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.