Steve Endacott — Photo by Travolution

The more Big Data an OTA has, the more it can expect higher conversions or higher margins, says Steve Endacott

Back in 2003, when we launched the On Holiday Group to exploit the changes dynamic packaging would drive in the beach holiday sector, our primary focus was growing passenger volumes fast.

Our logic was that when operating in a commodity market with low barriers to entry where most players can source exactly the same flights and hotels for the same price as you the key differentiator was how efficiently you operated.

In other words, you have to drive the highest possible volume through the lowest overhead.

Basically, the bigger you get the lower your overhead per passenger and the cheaper you can sell holidays for, whilst still making a profit.

In general, this point still applies, however very quickly Google advertising costs became the biggest business overhead and slightly different rules apply.

Google's paid bidding algorithms (Paid Per Click) favours bigger companies, because a key element of what companies pay is their CTR - how many times customers click on an advert compared to being shown it.

Read the full article at Travolution