Online travel and customer experience.

1. Online Travel
Travel Planning, Digital in Travel, Essential Principles for
Travel Websites
Kamil Mehmet ÖZKAN
www.kamilmehmetozkan.com
@kamilozkan
Wednesday, December 28, 11

2. Travel Planning
Top ten factors - What mostly prompted your decision to
choose this destination? (Provisional 2011 data - 15,000+ international tourists from 30+
markets and visiting a destination for the first time):
1. Friends or relatives recommendation: 38%
2. World renowned must-see destination: 32%
3. Information on the web: 22%
4. Cheap deal / special offer: 15%
5. Geographically close destination: 14%
6. Travel agency recommendation: 8%
7. Article in a magazine / newspaper: 6%
8. Movie realized in the country: 5%
9. Appealing advertising on it: 5%
10. Heard about in the TV news: 2%
Wednesday, December 28, 11

3. Travel Planning
60% of travel industry marketing
A massive
gurus still rank search as the number 1 way to drive
traffic, according to stats from EyeForTravel's "Travel
Distribution & Marketing Barometer" report.
Globally, organic search is the most influential
marketing channel for online travel marketing followed by
paid search, then good old email marketing, social
media, meta search and lastly mobile marketing
Wednesday, December 28, 11

4. Travel Planning
Nate Bucholz of Google told that 69% of
businesses (compared to 63% of
consumers) plan travel by searching the
internet, visiting an average of 22 sites before
deciding on a destination. Meanwhile, mobile travel
bookings accounted for 15% of all reservations
in 2010, up 69% from 2009, when around nine
percent used the medium, according to Corporate &
Incentive Travel. (Travelmole, February 2011)
Wednesday, December 28, 11

5. Destination Marketing
Organizations
Many recent studies told us destination marketing organizations (DMOs)
are facing intriguing challenges to provide
quality information
online in an era of information overload. Insufficient
knowledge of tourist's online information preferences and
search behaviour has hindered them from effective
information management. A local or regional DMO website should
help to promote not only the destination as a whole, but also
hotels, tourist attractions, restaurants, theatre,
sports, activities in the destination itself. Following
the latest developments on the field, it's hard to ignore the fact that DMOs
need to go where the consumer is, instead of convincing the
consumer to come to them. (About Tourism)
Wednesday, December 28, 11

6. 5 Basic Principles for Travel Websites
1. Look Good (=Nice & Simple)
A visually appealing website is a site that is easy to read, easy to navigate,
follow some basic design standards, and think about the usability and
accessibility of the design.
Wednesday, December 28, 11

7. 5 Basic Principles for Travel Websites
2. Content (was) is (and will be) the King!:
The content on your site is your vehicle to present your message and portray
your brand. Qualitative & diverse information, trip planning tools, attractive
visual material including video & photo sharing applications, multilingual
content, B2B & Press sections and efficient SEO saturation/meta-tags are all
"must" elements of a successful DMO website.
Wednesday, December 28, 11

8. 5 Basic Principles for Travel Websites
3. Engage Your Audience!
Identify your visitors’ social activities & build an on-line
community to spread the word about your
destination’s competitive advantage & USPs.
- 57% of DMO website users read travel written
reviews
- 32% of DMO site users post ratings and reviews
- 43% of users visit travel-related forums
Wednesday, December 28, 11

9. 5 Basic Principles for Travel Websites
4. Don't Forget SEO:
In search engine marketing, travel business is a well known
category which is vast with a big competition in
online marketing. From bookings of flights to hotel
reservations, it is estimated that 70% of all flights are
booked online through websites.
Wednesday, December 28, 11

10. 5 Basic Principles for Travel Websites
5. Convert!:
Conversion strategies are the plans needed to convert a
looker into a buyer! Use of Social Media and
your SEO strategy should all be part of your
overall on-line marketing strategy.
Without one, the typical
conversion rate for a
website is about 2% of visitors. This is not only
about selling hotels, tickets to cultural events,
tourist attractions, museums, sport activities etc
but to sell your own products as well (city pass, walking
tours, souvenirs etc).
Wednesday, December 28, 11

11. Travel Planning
Type of website used by online business and leisure travellers
worldwide to research their last trip, 2010: Travelport report "The
Well Connected Traveller - the changing face of today's travel
consumers"
LEISURE
BUSINESS TREVELLERS
TRAVELLERS
Search engine %59 %66
Airline website %40 %40
Hotel website %36 %36
Websites of the destination %32 %40
visitingwebsites
Travel %29 %31
Online travel agency %26 %25
Website of a high street travel agent %16 %15
Car rental website %14 %11
Social networking website %11 %10
Wednesday, December 28, 11

12. Digital in Travel
A survey conducted by travel social network WAYN for the World Travel & Tourism Council
shows an interesting picture of use of digital in travel. The study, carried out in conjunction
with Frommer's Budget Travel magazine, asked nearly 3,580 people (780 US, 2800 non-US) a
range of questions about how they plan, book and use technology with travel.
Which of the following do you use most frequently
when travelling?
- Mobile maps: 56% (US) and 63% (non-US)
- Social networks: 38% (US) and 64% (non-US)
- Virtual/3D tourism: 30% (US) and 27% (non-US)
- Blogs: 32% (US) and 22% (non-US)
- Podcasts: 9% (US) and 7% (non-US)
- Virtual worlds: 0% (US) and 10% (non-US)
- RSS feeds: 7% (US) and 11% (non-US)
Wednesday, December 28, 11

13. Digital in Travel
When planning a trip, how many websites do you
usually visit?
- 1: 1% (US) and 5% (non-US)
- 2-5: 34% (US) and 48% (non-US)
- 6-10: 35% (US) and 27% (non-US)
- 11-15: 10% (US) and 7% (non-US)
- 16-20: 4% (US) and 3% (non-US)
- 20+: 16% (US) and 10% (non-US)
Which of these services would you try with a
trusted provider?
- Booking via mobile: 53% (US) and 76% (non-US)
- Paying for in-flight web: 37% (US) and 43% (non-US)
- Barcode check-in: 66% (US) and 43% (non-US)
Wednesday, December 28, 11

14. Digital in Travel
Which of the following do you use when travelling
overseas?
- Onboard wifi: 11% (US) and 31% (non-US)
- Twitter: 3% (US) and 17% (non-US)
- Facebook: 21% (US) and 63% (non-US)
- Phone booking: 3% (US) and 16% (non-US)
- Metasearch engines: 41% (US) and 8% (non-US)
- Digital guides: 12% (US) and 24% (non-US)
- Location GPS apps: 12% (US) and 25% (non-US)
- Read/update blogs: 28% (US) and 22% (non-US)
One of the interesting elements of the survey is that the US respondents came from the Budget Travel
audience, whereas the non-US were all WAYN members, perhaps signifying the differences in adoption on
the social-type questions. (tnooz.com, August 2010)
Wednesday, December 28, 11

15. Sources
• www.tnooz.com
• aboutourism.wordpress.com
• www.travelport.com
• www.newmediatrendwatch.com
• www.eyefortravel.com
Wednesday, December 28, 11

16. Thanks.
Kamil Mehmet ÖZKAN
www.kamilmehmetozkan.com
@kamilozkan
Wednesday, December 28, 11