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The Travel Industry & Internet Marketing

The internet is the major access point for customers booking holidays and travel arrangements.

With an estimated $63 billion spent online on travel in 2005 in the US alone1 - the time has never been better to access this booming market.

Travellers search and book online

  • 88% of consumers who travel this summer will use the Internet to research and purchase their trips2
  • 84% of internet users are comfortable with search engines - and on any given day 56% of people online use search engines3
  • Travellers are computer savvy - in 2004 two thirds of the 98.3 million travellers who are online (63.8 million) used search engines to search and purchase travel arrangements4
  • Half of all Internet users have made a travel purchase online, and more than 20% of adult users are frequent domestic travellers5
  • Many areas of the travel industry are benefiting from internet sales: with 82% of travel bookers buying airline tickets, 67% booking overnight accommodation, and 40% making car reservations online in 20046
  • Following word-of-mouth, the Internet is the most used source for pre-trip travel information (used more than travel agents)7

Increase in Australians shopping for travel online

- Source: Roy Morgan single source (Base: total population aged 14+)

Corporate travel boosts online travel market

  • 41% of business travellers now shop online, up from 37% just a year ago8
  • Companies endorse online booking because it's often cheaper. In 2005, trips booked online averaged 49% lower agency fees and 14% lower airfares9
Travel Bookings Chart

Travel advertising with Google

The Google search engine is an ideal site of exposure for online travel businesses, as:

  • Google sends more traffic to airline and hotel sites than any other search engine10
  • A recent study found that 65% of online travel researchers use Google to find travel sites and information online - more than any other search engine11

The Found Agency has qualified Adwords Professional staff, and extensive experience in constructing and maintaining successful ad campaigns on the Google search network.

Google is the preferred search engine of 80% of Australian web users, however The Found Agency also works with other major search network advertising platforms to further promote travel businesses to buyers not using Google.

Target Your Market

The Found Agency can construct a search engine optimisation strategy to get your website to the top of the search engine rankings, or a PPC ad campaign to drive targeted traffic to your site.

PPC campaigns only charge for ads that get results:

  • The Geo-targeting capability of PPC is ideal for reaching nearby customers in local market travel business such as:
    • Hotels
    • B&Bs
    • Bus companies
    • Tourist attractions
  • By expanding ad targeting to city, state, country level, PPC forms a powerful advertising platform for:
    • Airlines
    • Travel agents
    • Regional tourism
    • Hotel chains

In either case, PPC means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad - you can constantly monitor daily spend, cost per click, and rate of conversion (i.e. sales or leads etc.)

Image Ads

In addition to the standard PPC text ads on search engines, your business can also be promoted in the same fully measurable manner with targeted image ads.

  • Unlike standard banner ads which are only placed on 1 generalised high traffic website, targeted image ads use keyword matching technology appear on content sites most relevant to your ad

Image ad example:


  • Ideal for attracting attention, targeted image ads offer a powerful branding opportunity, and cheap alternative to banner advertising
  • Image ads are charged either by CPM (cost per thousand impressions) or PPC basis - and are often one tenth of standard banner ad price

Transparent Return On Investment (ROI)

PPC campaigns allow advertisers to accurately monitor ROI by calculating the average price paid per conversion. A conversion is whatever you want customers to do while visiting your site - whether that's:

  • buying an airline ticket
  • booking a hotel
  • or signing up to your mailing list

Data is available each month, so you can monitor exactly how well your campaign is performing.

  • Know the keywords users searched on before buying particular flights and packages
  • Know which ad text attracts the most customers - not just surfers, but customers who actually convert
  • Know which pages on your site keep people interested, and which ones need revamping

Ready to get your website FOUND by customers interested in Travel? Just contact us for more details.

1. Hospitality Net (http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4008819.search?query=online+travel+industry+worth+worldwide)
2. Claria Corporation Feedback Research, published by Clickz - August 2005 (http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/travel/article.php/3528131)
3. Pew Internet & American Life Project, 'Internet searchers are confident, satisfied and trusting' January 2005 (http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/146/report_display.asp)
4. Travel Industry Association of America, 2004 Report (http://www.tia.org/Pubs/pubs.asp?PublicationID=57)
5. Pew Internet and American Life Project- 24 Dec 2002 (http://www.pewinternet.org/trends.asp)
6. Travel Industry Association of America
7. Roy Morgan, 'Online Travel continues to increase' - December 2004 (http://www.roymorgan.com/news/polls/2004/3811/)
8. Forrester Research, quoted in Las Vegas Business Press - September 2005 (http://www.lvbusinesspress.com/articles/2005/09/08/news/news04.txt)
9. Get There - August 2005 (http://www.getthere.com/news/press_releases.cfm?id=28)
10. StatMarket, published by Google - June 2003 (http://www.google.com/ads/metrics_trav.html)
11. Insight Express, published by Google - July 2003 (http://www.google.com/ads/metrics_trav.html)

The Found Agency

Call : +612 9386 2100