Think Mobile with ebookers

Watch Robert Define, Director of Product Strategy give insight into the transactional and brand aspects of ebooker's mobile strategy, July 2011:

Posted by Ellie England, Account Strategist

Summer 2011 Whitepaper

We are pleased to announce the release of our latest whitepaper, entitled Summer 2011. The paper looks at the potential development of a challenging and value-driven lates market for holiday suppliers. Throughout the paper, we've highlighted insights on the latest query trends and have provided data which will hopefully help travel advertisers plan for the summer ahead. We welcome any feedback as well as questions on the paper and hope that it proves insightful.

Please find the paper here.

Posted by Matt Kala, Industry Analyst

What's your video strategy?

81% of internet users in the UK watch online videos.

On average, each user watches 173 videos every month.

Not only are people watching loads of videos, they are searching for videos related to travel information. As such, many travel brands have adopted YouTube as an engaging communication platform to speak with their audience. For example, Air New Zealand has been really great at keeping their YouTube brand channel fresh and fun, and in doing so have generated over 6 million views of their videos and more than 1 million visits to their brand channel.

No matter what you've chosen as your video strategy, we'll show you 10 steps to doing the basics brilliantly. Please check out our slideshow below:

Your Brand on YouTube

View more presentations from YouTube UK

Posted by Cristy Aragon, YouTube & Display Sales Manager, UK.

The Champions League Final

The Champions League Final is on the 28th of May in Wembley. One English team, Manchester Utd., are definitely in the running to be Finalists. In previous years when English teams have been in the Final, we've seen huge query volumes for the city hosting the Final. This represents a unique opportunity this year, with the final taking place in Wembley, London. The usual queries are for Flights/Accommodation, but this year we can expect volume across Flights, Rail, Bus and even Ferries due to Irish fans travelling to the final.

We expect traffic to spike just after Easter, and the period will be very short (approximately one week). To help you prepare and capitalise on this unique opportunity, we have created a report and also a pre-recorded Webinar discussing the report.

Webinar Link:https://googleemea.connectsolutions.com/p55242231/

Stephen Cunningham, Industry Analyst

Destination Analysis Week 12

Please see the destination analysis below for the usual 5 industries. We've started to see some uplift in many areas, most notably in Car Hire, with double figure growth week on week across many of the top destinations. This is reflected in other areas, but is most pronounced in Car Hire.

Version 3.0 is on the way - this will include updated destination lists, a more comprehensive keyword bucket for the analysis, and Q1 2011 statistics for ad depth and CPCs.

Hostels

Holidays

Flights

Car Hire

Hotels

Stephen Cunningham, Industry Analyst

Think Quarterly

While we always think "travel first" on the Google UK Travel Blog, sometimes we would like to share with you information and ideas that are applicable to the wider community and all industries. Matt Brittin, Managing Director of UK & Ireland Operations for Google today kicked off Think Quarterly. Think Quarterly contains advice and wisdom from some of the brightest minds and leaders from Google and the UK business sector. In Matt's words, "Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It's a place to take time out and consider what's happening and why it matters." We hope you find it both enjoyable and useful.

Posted by Nate Bucholz, Industry Manager

Easter & Royal Bank Holiday Whitepaper

2011 is a great year for Easter bank holidays! To help advertisers plan for the coming season, we have analysed trends in 2010 and 2011 (to date) and have written our findings in the latest whitepaper, which you can download here.

Travel query growth year-to-date suggests that demand from the online travel consumer continues to grow (29% year-to-date), and we expect this to carry through the Easter weekend. The upcoming Royal Wedding may increase tourism within the UK. Sweden had the last major European Royal Wedding in July 2010. During this month, queries for hotels in Sweden originating from the USA grew 40% year-on-year. More impressively, hotel queries within Sweden rose 124% Year-on-year.

We have also noticed more interest for short haul destinations when compared to long haul, the former growing 20% vs.7% year-on-year in January 2011.

For a more detailed analysis, please download the whitepaper. We hope you find the insights and recommendations helpful.

Jonny Cranmer, Industry Analyst