I just returned home from a two week trip to visit some client destinations in Florida and Tennessee. In both places I was met with happy clients who are seeing great returns on their  online advertising spend. For one of our biggest resort clients we ran some early spring specials and it really paid off. The resort measured results at 8x return on the investment and are extending the promotion to gain more market share.  In Tennessee we have vacation rental companies who are realizing the advantage of using our Top Ten Tips for Marketing in this economy. We use some of the attributes that vacation rentals have over single hotel rooms and target consumers who are most likely to visit the destination and consider vacation home rental. Our key learnings in this market segment are based on the first research just released by PhoCusWright about vacation rental management in the U.S.  We were a partner in the research and gained some key information from custom questions we submitted for the survey.

Vacation rentals are becoming more appealing tas a travel option this year primarily because of the economic slide and consumers needing to budget more than ever before. As I have stated, consumers will travel and have a deservability about their vacations, t they are trying to cut back on restaurant meals and other expenditures on the trip. We market our vacation rental clients in a number of ways online, primarily in very aggressive search marketing and eMail advertising. Douglas Quinby, a friend of mine and leading analyst at PhoCusWright says "It's a whole new ballgame and a $25 billion-plus market".

The biggest return we have seen on the online advertising has been where we finely target the top ten markets for our clients and then offer compelling reasons to buy... not deep discounts, but value. It is working and man, there is nothing better than happy clients : )

till next time...

Leah

A recent statistic published by eMarketer.com and attributed to Merrill Lynch, stated that online travel sales are projected to account for 30 percent of all travel sales in 2005, up from 25 percent in 2004 and 21 percent in 2003.

Jupiter believes that online travel sales will hit $91 billion in 2009... one out of every three travel bookings. That's a gigantic 70 percent increase from 2004.

The real news is that the major growth will not come from the big online travel agencies but rather the suppliers own web sites. Their market share in online travel sales is expected to grow a whopping 60%.

What does this mean for DMOs and hotels?
It means that the timing is right to develop a smart, long-term strategy for an Interactive program. Search marketing is key right now, but there are other marketing tactics that are vital to make up the whole online success picture. When we are called in to develop a plan for a DMO or hotel, we always perform a deep assessment and comparison study and set some benchmarks first. A SWOT analysis is vital. We develop the strategic plan after we have the data and analysis we need. It is vital to know how you measure up with your competitive set and how you need to draw the map to get to real online success.

The time is now. DMOs and hotels you can take your share of the online sales. But you have to plan your work and work your plan.

Leah

USDM.net, "Online-Offline Media Budget Allocations and Interactive Technology Drivers," July 21, 2005

Posted at 11:26 AM