Unwrapping Christmas Travel Trends Whitepaper Nov 2009

November 2009: Here is the next instalment of our Travel research papers. Michael Wicks, our Industry Analyst, looks at the festive season ahead and provides key recommendations which will hopefully enable you to maximise your traffic. For full details, find the paper here: Unwrapping Christmas Travel Trends.

Online insights for the festive period

December is becoming increasingly important for travel consumers. In our latest in-depth look at the search trends within the travel sector we look for opportunities for advertisers to capture a share of the Christmas market and get in pole position for Q1 2010.

Promote your brand over Christmas

· December is becoming an important month for travel consumers as their search activity increases relative to other months

· Query growth is beginning to accelerate

Recommendations:

· Ensure adequate budgets are available in the run up to Christmas to avoid missing on customers either in December or in January

· Do not ignore the peaking traffic in week 52 of the year

The mix of queries changes over the Christmas and New Year period

· The long tail grows in importance in December; consumers are searching across a broader range of queries with additional modifiers

Recommendations:

· Set up more granular Ad Groups that capture more specific requests from customers

· Test different creative strategies to convince the consumer to book ahead of the traditional booking window

· Ensure ad text has a clear call to action

Opportunities arise from drops in Ad Coverage and Ad Depth

· December offers advertisers an opportunity to acquire traffic in a less competitive auction

· Advertisers who do maintain their investment over December will be in a stronger position in January as their Quality Score will not have been negatively impacted

Recommendations:

· Focus on capturing long tail traffic

· Fully understand the value of a pre-Christmas communication with consumers who will book in the New Year

· Query volumes are indicative of interest, so to take advantage of this evaluate value propositions in copy to ensure maximum commercial return