Nielsen Media Research revealed that travel firms spent 500% more on online advertising in 2007 than in the previous 12 months. One company increased their online advertising by as much as 2000%. Does this mean that travel firms finally realise that online marketing brings in more clients than conventional marketing methods?
Read the full story at Travolution
Last week Google announced changes to its Pay-Per-Click policy, which for the first time allow any company to buy keywords associated with a rival’s brand name. Big travel brands can expect to see a significant increase in their digital marketing spend, while smaller companies, such as online travel agencies and meta search engines find a new distribution stream opening up. What effect will this sudden Google policy change have on travel companies employing the PPC marketing method?
Read the full article on Travolution
Tripadvisor is one of the top three overall travel brands in the world. According to a Travel Mole article, the number of reviews have gone up from 10 million in June 2007 to 15 million.
Over 60 delegates from the travel industry attended the inaugural Online Travel Summit in Cape Town and they were not disappointed. They were treated to excellent range of presentations from leading experts.
Adriaan Strydom of Clicks2Customers and Mandy Schreiber from TrafficBrand gave their insights into the future of search, and participants came away with solid, practical advice. Other speakers included the ever enthusiastic Eric Edelstein of TrafficSynergy who created a buzz around affiliated marketing and Accelerations Claire Hauser who hit the spot with her excellent advice and insights into eMail Marketing.
The event was the brain child of Paul Hobden, Managing Director of Future Blue Strategic Consulting who commented after “The Summit was a great success and we certainly achieved what we set out to do – get the industry talking about the major online issues. We have been thrilled with the travel community’s response.”
Zack Rozga Executive Director at whl.travel, who presented an intriguing case study of his company’s experience in developing tourist capacity throughout Africa, felt “We need more of these events. It was excellent to share ideas, learn and meet so many people all trying to grow tourism in Africa.”
FutureBlue are in the process of rolling the event out in all major tourist centres. Jane Wynne-Dyke, Research Director at FutureBlue commented “We believe there is a growing demand for forums that allow the travel industry to get together, debate and exchange about the pressing issues.”
The summit was closed by Accelerate Cape Town’s Guy Lundy who challenged the travel industry to play its part in building the Cape Town brand and building its reputation as an innovation, creativity and travel hub.
In today’s online marketing world the big tourism brands cannot afford to hide from new marketing channels that have evolved as consumers spend more time online. Bill Marriott, Chairman and CEO of Marriott International took the chance and entered the Bloggosphere world in January 2007, creating quite a stir from within the blogging community and the media. The blog, Marriott On The Move, has been a great success, creating brand awareness, a channel for customers to communicate with him as well as generating revenue for the business.Bill Marriott has proved that blogging can be a successful marketing tool for business. Are African travel business using this tool effectively enough?
Read more at IdeaHatching
Expedia is offering exclusive deals to qualified tax payers, following a recent survey that revealed more than 51% of Americans are likely to spend their upcoming tax rebate on travel or vacation. This is according to Expedia, their way of adding a bit of stimuli to the US economy, which starting in May will return up to $600 to individual taxpayers or $1,200 to those filing joint returns.
A very clever marketing ploy by Expedia - it would be interesting to see how many people actually use their tax rebates for travel or vacation. Hopefully some of that will be spent on long haul African destinations.
To read more on Expedia’s Tax Rebate Packages go to HotelMarketing
Kulula is currently South Africa’s biggest online retailer, offering complete online travel packages. Already generating R1.3 billion in revenue from their website annually. They have partnered with Click2Customers to take advantage of their travel and tourism experience. Clicks2Customers have recently signed deals with SA Tourism and Protea Hotels.
A study done by Webcredible, a usability consultant, concluded that travel sites are failing to provide relevant information on their websites. Issues such as the quality of search, providing a clear results page, displaying the full price of a flight, providing contact details and ensuring cancellation details are unclear.
Only 2 of the top 20 UK travel brands scored above 60%. Given the sector’s huge growth, one would expect top travel sites to use every opportunity to their advantage to be more effective in this highly competitive market.
The latest Wikipedia tool reveals that an enormous number of people are searching for information on travel companies. This is a sign that consumers want as much information as possible on a product or company before buying, whether it is out of uncertainty or pure curiosity, we don’t know. What we do know though is that hundreds of thousands of people used Wikipedia to search various travel related companies in February 2008 alone…
Travel companies must ensure that their brand is being well represented online and that information on their products and services is up to date wherever it is being published online. How many travel companies are actively managing their online brand or have even checked if their is a Wiki entry for them?
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