July 26 2006

Research into how search drives travel purchases

Beyond hype, a consortium of Yahoo!, Media Metrix and Media Contacts, has analysed the purchasing behaviour of search-acquired visitors on travel sites over a three-month period. Their research shows nearly 10m transactions from 7.5m customers. Their research included nearly 8000 interviews and the conclusion are intuitive and hitherto difficult to quantify...

The research showed that only 10 percent of online travel transactions linked to search occurred immediately following the initial search referral, while the remaining 90 percent took place in subsequently. Indeed, some 45 percent of the purchases occurred more than four weeks later. The latency was even more dramatic among those who initially searched on destination-related terms, with 95 percent of purchasing taking place after the initial search referral.

This is not a surprise to anyone who's done some holiday planning recently: search engines are used to research possible hotels and other holiday attributes. Arguably, if you know only that you're "going to Paris" then you're further away from a purchasing commitment than once you've determined that you are looking for the best deal for Hotel Splendide, Paris on given dates.

This research is clearly beneficial to the search engines since it "justifies" continued high spending even though 'conversion' may only be 10%...

The message though is that retailers need to track carefully whether sales today are the result of previous site research or comparative activity. Working with your search provider to develop appropriate campaign management is therefore vital and the period for analysis should exceed the standard monthly cycle and look to quarterly analysis.

Ian Jindal Comscore's press release is available here