• Krista Pappas, Microsoft Bing Travel
• Gary Jackson, Google Travel
• Anne Payne, BeDynamic
• Yen Lee, Uptake

Yen Lee of Uptake – “The Long, Fat Tail of Search”

Numbers that really matter

• 73% of consumers search before they make a booking
• They search an average of 10 times
• 86% of leads are generated by organic search (there IS a free lunch)
• Typical travel search is 3.1 keywords
  • It’s becoming more specific: was ‘chicago’…then ‘chicago hotels’…now it may be ‘chicago family hotels’
  • (this means they give us more context now)
  • Always tailor unique content to consumer preferences

Krista Pappas of Microsoft – “Maximizing SEM In a Tough Travel Economy”

• Searchers want more than a URL – they want detailed information
• 5% of search sessions are over 30 minutes…and they account for 50% of time spent on search engines
• Bing is trying to become a ‘travel decision engine’ …experimenting with visual search
• Marketing lessons
  • Test, test, test ad copy variations
  • 18-24 age demographic favors travel metasearch sites
  • Focus on targeting short trips & “staycations”
    • use keywords like “national” “state park” “monuments”
• Keyword behavior is changing.
  • biggest increase in 7-term hotel-related searches
  • expand your keyword portfolios
• Invest in landing pages to support SEO & SEM efforts

Gary Jackson of Google – “Finding the Sophisticated Travel Buyer with Search”

• Economy may be improving, but consumers are now more value-savvy
• Consumers are clicking on more paid ads
• Analysts say search is the fastest-growing segment in online marketing
• Travel queries have increased 40% since 2008
• Search clicks to travel sites are up 35%
• Search funnel: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Purchase
  • Purchase searches may include brand & a date (ex: royal caribbean europe cruise in 2010)
• Continually learn: use data to optimize
• They’re is a strong correlation between travelers and smart phone usage
• 48% of consumers willing to buy a hotel room via mobile (eMarketer)
• When doing SEO, tag every piece of content and make sure it’s current

Anne Payne of BeDynamic – “Actionable Entertainment Content”

• Aside from groceries, the first place consumers go to before buying a product is the internet
• Is your story useful to your customers?
  • What type of behavior are you trying to achieve?
  • What metrics are important to you? (things need to be measurable)
• Case studies
  • Victoria Inn, Core’s Landing, Rice Lake, Ontario
    • Challenge: no online reservation system, most bookings came from word of mouth
    • Solution: creating content centered around what their customers liked most
    • Results
      • Paid for campaign in 1-2 months
      • Quickly reached top of search results
  • Audley Travel (tour operator)
    • Challenge: most important key words ranked outside Google Top 100
    • Solution: content strategy targeted 1000′s of long tail keyword strings
    • Results: overall traffic increased 142% from search volume & rankings; 372 top-rankings for keywords
  • Radisson Edwardian Hotels (UK)
    • Challenge: PPC had only mediocre results; website lacked direction & was not able to communicate hotel benefits
    • Solution: create content that promoted the uniqueness of the property, local events & seasonal activities
    • Results: 2553% ROI in first month; 3x ROI in first seven months
• Be the source
• Be invaluable

Q&A with Panel

“We treat SEO and SEM very separately. It’s like there’s a wall between them.” – Google

“You cannot have a ‘set it and forget it’ approach to SEO. Constantly create fresh content.” – Microsoft

86% of travel leads come from SEO. 14% through PPC. Are you spending 5x the resources on SEO? – Yen Lee, Uptake

“See SEO as a profit center, not a cost center” – Yen Lee, Uptake

“The two huge things for 2010 will be mobile and local.” – Gary Jackson, Google

Thomas O’Neil, Google Travel

Mobile landing pages: designing the user experience

• landing pages are evolving
• 4 great examples
  • Hotels.com/iPhone
    • being first moving has big advantage
    • have 1 million+ app downloads
  • m.toyota.com
  • m.cnn.com
  • iPhone.fandago.com
• key take-away: there needs to be optimized landing pages for the consumer
• not everyone has an smart phone…design for less
• search google webmasters: “mobile seo”
  • search algorithm is different for mobile sites

Mobile search: what consumers are doing

• not usually willing to do more than one search
• probably won’t go beyond top 2-3 search result listings
• they search for roughly the same amount of words…but search less often
• SEO is extremely important. If you’re not in the top 1-3 results, you may as well not even be there.

Advertising on the go: opportunities to reach individuals

• 4 types of Google advertising opportunities
  • WAP search
  • HTML search
  • content network (on other sites)
  • YouTube videos
• understand which apps your audience is using to choose advertising opportunities
• Google provides a high level of reporting options

Krista Pappas, Microsoft Bing Travel

• Mobile is at the center of the digital lifestyle
• The big story is that mobile is huge & growing. It’s critical you begin developing this one-on-one relationship with your customers now.
• Once people start using the mobile web, they don’t go back
• 107% more news & info was consumed through the mobile web in 2008 than 2007
• View mobile as more than just another media buy
• Mobile web is NOT the World wide Web
  • screen size limits text
  • information needs are based on location and situation
  • requires information be filtered so only relevant info is delivered
• Bing is working to give great mobile results
• Search results are optimized for mobile devices
• People may be booking more hotels last minute…as opposed to airline tickets. Tickets require more certainty and search options, hotel booking is seen as a much simpler process.

Start off by claiming or listing your hotel in Google Maps.  This step is crucial for optimizing your local search visibility.

In my experience, even 15 minutes making sure all the details & keywords are correct pays dividends for months after.

Use the map on your website

Many hotels are using Google Maps on their directions or ‘find us’ page. It provides an extra layer of functionality to a traditional map image: allowing your visitors to see satellite and street view, as well as custom directions from anywhere they are.

Google provides a little widget that makes this process super-simple. First, you just search for your location – and click the Link link:

Following the customize embedded map link will lead to a page where you can edit the view, and obtain the website code:

Make a custom map

A logical step in concierge marketing, a custom map can show guests the special attractions in your area. Here’s a good example that Xotels created for the Puerto Antilla Grand Hotel in Spain – it shows golf courses in the region:

You may want to take this a step further and add rich media to the map. A 3rd-party tool such as Trippermap allows you to add your own photos to a custom map – which could work well for custom city tours:

Trippermap

Advertise on Google Maps

If you’re advertising in Google AdWords, your text ads will have the opportunity to display to people searching the maps.

For additional coverage, some businesses are painting logos on their roofs – like this Target store in Chicago:

Chris has a (spoof) tutorial on how to optimize your roof ads for Google Maps.