Google Advertising Great For Travel Industry

Sunday, June 14th, 2009 at 11:22 am

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 With the global recession showing no imminent signs of getting better those involved in the travel industry must make their marketing efforts more effective. Traditional high street travel agents are struggling as peoples holiday budgets dwindle and as increasingly Google et al increasingly is where holiday makers are researching and buying their holidays and flights. Because of this many travel agents increasingly are turning to their website and online marketing as an important way of generating new business.

Pay per click is fantastic for holiday and accommodation providers as the search engines are by far and away where most holiday/hotel bookings originate from.

Moreover as very often the keywords to be used are very targeted e.g. ‘holiday villa rental in nerja’ the conversion (lead/enquiry) rate can be very high and therefore cost per conversion low. Typical holiday provider advertisers can expect to see 3-10% conversion rates. Pay per click enables advertisers to target specific locations and types of holidays based on their changing requirements. For example i October advertisers could spend 50% of budget on targeting, for example, Costa Brava villa holidays and 50% on Javea villa holidays and in June 30% Southern Spain 30% diving 40% Northern Spain. Similarly pay per click advertisers could promote last minute deals if they hadsurplus inventory or packages they may be looking to sell quickly. Also a pay per click campaign can be turned on or off, up or down to reflect seasonality.

Other key pay per click benefits to the holiday/travel industry include:

- Can target any place in the world

- Enormous exposure on the worlds biggest search engines and content sites

- Detailed reporting tools such as Google Analytics help with measuring performance

- Helps build database for other marketing efforts (mailshots etc)

The most important Google pay per click advertising consideration to work on is the most influential variable affecting conversion (enquiry/sale) i.e. the web site. Research shows that sales via online enquiry are more prolific than direct online bookings. Therefore the site needs to be geared to make it very easy and likely for those enquiries to happen. Also if a strong call to action can be made applicable e.g. “fill in your details for free Spain holiday guide” (this can be an automated PDF or similar to keep costs down) it is a great way of capturing more potential buyers.

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