NB: This is a guest article by Oliver Brendon, founder and CEO of Attraction Tickets Direct.
The heady days of 2002, post-economic bubbles and 9/11, pre-Iraq war and the credit crunch. Seems a long time ago, especially in online travel and technology.
TripAdvisor was just a year or so old and still an independent company, Travelport didn’t exist in name, the early metasearch engines were still finding their feet, online travel agencies were seen as innovative, and mobile phones were mostly rather clunky and, say no more, WAP-enabled.
Fast forward ten years and, of course, evolution has made its mark across so many areas of online travel.
The bar on website design and functionality is set very high now, for example. Customers are used to viewing compact yet useful sites with simple yet powerful booking engines.
When I started Attraction Tickets Direct in 2002, we managed to trade profitably and grow for 18 months with a flat and very basic website and no booking engine. Today, to support and maintain our nine websites to a reasonable standard, we require an in-house web development team.
If I was starting today, I’d certainly need a lot more than the £10,000 investment I had in 2002. I would also build the site and do the development in cheaper yet highly skilled countries such as Argentina, Poland or Hungary.
The internet has permanently accelerated the pace of change. To keep up in 2012, you will need adequate web development resources and also the ability to choose where to invest. For example, mobile friendly sites are more important than apps for the vast majority of travel companies.
You’ll need patience now. In 2002, there were ten million active websites. Today, there over 200 million, so on a very basic level, it’s 20 times more difficult to make an impact with an SEO campaign.
Don’t expect offline activity to translate to traffic online. Ten years ago, an offline advertisement or piece of editorial would get the phone ringing. Today, the same offline exposure might lead to an increase in search for your brand over a period of time but the impact is much more difficult to measure and certainly not as immediate.
In 2002, it wasn’t entirely clear how to achieve good SEO because there were three major search engines with roughly an equal share of the market: Yahoo, MSN (now Bing) and Google had about 30% market share each.
Although they all stipulated that they wanted the most relevant site to appear at the top of the natural rankings, it wasn’t clear how to achieve this and there were ways that companies tried to trick the search engines such as duplicate copy and link farms.
In reality, it was difficult to sustain a campaign that was SEO-friendly and sustainable with all three search engines. Today, Google is wholly dominant with 85% market share (in the UK) and they tell you what to do. Do it.
Write unique, interesting content about what you’re selling, become part of the online community for your particular product in order to generate valuable links and structure the site in a logical, user-friendly way.
The CPC for our major key phrases such as “Disney Tickets” and “Orlando Tickets” is about the same now as it was in 2002 and, if anything, the CPC has fallen slightly.
However, the overall cost of a PPC campaign is obviously much higher in 2012 compared to 2002 due to the increase in internet use and the increase in competition leading to a lower average conversion rate (ie. users are clicking on more ads before purchasing).
PPC is vitally important. Probably more so compared to 2002. You are in total control of your PPC campaign whereas SEO results can vary depending on competitor activity and changes in Google algorithms.
In 2002, all of the paid listings appeared on the right hand side of the page of Google and they were obviously paid-for ads. Today, the top three PPC listings are gently shaded and appear at the top of the page. I suspect most internet users do not know the difference between these listings and the naturally ranked sites.
Now, there is a very simple rule for PPC: if a phrase is profitable, carry on. If it’s not, stop buying it.
Mobile was not a web phenomenon back then either. In 2012, about 25% of customers now access our sites from a mobile device and the growth will continue (70% of 16 – 24 access the internet from a mobile device, for example). So, in short, build a site that can handle all types of devices.
User reviews are obviously now really important for improving CTR and SEO and also useful for understanding and improving your customer service. It seems logical to say so nowadays, but just invite customers to share their experiences from day one.
Of course, Facebook didn’t exist in 2002. It is now terrifyingly close to having one billion members – a figure in terms of countries  only surpassed by India and China.
But, still, I would argue that you could start a successful travel website without a Facebook presence. Why?
- Customers still use search and, in particular, Google when they are ready to make a purchase.
- Developing a beneficial social media strategy that really engages customers is time consuming, expensive and difficult to execute well.
- Getting a lot of “likes” is not nearly as valuable as getting a lot of bookings and there isn’t a direct link between the two. Far from it in fact.
- Travel websites tend to sell brands and destinations that have huge customer recognition. Let the brands and destinations build awareness on Facebook and focus on making sure that your site appears on Google when customers are searching and ready to buy.
Some things never change however.
- Phone calls will convert at a dramatically higher level to web traffic so encourage customers by having extended opening hours and a Freephone number.
- Customer service must be sincere and specialist knowledge needs to have integrity and those values must be obvious on your site and via your call centre.
- Supplier relationships are just as critical as they’ve always been. However good your site is, you need something to sell.
While some elements of selling tourism-related products will never alter over time (customer service, quality of product), what a difference ten years makes in online travel.
NB: This is a guest article by Oliver Brendon, founder and CEO of Attraction Tickets Direct.
NB2: Ten machine image via Shutterstock.
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Great piece except I disagree with your line about costs
“If I was starting today, I’d certainly need a lot more than the £10,000 investment I had in 2002″
In 2000 I helped build a hotel distribution system – and it took a Broadvision license (a lot lot more than the 10,000 GBP / 16,000 USD you mention)……. now a similar base platform can be SaaS sourced for a few thousand GBP / USD a year….
I also remember in 1999 looking at CMS systems from companies like MediaSurface – when now a system like WordPress can provide similar capability for close to nothing.
So tech prices are radically down. But perhaps you meant full investment? If you meant that, then no, I think you could still do a new attraction booking website AND business for 10,000 GBP – and launch off social media and affiliate marketing – so keeping all in costs low….
Brilliant common sense advice here. Agree with everything.
Alex. “launch off social media and affiliate marketing”? Totally disagree. You’d be daft to launch a business off social media (affiliate, ok).
I launched my travel business off social media – blogging, running forums, active on twitter…. etc etc…. it can be done. Mind you, yes, I probably am daft
It can be done, but then you are a travel blogging legend
Seriously though the chances of business success through social media in a reasonable time frame (one you would accept when starting out) are very small.
@ben – we were completely reliant on social media (because our email database was ZERO – no borrowing or buying of lists here) in our first few weeks at Tnooz, until our Google juice started to kicking…
it does work to some degree.
@ben – actually, make that 6 weeks until the juices flowed.
always exceptions to the rule
I’m now going to retract my blanket statement and qualify it. You’d have to be daft to start a B2C business on social media alone. I’d recommend putting some money in the budget for PPC at the very least.
Number of websites in June 2002 – 38,807,788
Number of websites in May 2012 – 662,959,946
Source: netcraft.com
Agree totally. In 1999 I opened a small hotel/youth hostel in Rome. At the time, were THE ONLY thing that resulted in a search on a few (then) major search engines. Yahoo – white blank page with our place and nothing else.
Yes, times have sure changed.
It used to be that you created a website to be like a library – with everything findable and organized. Now it has to be optimized for conversion of something. And do to that requires a lot more effort, more specialized people, and thus a much higher budget. I’ve always designed our own websites until recently. Without a good dev team and people who really know their SEO shit and some really good thought put into strategy and optimization, there’s no point.
And even then, starting today with a small budget – you’re up against some ferocious competition that never used to exist – especially in the budget sector.
I agree with most of the article, but yet….there are so many opportunities that didn’t exist then online that a new company can get stuck in to.
Google had only recently released Adwords when we started thinking about Skyscanner – and we certainly didn’t understand traffic acquisition or monetisation then.
http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2012/05/23/its-morning-in-venture-capital/ provides a great perspective on the cost of starting-up now versus then.
However, I suspect the “”rule”" of a website-based business of having a CTO in the founding group is becoming more advantageous over time – as the technologies and business models get more complex.
Although the observations in this article are interesting, you fail to address the failure of most online travel marketers to build websites that follow the most basic rules of usability to maximize conversions. Of the 10 million active websites, how many of them offer:
* Simple, yet elegant, content driven pages that enable viewers to find what they are looking for within 15 seconds and navigate effectively to it?
* Pages that open in 2 seconds or less?.
* The ability to land on a home page and complete a purchase in 3 clicks or less?
Those who notice that phone calls convert at a higher rate, need not wonder why.
Regarding, CPC and PPC, how many campaigns enable the shopper to buy at the first landing page — a page that accurately reflects the promise and expectation of the search term?
In too many cases, travel industry marketing strategy is the same on Internet as it was in the print world: Produce brochures and catalogs with big non-specific pictures, a lot of fine print, and very little compelling content that distinguishes one destination from another.
Glad the piece sparked some interest and comments.
Just 2 things to clarify.
My numbers of 10 million websites 10 years ago compared to 200 million now are for Active websites and the source of that data is our seo / plc agency. Total websites are much higher but the majority aren’t active.
Agree tech prices have come down but the bar of what is acceptable and will work is much higher. A flat site with no booking engine generated a decent level of business 10 years ago but wouldn’t do now even if you could get the traffic. I started with a total £10k investment because we spent so little on the initial site. I don’t think that would be possible now
Great summary, lots of good sense. On the social media side, I think many businesses kicking off now are trying to get some “free” traction via social media hence it’s importance. It’s not free but you tend to see your time as free when you kick-off!
Great post!
Any ideas or speculations of what would it be to start an online travel brand in 2022 ?…
For me the good question is: whats next? what is coming up and is the next big game changer for the next 10 years…. Is it mobile bookings, facebook and even more social media… I guess the innovative companies will survive but that means that to be innovative we need to invest into new projects and learn from our mistakes… thats easy to say but hard to execute… Google Ad Words are at the moment becoming more expensive.. depending on the key words (for example certain software keywords have max. CPC of 10 USD or more)… from this point of view I agree that a marketing roll out was 10 years ago cheaper… another argument to start a vision or project today and not wait
we are not getting younger and it won`t be cheaper 