’t use social share counts directly in its algorithm, there are many secondary SEO benefits to be gained through successful social sharing.”
Keywords are falling
Keywords are falling in influence. That is no great surprise and we are all looking for alternatives. In our own development we are moving to Behaviour Responsive Design featuring personality traits rather than keywords which are clearly falling in influence. See http://holidays.barbados.org for an example of a new travel planning approach that uses personality to personalize shopping. The Moz analysts noted that “related terms, high semantic density and relevance of the text are much more important than keywords.
Check twitter daily to get the details of SEO ranking factors in 2016! https://twitter.com/irclay
I don’t think it would be nice of me to share the email from Stanley but it is packed with good insights. Check out his link below. I am not promoting it or recommending what he does. He has been around for a long time offering forum links. You have to pay for them and I don’t do that right now.
Stanley Damon,
www.ForumLinkBuilding.com
Jul 30, 2015 | the future, trends
Digital Marketing trends that are changing how e market hotels and tourism destinations.
Perhaps the biggest and most powerful force for change in travel marketing is Mobile, it is simple going to pull the foundation from under the pillars of all the established platforms.
Mobile technology is playing havoc now but when coupled with the consumer changes like the advent of millennials doing their own thing, it is devastating some businesses and many industry practices.
The new generation Z are said to “Wake up Connected” and what that means to travel is just begining to emerge!
global trends in travel marketing that effect hotels ad tourism destinations
The 5 Digital Trends Changing Hotel and Tourism Marketing seem as Shaping the Future of travel by Marketing Technology Blog and in the SDL infographic are:
“Social Amplification, Personalization, Digital Do-it-Yourself millennials, Visual marketing and Mobile.
Other factors and forces are at play including the increasing role of government to control the growing monopole of OTAs as the industry consolidates and the most successful get bigger. Governments are taking issue with fair rate policies and insisting that small hotels have control over heir marketing strategies and pricing.
While the digital trends above are forcing a shift in balance from the biggest to the global consumer and tourism provider – these other forces, like the possible end of rate parity now blowing in the wind, are also creating a more even playing field.
For the full article see Digital Marketing in Travel
Jan 5, 2015 | Social, trends
Fred Wilson On The Death of Social Media and What Happened In 2014 – Business Insider.
social media indexing network 2014
Fred Wilson, venture capitalist and renowned futurist when it comes to predicting winning technology, has a reason to be interested in the future of social media. He spotted the emergence of social media early and his firm, Union Square Ventures, invested in Twitter, Tumblr, Zynga, Foursquare, and others.
Today Wilson fears social media as we know it died in 2014. “Entrepreneurs and developers still build social applications,” says Wilson. “We still use them. But there isn’t much innovation here anymore. The big platforms are mature. Their place is secure.”
He believes that several new trends are now more important and key amongst these is Messaging apps. “Messaging and mobile moved into the enterprise in a big way in 2014.’ He says, and he points out that Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp defined this trend.”
He also goes on to say the “sharing economy” was outed as the “rental economy.” Amongst other disruptive trends he picks crowdfunding, mobile OS, xiaomi, video and he seems pretty down on the cloud as we enter 2015.
Read more: http://uk.businessinsider.com/fred-wilson-on-what-happened-in-2014-2014-12#ixzz3NwiQ6AOm
Also see other post on Social Media Marketing Anonymouse in the Social Age | Brand Engaement on Facebook falls in 2014 | Publishing on Social Media in 2014
Aug 6, 2014 | the future, trends
The Global Travel Boom.
The Real book is China and the figures of what that means is stunning. Chinese citizens now spend more on travel than both the United States and Germany. In 2012 Chinese travelers spent $102 billion on international travel over 40 percent up from 2011, according to Hotels.com. In the first three quarters of 2013 saw an increase in expenditure of 28% from 2012.
Europe too had 29 million tourists, a 5 % growth. It was spurred on by Central and Eastern Europe with a 7 % increase while Southern Europe and Mediterranean Europe rose 6 %. Asia and the Pacific also had an overall 6% increase in travel spend.
South America and the Caribbean were the poorest performers at this time but they too all have a growing market.
But the real news is all about China, which will soon be a tourism colossus,
Here are the facts as reported by the Chinese International Travel Monitor (CITM) from Hotels.com:
“- 75 percent of global hoteliers say Chinese travelers now account for up to five percent of their business. Nearly half (45 percent) say they have experienced an increase in Chinese guests over the last year, with the greatest increases coming in APAC (61 percent). Hoteliers see China as a positive growth market over the next three years with one in 10 expecting to see an increase of more than 50 percent and almost half (47 percent) anticipating an 11-50 percent rise”.
Overall more people everywhere are travelling and most of these the new rising middle class who are exploring the world visiting new countries. Its those Millennials again — see the blog on how Mariotte is focusing its product for this new market.
Millennials
Jul 9, 2014 | trends
This Is the Future of Japanese Train Travel, and It's Awesome – ABC News.
When most of the western world are cutting back on train travel, its not so everywhere. This article exposes Japans plans for Train Cruises, the most exotic and exclusive train travel on the planet.
JR East Japan Railway has, in collaboration with Ferrari designer Ken Okuyama, unveiled blueprints for the so-called Cruise Train. The luxury liner would cost more than $50 million and could debut in spring of 2017.
The design could bring not only luxury, but exclusivity, to train travel. Instead of packing passengers in, the train would carry just 34 passengers in 10 carriages. Two of those would be glass-enclosed observation cars so passengers could take in the scenery en route to their destination. The concept was a “train to enjoy the change of time and space,” according to Okuyama’s website.
Twitter
Recent Comments