Now posted: The Customer Journey for Online Travel

The Nielson study, The Customer Journey for Online Travel, is now available here.

About the study: This year we revisited the Customer Journey for Online Travel in the UK. Nielsen used its NetView metered panel to monitor travel research, quotation and purchase behaviour of 50,000 UK panelists from January to March, 2010.


Posted by Nate Bucholz, UK Travel Industry Manager, Google

Customer Journey For Online Travel

This year we revisited* the Customer Journey for Online Travel in the UK. Nielsen used their NetView metered panel to monitor travel research, quotation and purchase behaviour of 50,000 UK panelists in the key sales period, January to March (2010).

We analysed:
· The journey and profile of a purchaser beyond 1st transaction

· The role of paid and natural search, brand and generic keywords on one's propensity to book

· The relationship between search, research, product and review sites in the journey path

We will be releasing the information next Wednesday 1st December and holding a webinar between 4-5pm to present the findings and talk through the data. Nielsen will be on hand to address any methodology questions.

Name: UK Online Travel: The Customer Journey 2010

Start time: 12/01/2010 4:00 PM
End time: 12/01/2010 5:00 PM

Registration Link: https://googleemea.connectsolutions.com/e31836066/event/

We urge you to register before the event as we ask for adwords account information.

Please do join us!
The UK Google Travel Team

*We first looked at the customer journey with Comscore in 2007, both we and our clients have been referencing those finding ever since.

Posted by Sarah McDonald, Senior Industry Manager, Travel Team

All You Want For Christmas

The Google Travel team's latest whitepaper is now available! All You Want For Christmas looks at the increasing importance of December to the online travel market, the change in the way people search for travel products during this period and the effect of the extended January peak. We hope that the paper will help travel advertisers plan more effectively for what is the busiest period of the year.

Please click here for the latest paper.

Posted by Michael Wicks, Industry Analyst, Travel Team.

easyJet shares mobile success at Google's Think Mobile

Think Mobile, Google's annual event dedicated to the mobile advertising (R)evelution took place recently at the Royal Opera House in London. If you didn't make it in person, fear not! You can find the presentations on the
Think Mobile YouTube channel.

As we've said in other blog postings, we keep hearing great mobile success stories from Travel advertisers. One such story comes from easyJet, which saw a return of $11 for ever $1 spent on mobile; this is higher than their return on desktop search ads.

In the video below, easyJet UK Marketing Manager, Katie Stitson, speaks about the approach, testing methodology and results achieved.



Posted by Nate Bucholz, Industry Manager, Travel

Jane Butler, Google's managing director for travel in the US, recently wrote a guest post for tnooz regarding remarketing display ads. Here in the UK, we've also seen travel advertisers achieve great results with display remarketing and the points below are as relevant in Europe as they are in the US.

Case study: How display ad Remarketing works in travel

I’ve been working at the intersection of travel and online marketing for almost 15 years now and while many things have changed, one thing has not.

Travel marketers continue to produce some of the most innovative and effective online campaigns across all industries.

Years ago, travel marketers were some of the true pioneers of search marketing; they were among the first to use advanced bidding systems and scale these programs as robust marketing and distribution channels.

“What would travel marketers do?” was a frequently asked question in marketing circles (though not a frequently worn “WWTMD” bracelet, despite my best efforts), and I spent a lot of time explaining to others how best practices from travel could be lessons for other industries as well.

Today, we’re seeing travel marketers apply their online savvy to non-search channels too. Display advertising is one area that is currently popping and not surprisingly, travel has again become the category to watch.

So, you may be asking yourself, what’s working and how do I get in on it?

Discussing display is a bit like discussing travel – it’s a broad category and there’s a whole lot going on.

For the purposes of this piece, I’ll look at one display product, called Remarketing, and one way a travel marketer, IHG (Intercontinental Hotels Group), found it to be useful.

But first things first: what, or more specifically, where, is display?

Display ads on any service, but in our case, from Google (such as rich-media, banners, video, text, and more) are served on the Google Display Network, Google’s network of over one million AdSense partner and Ad Exchange sites across the web. Users may see display ads on both 3rd party websites, and/or Google-owned sites, like YouTube.

Remarketing allows marketers to re-engage users who’ve previously visited their websites as they browse sites across the network. Advertisers, including a large number of travel companies, are finding Remarketing campaigns to be very effective and they’re investing more in them.

Remarketing also benefits users, as they may see more special discounts and offers – cheap flights or hotel deals, for example — from sites they’ve previously shown an interest in.

For those users who don’t want to see these ads, our Ads Preferences Manager provides granular privacy controls and an easy way to opt-out. Online publishers like Remarketing as well because it leads to more investment into display advertising, helps to bring new advertisers, and grows the overall display ad pie.

IHG’s experience with Remarketing is instructive. The hotel company observed a pattern among many of its sites’ visitors. IHG saw that some users would go to one of their hotel brand sites and browse, but would not book a stay.

IHG ran ads for its hotel brands, which include Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and InterContinental, across the Google Display Network, in some cases offering specials to users who had previously shown interest in one of them.

This campaign yielded some pretty impressive results:

Remarketing ads had a 21% higher overall click-thru-rate compared to remarketing campaigns on other ad networks.

Clicks increased by 55% after IHG introduced text ads into their US campaign.

IHG increased budget by 100% as a result of campaign performance.

This is only one of the approaches that marketers have used in their Remarketing campaigns.

We’ve also seen other travel marketers – cruise lines and car rental services, for example – advertise special offers to recent “lookers” while they are elsewhere on the web and drive them back to their web sites to book.

In addition, some airlines are using Remarketing as a tool to upsell online customers (who have already booked a flight) with ancillary services such as boarding priority, travel insurance, etc. The possibilities go on and on.

The competition for travel consumers has never been higher and that means targeted, high-ROI campaigns are more important than ever.

Remarketing is one of the most exciting products I’ve seen in recent years that delivers on this front and, based on the budget increases we’re seeing in this area, I’m not the only one excited about its potential.

Guest post by Jane Butler, managing director for travel, US

Christmas And Ski Queries Start Rising In Late July

By Michael Wicks, Industry Analyst

The nights are falling earlier and X-Factor is starting this weekend. This must mean it’s the end of Summer. Surely too early for people to start thinking about Christmas holidays and ski season though?

Well, in a nutshell, no.





Graph 1 shows the seasonality of Christmas-related queries over the past four years, with the purple line representing the average. Christmas queries tend to increase in volume from around week 30 (late July).






However, as queries begin to peak, the average depth (number of ads shown per query, or auction intensity) begins to fall, as is evident in Graph 2. This is a common scenario across a number of categories; when query volume increases this is often because there are more distinct queries and advertisers are slow to take advantage of this.






The story is much the same for ski queries, which also start to rise from late July, rising steadily before peaking in week 2 of the following year (please see Chart 3). Average depth is fairly stable for ski-related queries, with a slight fall towards the end of the ski season.


So, the lesson for advertisers is that they should already be planning their Christmas and ski season activity, to give them a head start before the rush at the end of the year.

Seasonal Query Trends

In previous blog posts, we’ve looked at how queries related to overall Travel or particular Travel products vary over time, or in the build up to key events.

Our latest piece of analysis takes a look at the types of holiday queries that Google users search for, and how these vary throughout the year.

Key Findings:
• There are twice as many Cheap or Budget queries in summer as there are in the winter
• We get 3 - 4 times more Late or Last minute queries in the summer compared with the winter.
• The proportion of both Cheap or Budget and Late or Last minute peaks in summer months and declines in winter, accounting for around 15% and 5% of total queries, respectively.
• The opposite is true for Destination and Generic queries, where the proportion of queries increases in the winter and declines in the summer.
• In terms of volume, Destination and Generic queries account for over double those of other types in the winter. However, in the summer Cheap or Budget queries account for nearly the same volume as destination queries.
Examples of the different types queries used in this analysis include:
Generic: Holidays, holidays 2010,
Destination: Holidays in Spain, Dubai Holidays
Cheap/Budget: Cheap Holidays, Low cost holidays, Budget Breaks
Cheap & Destination: Cheap holiday in Cyprus, All Inclusive holidays Turkey
Late/Last Minute: Late deal holidays, last minute holidays abroad, late availability deals.

Posted by Rashad Sharif, Industry Analyst.

The Word on the Street - Travel

More videos! But this time we take to the streets. As the summer holiday season is now upon us, our Google on the Street Team have been out talking to consumers about their travel plans.

Last year, 1 in 3 Brits spent an entire day trying to find the best holiday deals online (Source: Greenbee.com survey, January 2009). Are consumers still as keen to find the best deals online now that the economy has shown signs of recovery?

Watch our short video to find out what they said in response to the following questions:
How do you decide where to go on holiday?
Do you prefer to book your holidays in store, on the phone or online?
How important is the internet when deciding where to go?
Do you use online videos to research your holiday?

think with Google: Travel Industry Leaders Share Their Thoughts

YouTube has long been a place to come to look for information and to connect with other people with similar interests. In the same vein, we have launched "think", Google UK's new platform for sharing business insights and viewpoints delivered in bite-sized, inspiring and actionable videos.

The channel has some of the UK's leading thinkers offering their insights on strategy, trends, consumer insights and more. Contributors already include EasyJets' Founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Loannou, and Cheapflights' Media's Global Sales Director, Francesca Essary, and many other inspiring people.



As always, viewers will be able to rate videos, leave comments and subscribe. The hope is that this will become a thriving business community in the spirit of YouTube – so head to the channel, listen to the thinkers and feel free to make your voice heard.

YouTube.com/think

Christoffer Klemming
B2B Marketing, Google UK

UK Travellers go online as the England team returns home

Last week we predicted around a 7% Week on Week (WoW) increase in Travel queries following England's departure from the World Cup.

Latest data shows that the week after England team's departure from the World Cup:
Travel Queries rose by +9% WoW.
Clicks on Travel ads increase by +15% WoW.

The fact that clicks on Travel ads grew at a faster rate than queries suggests that the consumers who are searching for Travel products now, are looking to purchase in the near future, rather than just researching holiday destinations.

These Week on Week increases occurred across all sectors of Travel. Flights and Hotels categories showed the highest click and query growth.

Rashad Sharif, Industry Analyst

Did the World Cup affect Travel queries?

Posted by Rashad Sharif, Industry Analyst.

Following England's departure from the World Cup last Sunday, I've attempted to quantify the impact this year's tournament has had on UK Travel queries.

Main findings:
• We would have expected 10% more queries and 8% more clicks in the past 3 weeks had the world cup not taken place.
• Package Holiday & Car Hire queries/clicks were most impacted, though all Travel sectors were affected.
• If 2010 follows 2006 seasonality, we expect a 7% increase in travel queries this week.
Estimates take into consideration: Current YoY average growth rates, 2006 seasonality, last year’s trends and month on month growth rates.

The graphs above illustrate the differences in growth rates as a result of the World Cup for each Travel sector.

England is Out of the World Cup - Here's the Silver Lining

While we may be dismayed at England's abrupt World Cup departure, the UK travel industry is gearing up for a surge in queries and bookings. We saw this behaviour during the last World Cup (see most recent blog post for the data) and a recent article on Travelmole.com is predicting the same. In fact, one tour operator saw a week on week increase in web traffic of 40% following England's loss yesterday.

We advise you to check budgets to ensure they are adequate for capturing the expected interest. Also, conversion rates are expected to rise as "lookers" turn into "bookers." Adjust bids accordingly to gain visibility for your advertisements.

Nate Bucholz from Google Travel UK

Summer 2010 Whitepaper: "A Paper Of Two Halves"

We're pleased to announce the release of our latest whitepaper, "A Paper Of Two Halves". Throughout the paper, we've highlighted insights on last year's query behaviour and have provided data which will hopefully help Travel advertisers plan for the summer ahead. We welcome any feedback on the paper and hope, as ever, that it proves insightful.

Please find the whitepaper at this link

Posted by Jonny Cranmer, Industry Analyst.

easyJet finds success with Google mobile advertising

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly popular and essential in today’s fast-moving society. easyJet is one of the first airlines to capitalise on the rapid growth in mobile traffic in 2010, as demonstrated in the case study attached. The low cost carrier set up a mobile account this February, yielding strong results. The CTRs for their non-branded Adwords terms were six times higher for their mobile campaign than their desktop campaign, with a return on investment of 11:1, i.e. £11 return for every £1 spent. Interestingly, 38% of bookings on mobile were for flights that departed within 10 days versus 13% for desktop. easyJet’s marketing manager, Katie Stitson, comments that “the airline experienced “100s of bookings a month from mobile devices.”

With a website adapted specifically for use on the mobile, easyJet is likely to experience even greater returns. Katie says that “the campaign has confirmed that there is a strong demand for mobile internet – and it’s increasing at a substantial rate. The results will definitely have an impact on the future of the brand’s online development. After the success of Google mobile ads, we now plan to develop a mobile version of our new easyJet.com website.”

For further details please find the case study at this link.

Posted by Jo Webber, Account Strategist

Travelodge Finds Success With Youtube

The Travelodge Ireland case study outlines the hotel chain’s pioneering use of YouTube advertising. What began as a novel advertising experiment has become a cornerstone of Travelodge’s seasonal marketing campaigns. Combining Google Analytics, YouTube and Google AdWords, Travelodge Ireland gathered the information to prove that YouTube users remember the ads they see on YouTube.

The case study outlines how organic searches for Travelodge terms have grown significantly since advertising began on YouTube, the sheer volume of impressions driving brand recall. Also cost-per-click in many campaigns was up to 57% cheaper than on relevant search keywords. Conversion rates and particularly view-through conversion rates performed very well.

For further details and statistics, please refer to the case study.

By Tomas Burke

Volcanic Ash

By Rashad Sharif

The cancellation of flights due to volcanic ash during the last two weeks of April had a huge influence on UK travel queries. In particular, flight queries grew by 47% Week on Week (WoW), as consumers used Google to find out the status of their flights. Car hire queries grew by 9% WoW as travellers sought alternative transport methods.

To take a closer look at how travellers responded to the ash cloud, we analysed destination specific queries during the period affected by the ash and compared these with the overall growth of the same queries in the year to date. The chart below shows our findings:

The chart splits the destination types into three groups:

1. Short Haul (City): e.g. Paris, Barcelona, Amsterdam etc.

2. Short Haul (Beach): e.g. Spain, Turkey, Portugal etc.

3. Long Haul: e.g. Dubai, New York, Australia etc.

The red columns represent the YoY query growth of each group for the year to date (i.e. volume of queries Jan 10 – Apr 10 vs. volume of queries Jan 09- Apr 09).

The blue columns represent the query growth of the same group of queries, but specifically looking at the last 2 weeks of April which we saw the effects of the ash cloud versus the same two weeks time period last year.

There was clearly a disproportional increase in growth of queries for European cities (74% for the two weeks vs. 25% as an average for the year). This is likely to represent large numbers of tourists stranded in the UK trying to get home.

Long haul queries saw the largest decrease in relative query growth (18% in the two weeks vs. 30% average for the year). Long haul destinations were likely to be less attractive to consumers at this time as the prospect of further disruption to European airspace might make it impossible for them to get back to the UK.

Short haul beach destinations saw smaller decline in relative growth, as consumers have the option of alternative transport methods such as ferry or the channel tunnel, should further disruption to UK airspace occur.

Welcome!

Hi from the UK Google Travel Team!

Via this blog we hope to be able to share online insights and developments in search advertising with all interested parties, but with particular reference to our current advertisers, their agencies and affiliates. Please feel free to become a follower of the blog and receive email updates (click the 'follow' button in the right hand column).

We will update the blog with in-depth analysis on seasonality and market dynamics - for example, please read our latest post on the World Cup (see below). We hope to cover areas such as query patterns, product advice, weekly aggregated metrics for travel activity on Google, and research papers. We will also post details of upcoming Google events, as well as videos of the events.

While we will regularly listen your feedback as we develop the blog, this is not a forum in which we will be able to answer questions or queries regarding specific accounts. If you have any account queries, please contact your Google Customer Representative.

We hope that you find the content compelling and useful and we welcome your feedback.

How will the World Cup affect Travel queries?

By Rashad Sharif

In order to estimate the likely impact of the 2010 World Cup on UK travel queries, we have taken a look at the trends we saw during the last World Cup in 2006.

The graph below demonstrates the month on month (MoM) change in travel query volumes from May – July, across a five year period (2005-2009).

Every year, travel queries increased month-on-month by 2-5 % from May to June. This is expected seasonality as we get closer to the peak of the summer.

The only year we saw an exception to this seasonality was in 2006, the year the last World Cup was held, where we saw a 6% decrease MoM. As this is the only noticeable exception over a five year period, it is highly likely that the MoM decrease was the result of consumers choosing to stay at home to follow the tournament on television rather than travel.

This trend becomes more apparent when we look at MoM query growth between June and July, where generally we see a 3-9% increase. 2006 saw an above average 13% MoM in July, which indicates that interest in travel picked up immediately after the tournament ended.

We then looked at indexed travel queries on a daily basis, to see when exactly travel queries increase from June into July. The chart below shows daily indexed travel queries from May – July for three years 2005-2007 for comparative purposes:

Indexed query volumes in June 2006 were lower than in 2005/2007 – indicates less travel activity in 2006 as consumers watch the tournament at home rather than booking their holidays.

Change in seasonality at start of July 2006 - queries rose rapidly as soon as England dropped out of World Cup, whereas in 2005/2007 queries were falling during this time. This is a clear indication that consumers start looking for holidays once they lose interest in the tournament.

Easter Insights 2010 Whitepaper released March 2010

Our Industry Analyst, Rashad Sharif, has summarised the 2010 January and Easter trends. His key findings can be found in the summary below. You can download the full version of the whitepaper at this link: Easter Insights 2010

2010: The beginning of the road to recovery? Travel query and click growth is much stronger than this time last year. CPCs have fallen across travel products year on year. Monitor your budgets to allow for increased Search activity this year. It is more affordable to increase bids to drive traffic than it was last year.

Query trends in the run up to Easter: Travel queries peak two weeks before Easter Car Hire has the most positive and prolonged query growth over Easter Flight queries peak earliest - indicating primary purchase consideration when booking a holiday Monitor your bids and budgets in the context of rising demand and competition.

Use Easter modified keywords. Easter keywords see high query volumes in the run up to the holiday. Last year we saw CPCs drop as demand increased on these keywords- an opportunity exists to gain cheaper traffic. Top Easter Destinations Recovery of city break destinations YoY suggests a strengthening in the short breaks market. Turkey, Spain and Egypt, New York and Paris among the most popular Easter destinations. Demand for holidays to US and Eurozone destinations has seen large YoY increases.

Sun, Snow and Search In January whitepaper

January 2010 Whitepaper by Michael Wicks, Industry Analyst.

Blazing a trail in Q1 2010.

Last year, travel queries were slower to pick up than usual, due to New Year’s Day falling on a Thursday

· Queries peaked later than normal last year, due to New Year’s Day falling on a Thursday and many people not returning to work until the following Monday 5^th January

· Average cost per click fell immediately after Christmas Day, and click through rate rose during the same period

· Queries peaked on a Monday late in January last year

· Hotel and accommodation queries have the highest relative growth over the New Year and January

Recommendations

· Be prepared to take advantage of an increase in traffic immediately after Christmas

· Ensure adequate budgets are available in the run up to - and beyond - Christmas to avoid missing out on your ads appearing against relevant search queries

· Ensure you have a value based offering to encourage consumers to book early and not wait until the lates market

· Keep your budgets turned on throughout January to take advantage of another potential sustained peak

Consumers are slowly moving back to Eurozone and US Dollar destinations

· Growth for Eurozone city break destination queries has increased as the pound has strengthened against the Euro

· Short haul sun has seen a resurgence, driven by queries for Spain and Portugal

· Although some US destinations have seen an improvement in query growth, non US dollar destinations are still outperforming them

Recommendations

· Promote destinations which have seen an improvement in query growth, as well as those which performed well in the early part of the year

· Use the Insights for Search tool to keep on top of the changing destination patterns most relevant to your business

Average query length is increasing year on year

· The length of travel queries is increasing, as people search for more specific queries. This is a trend across all sub-sectors within Travel

Recommendations

· Ensure you have a coherent match type strategy which allows for identification of changes in search behaviour

· Granularity of accounts to ensure that they are delivering more relevant search terms

· As consumers are getting more demanding, it is important to match landing pages to appropriate ad text

There has been a resurgence for ‘premium’ type queries

· Premium type queries are now growing at the same rate as budget queries, which represents a shift from earlier in the year

Recommendations

· Push both premium and economy product as the market for both is growing at over 10%

· Ensure that you have strong value-led creatives, aligned to premium terms

To download the full report, please click here: Sun, Snow and Search.