"In the U.S., some $66 billion, or 58%, of leisure and unmanaged business travel will be purchased online in 2005, according to PhoCusWright projections. And that figure climbs to $78.5 billion, or 66%, in 2006."¹ These numbers are not surprising to me, having watched this growth since 1993.

But what does surprise me is that many marketers still don't get it - they don't understand the total impact the Internet has on their business plan. It's amazing to see the numbers of travel marketing executives at hotels, attractions and destination marketing organizations that allocate so little of their budgets to the Internet. And they still want to measure every click, every impression, every little detail to compare it to traditional marketing and advertising -- where you can't measure much at all.

I have always been about measuring all of it. At USDM.net, we benchmark and we measure year over year. In fact, we are strategic partners with three of the top travel organizations in the nation, and our purpose is to help define the metrics that count for the industry.

These metrics are important when executives decide to invest in marketing. I read recently that, this year, more than 50 percent of respondents to a survey of travel marketers said they intended to have a larger online budget in 2005 than they did in 2004 and the number of respondents spending 20 percent or more on Internet marketing has doubled. ² That number increased significantly from last year. In reality, I believe you need online and traditional marketing, advertising, public relations and all forms of the marketing mix that fits your target audiences. But why wouldn't you allocate budget according to the results? Why wouldn't you hold the traditional side of the budget to the same stringent standards you hold the Internet side of the budget to every day? I believe it's because you really cannot measure traditional and you can easily measure so much online.

Some of our clients spend significantly more than 20 percent of their marketing and advertising budget online. Some spend about 20 percent. But whatever they spend, we measure everything about the results -- every click, every impression, every behavior, every conversion, and every search. Of course, we always keep tabs on ROI.

So I have to ask: What is so hard to understand about Internet marketing in the travel industry, and why have so many otherwise smart marketers decided to allocate pennies of the dollar to one of the most effective, measurable accountable mediums for travel marketing?

¹ TravelWeekly.com, "Travel spending surges on the Web, researchers say," May 6, 2005
² Online Marketing Strategies in the Travel Industry: A Survey of Travel Marketers by New York University And PhoCusWright Inc. Joint Research - 2005