What channels do tourists use to find hotels?

How do guests who book rooms on the hotel website know about this hotel? According to a survey, 24. 1% people know about the hotel reservation website through friends or family, 20.2% people know about it through online travel agencies, and 16% people know about it through Catway Eagle.

How do guests who book rooms on the hotel website know about this hotel? I have done some research in this field recently. We (some WIHP analysts and I) interviewed more than 6,000 guests and selected 65,438+000 hotels in Paris, Rome and Barcelona as the survey samples, including budget hotels, luxury hotels and boutique hotels. Although the scope is very wide, they are all independent hotels, and the scale is not large, with an average of only thirty or fifty rooms.

We used the most typical question "How do you know about us?" To be honest, I had hoped to get some answers beyond the survey results. We have long known that 90% of hotel website reservations come from users who are looking for hotels on search engines. Our question is, how did the guests find their hotel?

After several months' investigation of the guests, we began to get the answer, which is quite interesting:

Investigation question: How do you know about us?

24. 1% of friends or family members

20.2% of online travel agencies

17.2% others

16.0% Catway Eagle

1 1.8% repeat customers

2.7% travel agency

2.7% of blogs

2.0% Facebook

2.65438 0% magazine

1.0% guide

0. 1% Twitter

Not surprisingly, friends or family members are the most people's replies, and Google's research has also reached the same result. Although I didn't expect this to be the first time, it obviously makes sense. As the previous marketing and public relations rules tell us, word of mouth is your best advertisement. However, social media marketing experts need to realize that their duty is to use word-of-mouth marketing to get the maximum economic benefits. Although social media is a completely different channel, it can bring you new customers, but your social media advertising must focus on friends and family, then it will become a huge source of income. Get all employees involved. They need to make their guests feel "great", not "good". If your guests don't think so, social media managers need to reflect and make improvements.

Online travel agencies (Expedia, Booking.com, Orbitz, etc. ) ranked second. Hotel managers who try to close the channels of online travel agencies are stupid. They should not shut out the online travel agencies. They need to use the online travel agency channel wisely to make reservations and bring traffic to the hotel website. They should establish a win-win cooperation relationship. I wrote an article in February about switching from online travel agency to direct booking, which is still a good way for both parties to cooperate and is beneficial to both parties.

"Other" contains various responses, and we also analyzed them. Google search is also included in this reply. Some hotel managers think that searching hotels through all keywords is a good SEO strategy, which can bring them new customers. But for the average independent hotel, this is a bad strategy. The result is a high bounce rate. In the end, Google will think that your website has nothing to do with "boutique hotels in London", which will lower your website ranking and make you lose more than you gain. For independent hotels, the best strategy is to build a distinctive website and increase the popularity of your website through formal channels. In addition, I suggest that "Google" or "search engine" should not appear in the questionnaire options, because consumers must have found the hotel from Google, but they already knew the name of the hotel before searching.

Interestingly, Catway Eagle ranked fourth. I once persuaded hotels to buy Catway Eagle links, but 50% of the hotels surveyed didn't buy links. Strangely, some hotels with no purchase links and low rankings have 20% guests from Catway Eagle. The conclusion I draw from it is that the comments on Catway Eagle are more important than your ranking. It is important to keep the top 5 to 10 reviews, which can bring you benefits, but the rise and fall of hotel rankings is secondary. The good news is, now you know that you are no longer powerless.

I'm not going to analyze all the results. I'm sure you know these figures as well as anyone else, but I still want to say that the figure of 2% on Facebook is very interesting. Facebook is undoubtedly a rising tourism marketing resource. I suggest that hotel managers take the initiative to accept it as a tool to contact consumers and help them complete the purchase process. (compiled by Ronnie)