Hotel marketing and consultancy group WIHP has spent some monitoring the booking behaviour on consumers on independent hotels in Europe.
The company examined length of time spent on websites, how many websites visited, length of booking cycle and more.
It then turned the data into a rather nice infographic:
NB: More information about WIHP and its services.
Related posts:
About Kevin MayKevin May is editor of Tnooz. He joined as a co-founder in August 2009 after spending nearly four years as editor of UK-based business publication Travolution.
Passionate about the business of travel and the internet, Kevin played a major role in establishing Travolution in print, online, events and with an annual awards programme, as well as becoming a regular speaker and moderator at industry events.
Prior to Travolution, Kevin was web editor at Media Week (UK) and also worked in regional newspapers for two years at the Essex Enquirer. He started his career in journalism at the Police Gazette at New Scotland Yard in London.
[...] is pretty interesting and Scott Thomas from abouttheinn.com did a pretty good summary of this on the tnooz.com post, he says: Very interesting stats, and definitely reflective of our observations. Key takeaways: [...]
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These stats never cease to amaze. Have you seen the Twitter Monthly Airline report infographic?
http://eezeer.com/datalab/airline-monthly-report/2011-06
Great Infographic! Thanks Kevin
@eezeer – err, yes, we cover them here each month:
http://www.tnooz.com/2011/07/08/news/how-airlines-use-twitter-june-2011-infographic/
http://www.tnooz.com/2011/06/10/news/how-airlines-use-twitter-may-2011-infographic/
http://www.tnooz.com/2011/05/09/news/how-airlines-use-twitter-april-2011-infographic/
Very interesting stats, and definitely reflective of our observations.
Key takeaways: (1) Your home page MUST be optimized for conversions; (2) You need to be visible in conventional search, have good reputation with prior guests, AND be on the OTAs; (3) your website must stand out as providing something different.
@Scott, great analysis. Well spotted, I would add one point which is you need to have a booking engine that’s designed to convert. With 44% of user time spent on the booking engine if it’s somewhat complicated, slow or not representative of the hotel you’re going to loose conversion since the OTAs have some pretty good booking engines.
Thanks Martin, and I agree – while it should be a given, your booking engine must be doing its part of the conversion process.
So, let me get this straight. People go to 27.5 websites just to book a single hotel room (how to you visit half a site?)? Are the time stats cumulative or do they spend 14/11 minutes per site? Regardless, why do people visit so many sites? Is it their desire to save $5 bucks a night? Are they trying to get the Ritz for $50 a night? Or can it simply be that with so many choices and sites to visit, they can’t process all that info and make up their mind?
With the delay in first searching and then booking, can you say “paralysis by analysis”? Technology is supposed to make everyone’s lives easier, not complicate it with millions of options. Why not use a travel agent? They do all the work for a modest fee and let you get on with your life.
The most important information is missing: WHY people booked exactly this hotel (price,location,reputation,reviews etc.?) so it’s hard to answer your questions
Interesting graphic. As Michael says, it would eb nice to know WHY people actually made their choices; economics, location etc?
Oh, and “…beggining of the purchase cycle…” should be beginning.