Travel purchase on the net; get searching!

Fear not says Simon Williams from VIPvillas.com. “There is no need to worry if you haven’t secured your targeted bookings for this Summer in the January window.” He refers to recent research by Google on the time it takes for a consumer to make a decision about where to book for this summer. Consumers are using search engines in more and more elaborate ways to eventually purchase holidays. The research looked into online consumer behaviour and found some very interesting facts. The look to book process can take as long as twelve weeks with several visits to the computer in the process. With an average of 12 related travel searches, 22 visits and 29 days from look to book the ability to influence behaviour for active travel companies is large.
The research also revealed the average consumer visits a site 2.5 times before purchasing from it, for tour operators this was significantly higher at 3.9. Only 10% of purchases happen at a first visit to a site and 38% of sales occur up to four weeks later. Andy comments on this, “It is important for ecommerce travel companies to realise the days of a quick hit have gone. The building of a relationship is key to a sale. There are many ways to do this but we believe content is king. Any travel company that focuses everything on price is losing focus. More effort should go into marketing the resort and your particular product to secure a sale. People have
a budget and search on that. If your prices fit the budget then it’s the content that will sell it. That is the key for us.”
Generic search terms also appear to be important in the process of search. The interesting finding reveals consumers only search on brand terms 10% of the time for a first search. 54% of searchers started the process with a generic term such as ‘Villas Cyprus’. This is important to Google and effectively backs up their offering; the chance for all companies to appear at the top of page one achieving impressions. The importance of ‘hooking’ your custom at this search stage is very important to smaller companies. The research found that as the consumer goes on their search journey, keywords move towards branded terms at the end of the process. “We recognised this fact early on in our business life. This is another reason we are building content and constantly updating our site. You have to offer the customer more than one of the big boys in the market place. Hopefully if they go on to a large tour operator they will remember your product and come back to you. The fact that consumers are searching on generic terms details an opportunity to be seized upon by all. It’s absolutely key.”
VIPvillas.com provide luxury holidays to destinations around the world. The company is expanding to open up destinations that offer something different from the mass market.