Having read a very informative study, conducted by Nielsen, concerning the customer process in the UK online travel market, there were lots of interesting facts and figures which I felt compelled to share with our blog readers!

The study took approximately 490 travel sites across all categories, and charted a detailed analysis from January to March on their users’ journey, from searching to purchasing. Being an intern at a search agency with one team focused entirely on the travel sector, the study highlighted some very important facts and I hope to explain them in this post.

Let’s start with some basic facts: there are over 28.7 million people in the UK online travel market. Of these people, 22 million use search engines in their customer journey, with 92% of those that purchase using search at some point. That’s a huge number of potential customers that should not be ignored by any travel e-tailer wanting to dominate the industry!

The study delved even further into precisely what terms purchasers used in their journey: Nielsen found that 90% of searchers who purchased used generic terms somewhere along the way. This really highlights the importance of the online travel industry investing in organic search focusing on generic keywords. Even if you have a strong brand, ranking high for generic terms will push much more traffic towards your site with a higher chance of conversion!

Interestingly when the study looked at which were the most visited sites, the number one and number two websites searchers used were Google Maps (by a very significant 14 million) and TripAdvisor (8.1 million).

Two important points can be concluded from these statistics; the first one being how important it is to get your site listed on Google maps. Google has started to display its map listings on the first page regardless of whether the listing ranks highly for those terms or not (try searching ‘Brighton hotels’ and check out the Google map listings to the right). Not taking full advantage of this free feature means you’re missing out on a lot of potential traffic!

Secondly, Nielsen has shown us just how much social media effects a searchers decision. If your TripAdvisor page has numerous bad reviews and 8.1million people see them, this is going to hurt your chances of them making a purchase with you.

On the other hand, if you’re receiving a lot of great feedback from customers but are not listed on TripAdvisor, or any other travel social media network where these reviews can be searched for, you’re going to be missing out on a huge opportunity to increase your conversion rates.

The internet is dominating the UK travel market and according to Forrester Research (2010), by 2013 46% of this business will be booked online, the majority being through search engines. The Nielsen study emphasises just how important it is for online travel e-tailors to invest in search…the sooner the better.

The study in its full entirety can be found on the UK Google Travel Blog.