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.