AMSTERDAM, November 5 - More and more online-booking engines are choosing vertical-websites over Google Adwords when spending their marketing budgets.
Verticals, also referred to as "metasearchers", such as the popular travel sites of kayak, hotelscombined and LookingforBooking.com, combine real-time data (such as availability and rates) from numerous online-booking engines to show comparative results to their users. With these verticals offering their visitors the convenience of displaying all online-booking engines search results within a single page, there is an increasing interest in verticals. Whilst users may use Google for an initial search, once a vertical site is found they do not have the need to visit further individual sites, which will effect Google significantly.
The online-booking engine EasyToBook.com which has been doing business predominately with Google for the last five years has recently expanded to new marketing channels including verticals with striking results.
From the beginning of 2009, verticals make up 30% of the total traffic and reservations leads for EasyToBook.com. With such strong results shown in a period of less than ten months, EasyToBook.com decided to further broaden its partnerships expecting for verticals to make up to 50% of their traffic and reservation leads within the coming months.
In contrast to Google Adwords, verticals offer online-booking engines the possibility to directly advertise hotels, including their up to date rates and availability. Because vertical visitors are presented with hotels/rooms which suit their budget and travel dates, the conversion rate is much higher than that of Google Adwords. EasyToBook.com for example experiences a four times higher conversion rate. This high conversion rate together with the huge amount of traffic they generate, make verticals the prime competitor for Google Adwords in the online travel industry.
In the future a lot of online-booking engines might choose to spend large amounts of their marketing budgets in verticals instead of in Google Adwords.
LookingforBooking.com and Bellen.com CEO Ben Woldring says: "our strength has been objective comparisons for 10 years now, which is an absolute challenge in the travel market with lots of room types, that include or exclude breakfast, reservation costs and taxes. The data of EasyToBook.com shows us that there is a large growth in metasearch worldwide, and the Netherlands will not stay behind. In the Netherlands there is also the need for a good comparator, by which the consumer can easily, and with a price certainty, pick the right hotel offered by the right provider."
"LookingforBooking.com has the resources to become the Dutch Travel Metasearcher". says Wouter Blok, CMO EasyToBook.com. "Only a couple of parties worldwide are comparing hotels on room level and in their calculation concerning the tourist tax LookingforBooking is unique. The consumer appreciates this transparency.".
For the time being, verticals gain ground over Google in the travel advertisement battle and will not be defeated easily.
Source: EasyToBook.com press release (5 November, 2009)