Why such a surge in interest for vacation rentals over hotels? According to the survey, 82% of respondents cited savings and last minute deals as the top reasons.  Other motivating factors for the choice included traveling with a large group and the availability of more living space. While not specifically mentioned in the survey, it’s probable that greater awareness of the availability of vacation rentals as a result of increased online marketing and guest referrals are also playing a big role in the shift. After all, how many of you remember childhood vacations spent in a personal residence as opposed to in a major hotel chain?

Each type of lodging facility offers its own unique advantages. Here are the most common ones:

Ultimately, travelers are likely to make their selection for lodging type based on past experiences, personal preferences, budgets, travel purpose, size of the group and their relationship with one another, length of stay, and the availability of lodging options at their desired location. For shorter stays and when traveling alone, the conveniences that hotels offer are hard to beat.  But for longer term lodging and with friends or relatives who want to be close, but not too close, vacation rentals often provide the ideal accommodations. And if the convenience of hotel room service is a really big deal, consider hiring a professional chef to come in and prepare those special meals in the comfort and privacy of your vacation rental.      

Someone once said about marketing that if you do the right things, then you only need to concern yourself with doing things right. But if you do the wrong things, it doesn’t much matter how well you do them. The question you might then ask yourself is: “What are the right things for me?”

The answer will vary to some degree based upon your specific location, business model, facilities and other factors but regardless of what segment of the hospitality industry that you specialize in, certain statistics about demographic trends in the travel and hospitality industry are likely to shape your future marketing efforts. On a broad scale, these trends are influenced by travel purpose, economic conditions, personal disposable income, fuel costs, consumer confidence, and other factors.

Let’s start with the broad strokes: Exactly who is traveling?

According to the U.S. Travel Association, consumers spent $564 billion in 2011 for domestic and international leisure travel verses $249 billion spent by business travelers, a margin of more than 2:1. For domestic travel within the U.S., the margin is even greater with 77% of the 2011 total conducted for leisure purposes.

According to the Global Business Travel Association, business travel has grown less than 6% on average from 2010 through 2012 as the economy has recovered and as many companies are reporting record profits due to a weak labor market. In spite of this, the frequency of business travel was forecast to actually decline year over year in 2012 and again in 2013. Clearly, corporate profitability is not a significant factor.

So what is?

While there is no substitute for a face-to-face business meeting on certain occasions, many others can be accomplished in a much more cost-effective manner using technology solutions that have proliferated and grown in acceptance over the past several years.  Are these advances in broadband and V.O.I.P. technologies doing for business travel what e-mail did for the U.S. Postal Service? The implications cannot be denied.

For those businesses with marketing plans heavily concentrated on the business traveler, the target still exists but the bull’s eye appears to be shrinking. In order to respond, businesses must dial in the accuracy and effectiveness of their marketing efforts, consider expanding their focus more on the leisure market, or both.

• The click-through rate of paid search advertisements on Google now outnumbers ‘free’ organic search result listings by nearly a 2:1 ratio for high commercial intent keyword searches conducted in the U.S.,
• When people are searching in order to investigate or make a purchase, over 64% click a sponsored result.
• Google has also increased the on-screen real estate for paid ads for high commercial intent keywords. In some cases, between the top of the page and the right-hand side, sponsored ads take up approximately 85% of “above the fold” pixels. As a result the top three sponsored ad listings generate for over 40% of clicks on those pages, and product listing ads 19%.
• Total click-through rates for Google ads on high commercial intent queries are up to 600 times higher than the click-through rates for ads on a typical Facebook page.

Source: http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-google-is-killing-organic-search.html and http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/07/17/google-advertising

Here is an infographic with all that data and more:

© WordStream, an Google AdWords partner.

 

• The Average Hotel got 238 reviews in 2011
• 81% of travelers find user reviews important
• 49% of travelers won’t book a property without reviews
• 53% of reviews are written by women… and women give a 10% higher rating than men when they do write a review!

According to Friend2Friend, travelers are 80% more likely to book a trip from a friend liking a page than they are from responding to a traditional advertisement.

Consulting firm EyeforTravel released the 2012 report Social Media & Mobile Travel, which indicates that 7 out of 10 travel brands professed how social media has not only generated a remarkable amount of direct bookings from social media sites, but has also significantly improved engagement with customers.

The World Travel Market 2011 Industry Report states that more than one fifth, or 22%, of travel companies generate revenue from social media efforts and 27% are planning to make strides in social over the next 5 years.  The report further indicates that by 2016, social media will be in the forefront as a primary way to generate travel bookings and revenue for half of the travel industry.

Source: Forbes: How Facebook is Shaping your 2012 Travel Decisions

Research from e-commerce software specialist Ability Commerce which shows conversions on tablets outnumber those on smartphones by almost three to one.

The study, released in September, on three companies conducting a significant volume of business online, shows iPad users made up more than 55% of mobile commerce revenue while only accounting for 13% of mobile customer visits  for one company.

A second company saw 21% of its web traffic come via the iPad but 51% of its sales while the third saw 50% of their web traffic via the tablet device and 97% of all mobile revenue.

Research on 800 retailers released last year by Shopatron shows the average iPad conversion rate is seven times higher than for a smartphone device.

 14% of all travel related queries are coming from a mobile phone, compared to 4% in 2010.

Research entitled the ‘Beginning of the End of the PC Era?’ from web design and digital specialist Nucleus reveals the growth in traffic from mobile devices in January 2012 compared with August 2011 and shows luxury sites have the highest mobile penetration. The studied carried out on 10 UK and international travel websites reveals some have witnessed a doubling in mobile web browsing over the six months with the top site generating 24.2% of its traffic from tablets and smartphones.

Wave Collapse asked consumers to identify the last purchase on their tablet devices during April 2012 – here are the top five items:

1. Hotel reservation – 22%
2. DVD – 22%
3. Clothing – 20%
4. Books – 18%
5. Air tickets – 17%

Evidence of the results of all this is certainly starting to emerge – online travel agency Travelocity says 55% of all its mobile bookings are now coming via tablet devices, according to director of mobile Jason Fulmines, with so-called “mobile-exclusive deals” generating a “good percentage” of hotel bookings.

Read More at Tnooz: iPad and other tablets starting to challenge old web shopping behaviour and Google sees higher conversions from tablets – cars, sofas and houses among purchases and Research shows massive surge in iPad travel browsing

Travelers are 83% more likely to make an inquiry on your property listing if you have over 20 photos vs less than 5 photos.  Interesting Fact: Only 6% of properties feature over 20 photos (at Flipkey, a Tripadvisor company)

Website visitors are 64% more likely to make an inquiry if your property description is over 2,000 characters (vs. less than 500 characters).  Interesting Fact: 39% of property descriptions are less than 500 characters.

Vacation rental managers that identified more amenities also received more inquiries.  Those that identified over 20 amenities got 41% more guest inquiries than those that identified less than 5 amenities.

This data is provided by Flipkey, a Tripadvisor company.  The data comes from a 2012 presentation  in Rome to EU VRMAs.

This great quote  from Jeff Ferguson, CEO of consulting group Fang Digital when talking about common PPC blunders.

A new eye-tracking and click-tracking study from Mediative (formerly known as Enquiro) shows the value of having the top spot in Google’s local results, but also suggests that social content and signals can boost rankings further down the page.

Mediative’s study of online click-tracking:

• Most clicks went to the first listing, with the second and third businesses getting progressively fewer clicks.
• The fourth listing, the one with a review and text snippets, appears to have had more click activity than the third result.
• The top-ranked business always garnered attention and clicks, but listings further down the page did well when they had additional social content like star ratings, reviews and text snippets.
• When the top results have fewer social signals such as reviews (e.g. London), lower results get more visual attention.
• If your website is listed in any position other than the top, and your listing does not include any social signals, it will be relatively ignored, especially if there are other listings that do have social signals.

An eye tracking study done in July 2010 reveals some new insights into searcher behavior.

The study shows that the search snippet, often the meta description from the site, is an extremely important factor for searchers. It is fixated ovre more than the title or URL… searchers spent more time reading the snippet.

UK based SEO firm BrightLocal recently conducted an online survey of just over 2,000 consumers in the US and UK to determine local search usage patterns and attitudes. They found:

• 71% of online consumers consulted local business reviews at least occasionally, with 22% saying they do so regularly
• Those in the 35-54 age range consult reviews more than other groups
• 55% of US consumers trust a local business more after reading positive online reviews, and reviews appear to have a meaningful impact on consumer behavior
• 67% of respondents say they trust online reviews as much as word of mouth recommendations

More than 87% of travelers expect to take the same or more number of personal or business trips in 2011 versus years past. This outlook is positive, and with the rise of mobile, social and video behaviors, we are now seeing seeing travelers move through five key stages of travel. Here are some insights within each stage:

• Dreaming: 68% of business travelers watch travel-related online videos. Among them, 68% are thinking about a trip.
• Planning: The average traveler visits ~22 travel related sites during 9.5 research sessions prior to booking.  85% of leisure travelers consider the internet their main source of travel planning.
• Booking: 37% of leisure travelers report that the internet prompted them to book, up from 28% two years ago.  53% of travelers plan to increase comparison shopping this year.
• Experiencing: 70% of business travelers check into their flights/hotel with their mobile device. Almost 1 in 4 hotel queries come from a mobile phone.  Over 50% of travelers use mobile phone or device for travel-related information.
• Sharing: About 1 in 3 business travelers have posted reviews online of places they’ve been.