Search Marketing World 2008: Travel Industry & Searchd
Teddie Cowell - Neutralize
80% of UK consumers research online before they book a hotel or airline ticket
Travel keywords have trends - they are very cyclical "holidays", "hotels", "flights" pretty much share the same highs and lows
Because of this flow, the down town being in the later fall, Sept. - November is the better time to have site revamps, etc.
The Search Long tail in travel is extremely long, but the importance is on "destination"
Therefore, every page on your site becomes a long tail landing page
Provide a long term stable site for people to visit
The future of Travel - Mobile Search
Teddi shows a possible mockup of what a Googl Travel Portal might look like
Liana "Li" Evans - KeyRelevance.com & SearchMarketingGurus.com
Online marketing for the travel industry is expanding beyond just search
Why care? Traffic from different sources, Buzz/PR/WOM, Additional Search Engine Rankings, Help to Minimize "negative", Engagement of Customers
Social Ratings & Reviews - very important for Travel Industry
Shows Trip Advisor - Dublin City Page, then shows hotel example with negative reviews
Shows that example in the search engine results - Trip advisor's page for the example comes up 1st
Demonstrates the power of Yelp - article about the shop that has "no Yelpers allowed"
But it doesn't stop at Ratings & Reviews - Blogs, Photos, Videos, Forums, Etc.
Blogs - two blog showing in top five for a search on local Dublin, Ireland Pub
Videos - play in search results on both Google and Yahoo - if you have them optimize them
Photos - shows example where photos are of a hotel, but they aren't owned by the hotel
Summary - Don't abandon PPC & SEO for social media - use them in a combined online marketing strategy. Experienced professionals should be helping you plan a social media & search strategy. Lastly know where your audience is.... and remember Online marketing is no longer just about 10 blue links & #1 Rankings
Nick Walsh - Net Affinity
Focus on hotels for his presentation
Ask the following - why should a hotel do a search marketing strategy
- Decreases relliance on 3rd party booking sites
- Improves Profitability, Sales, and Revenue Management
- Own customer relationship
- decreases dependence on other types of advertising
Consider:
- Ensure you have an intuitive and attractive site
- pricing strategy is lined up with competition
- Scalable supply for all booking dates
- both a CPC & SEO presence
- Tracking everything on your website
- embrace review websites and action responses internally
- embrace localization, know your market
Usability:
- High Resolution Photos - make the investment
- Visible interated booking engine
- cross sell midweek packages
- copy for search engines (at least three paragraphs)
- midterm promos and events
- incentive to give email address
The travel industry has long been somewhat a different type of animal when it comes to SEM. With all of the third party sites competing with the actual property, the property that wants to succeed online must play smart and hard. There were some great points in this article.
Posted by: Michelle Herrin | April 04, 2008 at 09:17 AM