Online Travel Industry - The Competitive in Search Engine Marketing

Online Travel is one of the largest segments for consumer spending on the Web. Online travel is one of the largest segments for consumer spending on the Web, and choices for where to research and purchase travel online continue to multiply. Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz have led the industry with competitive prices and convenient travel packages.

(PRWEB) June 25, 2005 -- Online Travel is one of the largest segments for consumer spending on the Web. Online travel is one of the largest segments for consumer spending on the Web, and choices for where to research and purchase travel online continue to multiply. Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz have led the industry with competitive prices and convenient travel packages. Those companies spent a lot of money for marketing their brand and increase sales per month especially through the search engine. One Example, Travelzoo.com spent up to 4,867,000 USD for Online Advertising including Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing, Rich Media, etc. This website is listed in top 50 Internet Advertisers by Expenditure in April 2005. The competition for Search Engine Marketing in this industry is very heavy competitive. I would show an example case as competition of Search Engine Marketing by using Keyword Auction or Pay Per Click. The keyword Bangkok hotel" to bid in Yahoo Search Marketing Solution, the highest bidder pay at 2.55 USD per click. The most important for those companies is getting the most return of investment for those spending.

From my research, there are a few major players in this market. The major players are almost foreigners who operate the office in Thailand such as Asiarooms.com, Planetholiday.com. They are not just selling the hotels in Thailand, they also sell the hotels worldwide to compete with top major travel website as I mention above. If you have ever searched by using generic keywords such as Bangkok hotels, Phuket hotels, Have you ever noticed that who owns those travel website? I can say that search engines are key success factor to be success in online marketing. Some travel company doesnt pay attention to other medias except search engine because of the growth of usage on search engine and effective of search engine marketing. A few companies which can compete with them because many travel companies in Thailand lack of knowledge about how to marketing their website. I have noticed they are focusing on website design and program not look at search engine compatibility.

Some hotel in Thailand has jumped to play in this competitive field by investing to Search Engine Marketing, it would be effective than travel agency website due to they are official website which can be ranked well in their hotel name. For hotels in top destinations such as Chicago, New York, The big hotel has paid attention to be ranked well in search engine. You can search just the city name + hotels, the search engine result will be shown their hotel name. This would be generate both traffic and brand awareness because some searchers dont know any hotel name in that city but they found from search engine result, they immediately visit those website.

Recently, the large corporate hospitality company in US has promoted their websites in TTM 2005 (Thailand Travel Mart) such as OctopusTravel, HotelClub to focus in this market.

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