It’s more than just the sun that is heating things up this June, the UK travel industry is set for another ‘golden’ year of bumper deals that will satisfy jetsetters from all demographic and socioeconomic groups. Indeed the travel industry have never had it so good! Thanks in part to the recovering UK economy, advances in website technology, and the proliferation and mass adoption of mobile devices. It has never been easier, quicker or more convenient to book travel online.
#1: Brits spend more on online travel than any other European nation
According to eMarketer, digital sales within travel are looking to be significant in 2015, with an industry worth $510 billion worldwide – The UK will look to contribute $37 billion (7%) to these online travel sales this year.
UK travelers spent £19.6 billion a year on overseas trips to just Europe alone last year. And according to TNS Omnibus survey, more than one in three Brits this year expect to take a holiday abroad, and anticipate spending more than the previous year.
#2: Brits are upwardly mobile when booking travel on mobiles
A study by comScore in Jan 2014, found that mobile traffic represented an increasingly important share of travel sites’ total traffic among UK internet sources; with airlines, hotels, OTAs claiming one quarter or more of traffic come from mobile only sources. Therefore it wouldn’t be unexpected if we start to see more consumer mobile activity this year.
- The Italians top the list of most mobile travel searches, with nearly half of all travel queries in Italy being made on a mobile or tablet device; mostly from smartphones.
- The Brits also search while on the go with 39% of travel queries being made on mobile devices, however tablets play a greater role in the UK than other countries as it holds the highest percentage with 17% of travel queries.
- In the UK, the year over year share of travel queries on mobile devices (mobile + tablet) has grown +3pts. With cruises and flight searches seeing the highest growth on smartphones, whilst lodging and holiday related queries have seen greater tablet growth.
As mobile starts to play a bigger role in the world of travel, advertisers should not forget to target mobile searchers who are particularly active in the Italian & UK markets. Make sure to take advantage of device level bid modifier within Bing Ads so you can continue to tune your bids for optimum ROI.
#3: Brits prefer a mix of long and short haul city break destinations
So what are the top travel flight destination queries across Europe? (Stack ranked by search volume, on all devices across Bing & Yahoo sites):
- Destinations such as Barcelona, New York and Dubai are favourites amongst all the European countries
- Flight destination searches for Italy tend to be short haul focused within the EU, whereas the Dutch tend to search for more long haul destinations
- Five out of the top ten searched destinations in France are also French speaking countries, which plays an important role on deciding where to go abroad
#4: British women typically take the lead on family travel plans
- Nearly 60% % of all travel related search queries on the Yahoo Bing Network come from women in the UK. Those aged 35-65 are also searching for travel queries the most (interestingly an age who are more likely to have a higher income)
- In the UK, the 65+ age group tend to search for travel related queries, more so than any other country. Whereas in Italy and France, those aged 25-34 also tend to search more travel related queries when compared to the other countries. This may be useful when thinking about choosing specific target audiences across countries for multi-market campaigns
5# Greater value CPCs for travel advertisers with Bing Ads
According to Marin’s Global Advertising Benchmark, if we compare CPCs within travel on the Yahoo Bing Network to those from Google Adwords, the Yahoo Bing Network continues to be more cost effective. With the UK being -43% cheaper on Yahoo Bing Network to Adwords, and even -55% cheaper overall in the Eurozone.
6#: Specific and to the point offers makes Bing Ads copy more clickable
Make your ads stand out from the crowd with the following Bing Ads creative ad copy tips. We’ve categorised the top keywords and tokens into token categories and analysed which sub-categories are the best and most effective differentiators for your holiday, flights and lodging campaigns.
- If writing holiday specific campaigns, try including decision drivers in your ad copy so that the consumer knows exactly what type of holiday offering they are clicking on.
- Demonstrating the range of products and services are good tactics to help make your ad stand out for your holidays, flights and lodging campaigns.
- For your flight ad copies, be sure to include clear delivery actions and you’re your lodging related campaigns stand out by including brand endorsements.
- We highly recommend building and testing different ad copy combinations to find the strongest performing ad for your brand and product.
Thank you for reading, we hope you found the insights and strategies helpful! The above six tips are top-level tasters of what you may expect in the UK travel marketplace this summer season.
For a deeper insight into ad copy analysis, optimization tactics and in-depth travel trends for your campaign, download our slideshare deck. You can also find more hints and tips on our travel infographic here.