HOTELMARKETING.COM

The change in hotel search

May 23, 2012 | Hotel Marketing

Since 2004 hotel search via broad queries has been on a steady decline. In most major cities the search volume for “hotels in [city]” has lost over 70% in just the last 6 years. Today, most travelers aren’t using Google at the early stages of the buying process, instead they use the likes of Kayak, TripAdvisor, and Expedia.

For hotels this means the billboard effect is more important today than ever before. It means you must work with OTAs to increase your distribution. It means you should search out all the different travel search sites like Kayak, Hotelscombined etc and work out how to be present on their platform with a link to your site and if possible your rates and inventory (direct to your site).

This also means that your SEO efforts should target very relevant keywords, less is more. Be precise if you are in SOHO don’t just target Hotels in SOHO but even more precise than that. Combine your SEO with your USP and focus on that skip all the useless keywords that are anyways not on the rise.

Separate the buying process out like this: Leave the broad search and early steps of the buying cycle to OTAs, TripAdvisor, Travel Writers. They give the best user experience but make sure you’re represented on these sites.

Take the typology search such as “boutique hotel in [city]” and leave those searches to special interest sites and travel writers. Again ensure your hotel is represented on these sites.

And when the search is more focused ensure your site is capturing all the visitors that are now ready to purchase.

Get the full story at the wihp blog

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