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The Travel Marketing Digest
12th August 2012 - Volume 1, issue 3 |
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IN THIS ISSUE.....
Dear Industry Colleagues and Friends,
The Travel Marketing Digest brings together some of the most significant travel marketing stories and insights over a 1-2 week period. All feedback is welcome and please do forward to your colleagues if you feel this will be of use for them or contact us if you want us to cover a particular topic.
In this issue we cover:
- Google's Middle East Regional Head to present at our launch event in September
- Orbitz reports a slow-down in sales and an increase in their marketing spend
- All Twitter present an Infograph on the impact of social media on travel in the US market
- A new study on the growth of Muslim travel
- The rapid rise of Qunar, one of China's leading travel search engines
- Millennial media report on growth and trends in mobile travel advertising
Best regards,
Duncan Alexander
Director
The Travel Marketing Store
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Mohamed Mourad confirmed as a keynote speaker at The Travel Marketing Store launch event, Dubai 26-27 Sept:
Mohamed Mourad forms part of an interesting line up of speakers at The Travel Marketing Store's launch event in Dubai. Mohamad leads Google's business in the Gulf Region. He joined Google in 2011 with the mandate to drive Google's investments, to lead its business operations and to strengthen partnerships with stakeholders in the Arabian Gulf. Prior to joining Google, Mohamad held the position of Principal at Booz & Company, a strategy consultancy, where he led the Middle East region's Mergers and Acquisitions and New Business Development activities in the Telecommunications, Media and Technology sectors.
Mohamed will present on the trends in travel search in the Middle East and beyond.
For details of our event follow this link: Travel Marketing without Frontiers, Dubai 26-27 Sept |
 Orbitz report a slow-down in sales, an increase in marketing spend and in their investment in mobile applications:
TTMS
The concerns over the performance of US based online travel agents continue as Orbitz reported a slow-down in sales.
Gross bookings declined 1% year on year at reported rates. Net revenue was $201.0 million for the second quarter 2012, relatively flat year on year.
Marketing expense was up 9% in the second quarter 2012. This increase was driven primarily by higher global online marketing spend and the growth of the company's private label distribution channel.
"Despite a challenging economic environment in Europe in particular, we grew room nights 3%, consistent with the first quarter, led by 28% growth at ebookers. Our U.S. distribution business grew room nights 19%, ahead of the planned launch of our American Express Consumer Travel Network partnership in the third quarter. Our outlook for the third quarter and balance of the year is impacted by the global economic uncertainty that intensified during the second quarter and has continued into the third quarter," said Barney Harford, CEO, Orbitz Worldwide. "We continue to see very strong growth in mobile as we deliver new mobile apps and services across our global brands. Mobile, defined broadly to include smartphones and tablets, now represents 20% of Orbitz.com standalone hotel transactions."
In June 2012, Orbitz.com re-launched the popular Orbitz Flights, Hotels, Cars for iPhone app,
adding major speed improvements, powerful sort and filtering capabilities and new mapping tools that better highlight exclusive, mobile-only hotel discounts. |
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All Twitter Infograph on impact of social media on travel:
TTMS
All Twitter, "the unofficial twitter resource", have published an interesting Infograph on the impact of social media on the US travel market. The U.S. online travel industry is set to reach $162 billion in 2012 - up some 74% since 2007 with social media playing a significant role. More than half (52%) of travellers have changed their plans after researching their trip on social media sites, and 50% of travel companies have said that direct bookings have been generated from social media. According to All Twitter 87% of US travellers use the Internet as part of their travel planning, 43% read traveller reviews, 76% update Facebook whilst on holiday, 76% post holiday photographs and 30% use mobile applications to find hotel deals.
All Twitter Infographic |
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 Muslim Tourism, an untapped niche?
TTMS
According to recent research conducted by Muslim travel specialists Crescentrating and a market research firm DinarStandard, global revenue from Muslim tourists is expected to rise by 4.8% annually over the next eight years from an estimated $126 billion in 2011.
This constitutes 12.3% of the total global outbound tourism expenditure in 2011 of $1,034 billion as estimated by UNWTO. Among the top 20 countries exhibiting the greatest growth in international tourism expenditure between 2005-2010, 25% of that growth in expenditure is from OIC member (mostly Muslim majority) countries.
The top Outbound Muslim tourism source country is Saudi Arabia ($23.8 billion in outbound tourism expenditure), followed by Iran, UAE, Indonesia and Kuwait based on 2011 data. Three of these top markets are the Gulf countries. Another interesting finding is that Muslim communities living in non-Muslim countries also have sizable outbound tourism expenditure. The largest of these markets are Germany, Russia, France and UK.
Based on the number of trips, the top destinations for Muslim tourists are Malaysia, Turkey, and UAE. The following six markets are Singapore, Russia, China, France, Thailand and Italy. This assessment is based on data derived from top Muslim outbound markets that represent 73% of total expenditure.
"Muslim tourists may very well be the largest un-tapped niche market of the tourism industry," Rafi-uddin Shikoh, managing director of DinarStandard, said in a statement.
"Airlines, destinations and hotels/resorts can benefit tremendously by catering to the unique Muslim lifestyle travel drivers of halal food, family friendly environments, religious practices, accommodation, gender relation nuances, and other areas," he added. |
 China based, Baidu-Owned Travel Site Qunar, claims a doubling of sales
1 Aug Bloomberg, Mark Lee
Mark Lee for Bloomberg recently interviewed the CEO of Qunar.com, a Chinese online travel agent, who stated that first-half revenues doubled as consumers used its website to search for more deals on tickets and hotels, generating higher advertising sales.
Baidu, China's biggest search-engine company, last year paid $306 million to acquire a majority stake in Qunar for its biggest acquisition. Qunar, founded in 2005, means "Where do you want to go?" in Chinese.
"Collaboration with Baidu aided growth in user traffic at Qunar," Chief Executive Officer CC Zhuang stated in the phone interview.
Similar to the U.S. website operator Kayak Software Corp., Qunar operates a travel search-engine for consumers and sells paid web-links to customers including airlines and hotels.
"This is one of the best years we've had," Zhuang said."Last year we more than doubled, it's likely we will continue this very strong growth this year," he said, referring to revenue. He declined to provide a forecast for full-year sales.
In his report Mark Lee included data on Ctrip, another significant Chinese online travel agency based in Shanghai. They recently reported a fall in profits of 55% to 120 million yuan ($19 million), after spending on product development increased. Ctrip has started "intensified marketing campaigns" to attract new users, the company said at the time.
Slower economic growth in China may make consumers more inclined to search for travel deals on online sites such as Qunar, according to Ben Cavender, associate principal at China Market Research Group in Shanghai.
"People are definitely going to be more cost-conscious," Cavender said. "People are becoming more comfortable about doing online bookings, and I think we'll see Qunar and other sources of tickets and hotels start to do really well."
China's economy grew 7.6 percent in the second quarter from a year earlier, the slowest expansion in three years.
Passengers flying on domestic airlines in China may increase 54% to 450 million by 2015, from 292 million last year, according to a projection by China Market Research Group. |
 Mellennial Media report on mobile advertising
TTMS
US based Millennial Media, a provider of a mobile data advertising and data platform, released a report on its platform use by its travel customers.
Travel was the third-largest ad category on Millennial's network through the first quarter in terms of spending, after telecom and finance. It was also the third-fastest-growing segment in the last year - behind sports and news, with 200% growth.
Booking agents and sites accounted for more than half (57%) of the spending, with hotels and resorts a distant second, at 18%, followed by airlines (11%), tourist attractions and destinations (9%), regional transit (3%) and rental cars (2%).
The bulk of campaigns were aimed at sustaining an in-market presence (62%), followed by driving traffic to mobile sites (16%), registrations (11%), brand awareness (9%) and increased foot traffic (2%).
App downloads are typically the most common type of post-click action advertisers try to drive through mobile ads, with 42% of campaigns on the network, including an app download option. That feature is even more prevalent in travel-related campaigns, the majority (59%) of which push app downloads.
Travel advertisers on the Millennial Media mobile ad network have included JetBlue Airways and Westin Hotels & Resorts. |
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The Travel Marketing Store
Nicky Baxter
Editor
The Travel Marketing Digest |
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Images courtesy of Shutterstock
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