Online Travel Query Content is Changing

Last week we published a report on the Travel sector looking at how consumer search behavior has changed. I will highlight a couple of interesting findings from the report on this blog. In this first of two posts, I want to talk about how query content is changing.

One important change we noted in query content was a rise in branded searches. I looked at the top 300 search terms sending visits to Travel websites and found that more than three-quarters - 77% - of visits from these queries were from branded search terms such as “hilton hotels” or “expedia” in the four weeks ending April 26, 2008.

The following chart illustrates the dominance of branded searches.

As you can see, the largest chunk of branded searches were searches for inventory owners, such as airlines and hotels, and map websites, such as MapQuest and Google Maps. The share of visits to Travel websites from branded queries rose 6 percent in the past year indicating that travel consumers are increasingly brand loyal and that consumers are using search engines as navigational aids rather than to discover new websites.

At the same time we found a 12% decrease in generic searches, such as “driving directions” and “cheap airline tickets”, and a 26 percent decrease in searches for specific destinations, such as “disneyland” and “las vegas”, in the four weeks ending April 26, 2008.

Mapping websites and meta-search engines are seeing the biggest gains. Searches for map websites accounted for 32% of visits from Search Engines to Travel websites, up 13 percent year-on-year. Meta-search websites have experienced a 40 percent increase in Internet searches year-on-year (albeit from a low base).

I mentioned above an increase in searches for specific destinations. This is the other change in query content I wanted to highlight. In the report we look at which destinations are gaining and losing. I can't go into detail here (without going on with too many stats) but I will mention that Americans are planning to stay close to home this year with searches for theme parks gaining and international destinations decreasing.

So, see you all at Six Flags?

You can request the full report from our home page.

Heather Hopkins
Heather Hopkins is a Senior Online Market Analyst for the Hitwise Global Research Team.

In this role, Heather analyzes the trends affecting businesses online and works with Hitwise clients to identify opportunities and threats to online business growth. Heather writes regular Insight Reports on the gambling, travel, search and retail sector, covering affiliate marketing, search, and audience profiling. She is a regular speaker at industry conferences and is quoted regularly in trade publications, including NMA and Marketing as well as the dailies including the Financial Times, the Evening Standard, and the Telegraph.

Prior to joining Hitwise, Heather was a Vice President with Dalbar, a market research firm in Boston, Massachusetts and Toronto, Ontario.

About Hitwise | Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,400 clients around the world with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers. Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search and conversion behavior of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into an easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement and report on a range of online marketing programs. Hitwise, a subsidiary of Experian (FTS: EXPN) operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at Hitwise.