2010 tipped to be another “bumper growth year” for online marketing spend in travel

A global survey has indicated that 2010 will be another bumper growth year for online marketing spend in travel, with over half of those surveyed indicating they plan to increase spending next year. Of that group, half plan to increase their budgets by 11-50 percent.

The survey of 225 travel companies, initiated by Frommer’s Unlimited in conjunction with TravelMole, revealed that engaging with social media is the biggest priority for travel marketers, followed by search engine optimisation, and content as the next largest areas of increasing spend. Two thirds of respondents plan to increase spending on content. 

Social media marketing is gathering attention and budget share with 60 percent reporting that they plan to increase spending this year.

“We believe one possible objective is to improve search engine marketing performance, which also reflects the fact that unique content is a priority for twice as many respondents as last year,” stated a release. 

Among the other areas respondents ranked as growing in importance are destination content (70 percent this year as compared to 20 percent last year) and addressing international markets with investment in multilingual content as a priority.

In terms of cost per visitor, 76 percent reported a cost per visitor across their online marketing mix of under $5 with 36 percent being less than $1 and 39 percent falling between $1 - 5.

Budgets for online content

Spending for online content continued to track closely to online marketing budget trends this year; however, there was a higher priority on content than online marketing. There was an increase in the percent of respondents that plan to increase spend on content or keep it at the same level, 95 percent this year compared to 90 percent last year. The majority this year (66 percent), plan to increase spending with an increase of 11-50 percent being the most common in this group. Only 5 percent planned to decrease their online content budget this year, compared to 10 percent last year.

Overall, there seems to be a much higher interest in improving the broad range of content offered by travel sites.Search engine optimisation continues to be a top priority for web content budgets this year, selected by over 84 percent of respondents, up from 67 percent last year. In tandem with this spending, unique content has shown a dramatic increase now being included in 81 percent of people’s plans, nearly double last year’s of just 41 percent. Adding destination content was in the plans of 80 percent of responders, up from 57 percent last year, as were adding events content up from 26 percent to 70 percent. There is evidence that companies are looking to international markets more this year, with the number planning to invest in multi-lingual content up from 13 percent to 79 percent. Adding to or improving hotel and property descriptions is also up from 26 percent to 76 percent and image galleries increased from 28 percent to 75 percent.