iCrossing's director of industry relations explains why optimizing search keywords is mission critical for the travel industry.
Recently, I traveled to Geneva to chair a UN Conference on Trade and Development Expert Meeting on information and communication technology (ICT) and tourism for development.
It's a mouthful of a phrase for a conference that comprised a rather extensive spread of topics.
Broadly speaking, the meeting -- which included representatives from industry, government agencies and non-governmental institutions from both developed and developing countries -- departed from two ordinary assumptions:
- As consumers' online experience increases, they are more likely to research travel information and buy travel online
- Through more extensive use of ICT, the world's least developed countries can capture a larger portion of the revenue streams that might otherwise go to third-party distributors, aggregators and tour operators.
The themes of the conference got me thinking. The fact of the matter is that the issues faced by destination marketing organizations (DMOs) in developing countries are not all that different than the challenges travel suppliers and aggregators here have to contend with.
At a base level, all share the goal of "making winning connections," a theme I have been developing on iCrossing's Reverse Direct Marketing blog over the past several months.
Of course, to think that search engine optimization (SEO) will be the answer for developing country DMOs is far-fetched, but SEO is and should be a key element of any travel company or organization's overall marketing strategy, a conclusion that will come as little surprise to readers of iMedia Connection.
Why is optimizing for the right keywords so important for companies in the travel industry? Several prominent reasons immediately come to mind.
For one, data from a comScore study commissioned by DoubleClick indicates that online travel shoppers conduct an average of six relevant travel-related searches in the three months preceding any transaction, with 77 percent of these searches based on generic terms (as opposed to merchants' brand names).
Second, a considerably higher proportion of travel shoppers (73 percent, according to comScore/DoubleClick) perform relevant searches in the 12 weeks prior to completing a purchase online than buyers of computer hardware, apparel and sports and fitness goods.
Third, for online travel shoppers, 55 percent of the searching activity takes place two or more weeks prior to purchase, making the ability to track the latency effect of paramount importance.
One way to measure the impact of consumers' travel-related search habits on an optimization campaign is by developing visibility indices for a set of industry-specific keywords. By gathering all relevant information on the position of a given non-branded keyword and calculating it against the major search engines, the estimated number of monthly searches and competitors' position on the same keyword (using the same formula), it is possible to determine an index or ranking for each individual travel keyword as well as an overall index for all the keywords selected for optimization for a group of companies in a competitive set.
This overall index demonstrates the visibility of a company, on a sliding scale for a set of keywords, where a score of one signifies high visibility for natural search and a score of greater than three indicates dominance.
A quick look at the data iCrossing has collected for the hospitality sector, for example, reveals that generic, non-branded terms such as "luxury hotel" rank high in terms of estimated monthly searches (close to 120,000) as well as in proportion to the total number of search users (close to 20 percent), but low in terms of overall visibility (not higher than 0.25 for any company in the competitive set).
By contrast, a more specific term like "New York luxury hotel" generates a far lower number of searches (just 1,514 per month), representing just two percent of searches, but delivers a much higher page ranking on the major search engines, with a visibility score that reaches as high as 2.73. Looking at visibility results for a broad set of keywords can, in turn, help to define a roadmap for optimization targets and avenues for targeting competitors.
Capturing consumer eyeballs and dollars is especially acute in light of the fact that according to iCrossing's September 2005 "How America Searches: Online Shopping" study, conducted in conjunction with Harris Interactive, 72 percent of online adults now purchase travel online more than offline. Decreasing margins on online travel purchases have accompanied this trend toward increased use of the internet for travel research and booking.
Travel aggregators such as Expedia and Travelocity, which appear to be losing ground to direct suppliers, stand to gain the most from increased keyword visibility.
As a final thought, data collected by my former colleagues at eMarketer indicate that growth in the online travel market continues to be robust, with 2005 bookings up over 20 percent from last year and revenues forecast to rise to more than $60 billion. In such a competitive environment, no company, great or small, can afford to lose a sale, least of all due to a failure to appear prominently in relevant search rankings.
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