PPC Optimisation 2008/09 Travel Technology Guide
PPC Optimisation
How to get your website in front of customers
Mike Cogan, Partner, Equinus
The Online Revolution
These days, no self-respecting travel company can afford to be without a website. Travel
websites range from a basic presence to fully transactional with online booking and customer
fulfilment. Creating and maintaining a website is relatively easy and not too expensive. The
challenge is attracting visitors to the site and turning them into customers. There are lots of
travel sites and getting yours in front of customers isn’t easy.
In the UK there are 7,000 travel agent shops and 1,000 air based tour operators. Not so long
ago the tour operator only had to print a brochure and get an agent to rack it. The majority of
travellers would visit an agent and pick up a brochure.
With around 29 million people taking an air holiday each year, that’s 4,000 holidaymakers per
shop, assuming none book direct. A bit simplistic but it will do. Now let’s look at the Internet.
A Google search for “holidays to Spain” returned 2.3 million results. That’s fewer than 6 site
references per holidaymaker. Searching for “Holidays to Greece” returned 3.9 million results.
Whichever way one looks at it, getting a holidaymaker to visit your website is a bigger
challenge that getting them to pick up a brochure.
The most popular Internet activity is researching goods and services, at 84%. Searching for
travel and accommodation is the fourth most popular activity and is the second most popular
purchase, just behind films and music. People who buy travel use the Internet.
It is estimated that 75% of holidays are researched online and over half of these are booked
online with less than 10% using a travel agent shop. Sixty percent of UK households have
Internet access, growing at 5% a year. Broadband connections are growing by over 25% a
year.
So if you are selling travel or related products you need a website that’s fit for purpose and will
deliver a visitor’s expectations. But having a good or even excellent website doesn’t
guarantee business. The key is visitors and turning them into customers.
Search Engines
Did you know that 90% of website visits arrive from a search engine?
In the US, Google accounts for nearly 65% of all searches, followed by Yahoo (22%) and
Microsoft (10%). But in the UK Google achieves over 79% with Yahoo at 8% and Microsoft
5%.
These engines deliver two sets of results - natural and sponsored. Natural are free and
ordered by relevance and popularity. Sponsored results can cost money and are ordered,
generally, by the highest bid price for the keyword.
Natural search is favoured by most searchers, but over 30% will click on a sponsored link.
Irrespective of preference, most searchers will click on a site listed on the first page and
getting onto the first page of a natural result requires a great deal of effort including website
design and content management. Being listed on a sponsored result just takes money, or
does it?
Let’s search for “cheap holidays to Chania”.
Google returned 113,000 results. Two were sponsored results at the top of the page, with 8
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