Did you know experts predict that in 2022, the travel industry’s ad spend will increase by 36%? Global travel is beginning to recover: travel and tourism marketers are gearing up to welcome travelers again, especially with the pent-up demand from the pandemic!
Expedia presented this ad at the 2022 Superbowl, featuring Ewan McGregor:
The messaging speaks to how travel is what enriches our lives and those experiences are what stays with us forever.
Travel marketers need to get the customer journey right because the experience starts with someone researching their next travel destination.
The travel customer journey has 5 stages:
- Dreaming
- Planning
- Booking
- Exploring
- Remembering
Online Travel Agencies can inspire, influence, and convert travelers at every single stage. In this blog, we will be focusing on what they are, how they work, and why it’s an excellent channel for travel and tourism brands and organizations to advertise on. Here’s an overview of the topics we’ll cover:
- What are Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)?
- Examples of OTAs
- How Do Online Travel Agencies Work?
- How Do OTAs Make Money?
- Who Should List on an OTA?
- Why Do Travelers Like Booking Through OTAs?
- Why Should You Advertise on Online Travel Agencies?
- Most Common Types of Advertising on OTAs
- How We Can Elevate Your Travel Ad Strategy
What are Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)?
- Conduct research
- Compare prices
- Read reviews
- Book hotel and/or flights
- Rent cars
- Purchase vacation packages and more
Online Travel Agencies are extremely popular because they offer a wide variety of options and a simplified process. They are essentially a third-party service that resells services on behalf of airlines, hotels, car and bus rental companies, etc. They often offer package deals like “Hotel + Flight + Rental Car”, or flash sales for specific dates or destinations. Because of this, OTAs are the most significant source of online bookings in the travel industry, boasting millions of visitors every day.
Examples of Online Travel Agencies
- Priceline
- Kayak
- Agoda
- Cheapflights
- OpenTable
- Momondo
- Rentalcars.com
Expedia owns the following products:
- Hotels.com
- vrbo
- trivago
- Orbitz
- Travelocity
- Hotwire
- Wotif
- Expedia Cruises
- Egencia
- CarRentals.com
How Do Online Travel Agencies Work?
Online Travel Agency websites are easy to navigate as they were created to be conversion-driven websites to let people make an informed decision and efficiently book. Most of these OTAs have mobile apps optimized for easy user access. Here’s an example of Expedia’s mobile app layout:
For example, a hotel can list on Expedia, and it will show up when someone types “hotels in Orange County” in the search bar. People can read all about its amenities, browse images of its rooms, and read hundreds of reviews and more. They can then compare prices with hotel listings and book either on the OTA or directly with the hotel itself.
How Do OTAs Make Money?
Who Should List on an OTA?
Why Do Travelers Like Booking Through Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)?
A survey revealed the top 10 reasons travelers prefer using OTAs.
Why Should You Advertise on Online Travel Agencies?
- Grow brand awareness
- Increase ad reach and bookings
- Test promotions
- Stimulate sales by creating a sense of urgency (i.e., 47 people are currently viewing this hotel)
- Reach international audiences that otherwise would be expensive to advertise to through other channels
Travelers use OTAs to compare travel options 50% more than hotel websites. We elaborate on other benefits of investing in OTAs:
Wider Reach with Less Investment
Better Targeting Options
Accessible & Preferred by All Age Groups
An Oxford Economics x Expedia study revealed that OTAs are popular amongst all age groups, and over 18% of travelers say they use OTAs to book their travel (all or part of it).
In-Depth Data Insights
As mentioned in the previous point, because these OTAs have rich user data, these platforms also boast numerous insights for you to analyze and optimize your marketing efforts.
Online Reviews Help You Sell
90% of travelers admit online reviews influence their decisions. Reading someone’s first-hand experience is credible and even relatable.
For example, if Emma is looking for a dog-friendly accommodation, she could filter reviews on OTA sites for keywords on “pet-friendly” or “dog” and see how the experiences were of other guests who brought their pet.
You can view online reviews as digital word-of-mouth referrals. Referrals have an average conversion rate of 9.5% so listing on OTAs gives you the advantage of driving awareness of qualified travelers!
Encourages More Traffic to Your Website
Users might discover you on an Online Travel Agency and decide to look you up via search engine, which drives more traffic to your website. Users might even end up converting on your website instead of an OTA, which saves you from paying commission. Listing on OTAs is essential for travel-related businesses.
Most Common Types of Advertising on OTAs
Display
Sponsored
Sponsored listings mean you will show up in the top results for people searching for accommodations/attractions that match the parameters you have set, like keyword, location etc. (Exactly like how Search Ads work on Microsoft Bing or Google). You can expect more clicks to your listing than your competitors this way.
This is what it would look like:
How We Can Enhance Your Travel Ad Strategy
Custom Campaigns For Your Needs
As your advertising partner, we will work closely with you to understand your brand, business goals, target demographic and seasonal offerings. Then, we customize an ad strategy, taking care of the campaign from the get-go, spanning from set-up, execution, optimization, and reporting. Our reports give you an in-depth view of your visitors’ travel behaviors. We have lots of experience with seasonal promotions that require turning campaigns on and off at specific times of the year. We work with your budget and provide expert recommendations. We act as an extension of your team, working closely with you to serve great creatives, and run effective, paid ad campaigns.
Cross-Channel Approach (Not Just OTAs!)
Consider branching out and experimenting with other ad platforms to maximize audience reach. At War Room, we can weave your strategies across channels like Search, Display, and Social (and all these other channels). All the ad data would feed into each other, forming an ecosystem (instead of all channels being siloed). This leads to better retargeting and budget allocation and saves you more ad dollars down the road.
Pinterest and Over-The-Top (OTT) are examples of channels in which we’re seeing great reception for our client campaigns lately.
Klick&Mortar: From Ad View to Physical Visit
Klick&Mortar is our proprietary technology that tracks when an ad is seen online until the user shows up to visit your location. The goal is to allocate your ad budget precisely and identify user behavior and patterns. You can plan your future marketing strategy based on the data-backed insights.
Here is how we helped Thompson Okanagan Tourism Association in driving traveler visits and delivering a 9 million economic impact to their region:
We hope you enjoyed our guide to Online Travel Agencies! As the travel industry continues to shift and evolve, you can expect us to update this guide with new insights as time goes on. To wrap it up, OTAs can put your business in front of highly-engaged travelers. Running ads on these channels can in turn increase bookings. If you’re looking to drive more relevant audiences to your destination, War Room can help. Fill out the form below for a complimentary call and see if we’re a good fit!
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