Competition Results Show Trend in Online Travel Behaviour
August 20th, 2008
The Face of Global Search competition reveals interesting data
Travel sites take note: there is much more to the international online travel market than Google. The results from Oban and EyeforTravel’s online travel competition show that international internet surfers are expanding their search horizons to sites that give them more international usability, more options, ease of use, and of course, traveller reviews.
The Face of Global Search competition had entrants play a flash game in which they answered questions about their online travel search behaviour before advancing to the next level.
Questions sought to discover the entrant’s next holiday destination, important qualities in a travel site and frequency of holiday tickets booked online per year.
Next to English, Spanish and Chinese were cited as the most frequently used languages on the web. Next down the list were French and Dutch.
The UK was the most popular destination for entrants’ upcoming holidays (24 percent), while 15 percent were planning a trip to Spain. China and America were the third and fourth most popular planned travel destinations, followed by France, Italy, Greece and Canada.
Despite Google’s popularity, only a third of the respondents noted the site as their favourite for looking up travel destinations. Trip Advisor was favoured by 18 percent of the entrants, followed by Alibabuy, Expedia and Lastminute.com.
The most important quality that entrants looked for in a travel site was ease of use (30 percent). Half as many favoured traveller reviews (15 percent). Multilingual sites and sites with eye-catching design were also highly sought-after.
Only one percent of entrants said they never booked their tickets online. The majority of entrants (19 percent) booked holiday tickets online once a year. Only slightly fewer respondents said they booked online two and three times per year, at 13 and 11 percent respectively.
Perhaps even more interesting were the correlations that Oban found in the data.
Chinese speakers don’t Google
None of those who surf the internet in Chinese chose Google as their favoured travel search portal.
Under half of those planning a trip to Spain were frequent Googlers. About a third preferred Trip Advisor, while six percent used Alibabuy, and some used Lastminute.com.
Frequent online bookers prefer Expedia and Trip Advisor
Of the most frequent online ticket bookers, only 14 percent used Google to search. In this group, Expedia and Trip Advisor were favoured, with Opodo and Lastminute.com gaining honourable mentions.
Different site preferences for French and Greek holidays
Nearly two-thirds of those planning a trip to France as their next holiday were looking for easy-to-use travel sites, while the same percentage of those planning a trip to Greece said they would prefer to see traveller reviews on their travel sites. Over half of those planning their holiday in the UK wanted easy-to-use sites, with traveller reviews coming in at a distant second (20 percent).
Expedia and Lastminute.com users want easy-to-use sites
Overwhelmingly, those who used Expedia were looking for an easy-to-use travel site. Lastminute.com users gave similar responses but also mentioned low prices and eye-catching design as being important qualities in a travel site. Sidestep users were looking for plenty of options in a travel site, while Thomas Cook users sought comparisons of holidays.
Multilingual seekers aren’t Googlers
Nearly three quarters of those who thought multilingual was the most important quality in a site did not choose Google as their search engine of choice.
Frequent Googlers want eye-catching design
Oddly, those who were looking for eye-catching design were frequent Googlers (two-thirds). With Google’s reputation for simplistic design, this could suggest a market for those Googlers looking for more eye-catching options.
Spaniards take holidays in UK
Also interesting was that only one third of those who search the web in Spanish were planning their next holiday to Spain. The UK was second most mentioned as their next holiday destination, with Italy, China and Croatia also gaining mentions.
Face of Global Search short documentary
Over the course of the competition, Oban also produced a short video in which they conducted over interviews with international travellers from over 40 countries. The interviewees were asked how they researched their travel destinations.
Nearly every interviewee said that they used the internet to find information about, and frequently book, their holidays.
However, Oban did not get the answers it had anticipated. The ending reveals the paradoxical conclusion that emerged after a long day of interviews.
The video is available to watch at www.faceofglobalsearch.com.
Conclusions
Individuals are asked to conclude what they will from these results. However, Oban has its expert analysis to offer.
Analysis by Greig Holbrook, Director of Oban Multilingual:
What the results clearly show is that travel search is a very culturally diverse activity and that search plays a huge part in both the research and purchase of holidays for global travellers. The growth in Chinese on the web has been phenomenal and reflects the fact that over 900 million people on the web don’t speak English (around 70%).
Ninety-nine percent of those people who took part in the research indicated that they have booked travel online at some point. This once again reflects the fact that globally, people are becoming increasingly familiar with booking their travel online. This means that suppliers not only need to cater from them in their own language but also, as much as possible, allow them to buy successfully from the site. This means the sites need to be very well localised to reflect all search and online purchase behaviours.
Chinese travel searchers don’t seem to want to use Google, often preferring their own engines like Baidu much more. With the huge increase in Chinese searchers actually buying online in 2006-2007, it makes more sense than ever to make sure that optimisation for China is focused on local search engines.
It is not surprising that travellers going to different place are looking for different web features. International travel searchers are becoming more specific in their online behaviours so that in addition to multilingual web optimisation, global social media optimisation also needs to take place. In this context, a site properly optimised social media that is visible to a variety of cultures will prosper.
The finding that those who look for multilingual websites tend to avoid Google reflects the fact that international searchers are increasingly demanding good quality multilingual sites which are visible in their own search engines and not simply on Google, as Google is very often not the preferred engine or method for sourcing travel bookings.
In terms of Spanish people travelling to the UK, we have already found that travel sites often fail to provide good optimisation in Spanish for visitors who are seeking to visit the UK. Spanish people may use some English phrases to search or they may use Spanish, but very few travel sites provide them with the experience they need so they are often forced to use English sites. There is a great opportunity for travel companies to tap into the demand for travel from Spanish searchers; both for holidays within Spain and for travelling elsewhere like the UK.
