UK Travel Blog

Finding good flight deals just got much easier in Europe

2014-01-22T16:05:00.000+01:00

(Cross-posted on ITA Software by Google blog)

Travelers searching for a good flight deal in Europe may have needed to check multiple online sites to be sure they found the lowest airfare and best flight options. Now with the addition of Ryanair flight information in Google’s Flight Search, it is much easier to find the lowest fare -- at lightning speed.

We are delighted that Ryanair, which is Europe’s largest airline and the largest airline in the world in terms of flown international passengers and which is known for its low fares, has joined the Google Flight Search family.

Using Google’s Flight Search, travelers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain (as well as Canada and the USA) can quickly find, filter and compare flights, view prices in their local currency, save the results for later, or book directly with any of our booking partners.

Since we launched Flight Search in 2011, we've worked hard to add new features that make it fun, fast and easy to shop and book airfares

Best Flights and Tips - Quickly get the best answers with suggestions for alternate dates, airports, and trade-off between price and convenience
Interactive Maps - users are able to explore possible destinations and view live ticket prices by surfing an interactive map
Saved Flights - Results can be saved to track price changes, helping users make smart booking decisions

Google Flight Search is fast, easy to use and interactive so business people, parents and star crossed lovers can quickly book their travel and get back to their work, parenting or pining. We want to give users as many flight options as possible, so introducing Ryanair is very exciting. We are working to expand our relationships with other airlines and travel partners to bring Flight Search to more countries in Europe and around the world.

Posted by David Robles Fosg, Partner Development, Travel

On The Beach Improves Their Attribution Modeling and Increases ROI by 25%

2013-06-26T14:38:00.002+02:00

Attribution modeling is the process of distributing credit between different marketing channels that a consumer interacts with, prior to completing a purchase. As online reporting becomes increasingly sophisticated, attribution modeling helps advertisers to understand the purchase journey of their users and find the most effective ways of targeting new customer segments.

Online travel specialist On the Beach used Multi Channel Funnels and the Attribution Modeling Tool in Google Analytics to understand which marketing campaigns were driving their sales. They analysed all of their online marketing channels and search campaigns to uncover their true performance. On the Beach compared different attribution models to assess the relative contribution of each of their campaigns to their online sales. They found that generic (non-brand) campaigns for travel destinations and holiday terms were driving more sales than were being reported via traditional “last click” methods.

By understanding the true value driven by their generics campaigns, On the Beach were able to reach more potential customers when they searched with generic keywords, by increasing their investment. As a result, they have seen significant growth in sales and revenue, with a 25% increase in return on investment. The full On the Beach case study can be found here.

These findings were also supported in a recent case study with lastminute.com, where they found that generics were driving 43% more sales than were reported through their online analytics. The lastminute.com case study can be found here.

For advertisers who want to get started with attribution, there are great resources available:

* The Customer Journey to Online Purchase
* The Multi-Screen World
* Marketing Attribution Playbook .

You can also catch up with our entire attribution webinar series:

*An overview of our research on how the industry approaches attribution (watch here),
*The foundational steps for attribution using Google’s tools (watch here),
*Intra-channel attribution with Search Funnels in Google AdWords (watch here),
*Cross-channel measurement with Multi-Channel Funnels (watch here),
*Strategies for the Attribution Modeling Tool (watch here).

Find out more about the updated attribution modeler in Google Analytics on the Google Analytics blog.

Posted by Paola Lopez, Industry Manager, UK and Edwina Keyes, Account Manager, Dublin.

2013 Travel successes on G+

2013-04-15T15:59:00.000+02:00

It's been a while since we posted a G+ update so we'd like to share with you the latest successes our Travel clients have had on G+ this year: a case study from the UK and one from across the pond in the US.

Travel Republic: Online travel agents Travel Republic have two reasons to put the champagne on ice, having just reached a pair of major milestones in their social media activity. The company’s Google+ page is not only celebrating its first birthday, but it’s celebrating reaching 1 million followers on the platform too. Carry on reading if you want to know how they did it....click here.

Pure Michigan: As part of their social media campaign which won the Mercury Awards for Social Media, Pure Michigan created a G+ page in order 'to be where conversations about our state are happening. We created our Google+ Page to connect with folks inside and outside of Michigan to encourage them to vacation here.' They saw higher CTRs through social annotations: 'there is social proof in seeing which of your dozens of friends already follow the page. You feel compelled not to be left out.' In addition, they created an extremely successful hangout which resulted in their follower number jumping from 50K to more than 94K in a matter of days. For more, please click here.

Posted by Anna Tong, Industry Manager UK

Bon voyage! Flight Search rolls out across European countries

2013-03-18T17:57:00.000+01:00

Cross-posted on the ITA Software By Google blog.

If you live in the UK, France, Italy, Spain or the Netherlands -- and are thinking of hiking the Swiss Alps, visiting the Greek Isles, taking a bite out of the Big Apple in NYC or simply planning a business trip -- Flight Search is now available to make planning your trip easier.

Starting today, you can use Flight Search to quickly find, compare and book flights originating from each of these countries to any airport in the world. You'll also be able to search for flights from airports in these countries and see prices in your local currency. Additionally, you can conduct searches in 8 languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Basque, Catalan, Galician and Dutch -- and see prices in your local currency.

Smarter travel planning
Let’s say you’ve decided the Greek Isles are your vacation destination of choice, but you’re not sure which airport offers the most affordable fares. By typing ‘Greece’ as your destination, you’ll be able to quickly compare the cost of the different options, viewing live prices on the map.

Likewise, if you’re looking to take the family to New York City but are unsure of the best time to go, you can click on our ‘Lowest fares’ icon to see which dates will get you the lowest fare.

We choose the best flights based on cost and total travel time, while covering a variety of departure times and airlines. But, you can always view longer or more expensive flights by selecting, 'Show all'. Flight Search makes it easy for you to:

Find flights quickly. As you make changes to dates, destinations and filters, results will load fast in a format that’s easy to scan.
Discover places to go on a map. Explore possible destinations and view live ticket prices by surfing the map. You can filter by price, airline or flight duration.
Figure out the best time travel. Quickly see which travel dates are least expensive by dragging the date selector forward or backward, or click the "Lowest fares" icon to compare lots of dates at once.
See a simple list of the most relevant flights. Use our easy-to-scan list or compare options and find the flight that's most convenient, least expensive, wi-fi enabled or simply the one that best meets your needs.

Sometimes we are not able to show results for every single airline and we will make that clear. We are working to expand our relationship with other airlines, and bring Flight Search to more countries and in more languages.

To access Flight Search in your local country or language, type:

google.co.uk/flights/
google.fr/flights/
google.it/flights/
google.es/flights/
google.nl/flights/

We’ve worked to provide you with fast results as you browse a simple list of the most relevant flights, figure out when to travel, and get ideas about where to go and book your trip online. We hope you’ll enjoy planning your next trip with Flight Search! Bon Voyage!

Posted by Noam Ben Haim, Senior Product Manager, Travel

Latest Google Travel Whitepaper

2012-11-06T16:57:00.000+01:00

ADVERTISING TRAVEL PRODUCTS TO MULTI-SCREEN CONSUMERS
Many travel companies are struggling with the speed of change in the mobile sector and in assessing the scale of the mobile opportunity, in deciding when and how much to invest in mobile, and whether to build mobile optimized sites and/or apps. The travel path to purchase is becoming increasingly complex in a multi-screen world, where customers jump not only from site to site but also from device to device in their online travel-purchasing journey.

The shift from desktop-only towards the use of multiple devices to access the Internet has radically changed how consumers engage with digital content and when they choose to do it. It is no longer an activity we solely conduct either at home or our work via a desktop computer, but is something which now also happens on the train, bus, in a café with friends, everywhere possible.

In this whitepaper we have seen evidence that usage behavior varies by device, which in turn has made the travel-purchasing process highly complex and therefore challenging for advertisers to fully grasp and benefit from. The only common denominator across all devices is that we, as users, expect to have our needs for information and services fulfilled immediately in a seamless and intuitive way. Travel advertisers must meet these expectations in order for their multi-platform strategies to become successful.

You can access the whitepaper here.

Posted by Jonas Vang Gregersen, Senior Industry Analyst UK.

Last-minute travel has gone mobile

2012-07-18T13:14:00.000+02:00

This summer we have seen a notable shift towards the use of mobile devices, when the Brits search for last-minute travel products. For certain types of products, up to 40% of all Google queries are made on either a tablet or other high-end mobile device. We encourage online marketers to align their activities accordingly to ensure full capture of traffic which comes through Search on all devices. Please find more details about our findings at this link.

Posted by Jonas Vang Gregersen, Sr. Industry Analyst

Curious how Google+ can work for Travel brands?

2012-06-01T11:42:00.000+02:00

We're pleased to announce a new case study for how LateRooms.com has found success with Google+. A few of the top highlights from the study include: Approaching 600k followers Several posts have been re-shared over 2,500 times and have received 500 comments A 9% CTR uplift with social extensions on their Brand campaign. Take a look at the blogpost here and download the full case study to see more results and quotes from LateRooms.com! Posted by Erica Trittschuh, Industry Manager UK.

More travel research for you to explore

2012-05-23T12:10:00.000+02:00

Want to understand how search drives travel purchases? To compare mobile and desktop use? To understand more about the ROPO effect: research online, purchase offline. Or perhaps you want to deep-dive into the travel market in a particular country? Think Insights is home to the latest insights from a wide range of industries including the travel sector. The site houses case studies and thoughts from leaders to help you develop your travel digital strategy. And now the site has expanded to cover 21 different countries, across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. You can now search our expanded library by country and by sector, making the latest travel research even easier to find. Plus, there are new tools and videos for you to explore, including: two videos on the consumer journey looking at ROPO and attribution. Check out this video to see how the newly expanded Think Insights website can help you. And follow Think on Google+. Posted by Claire Martin, Product Marketing Manager, Google UK

London Olympics 2012

2012-03-07T12:51:00.004+01:00

We are pleased to release our latest travel whitepaper, "London Olympics 2012". This paper analyses the impact of the Olympic Games and other major sporting events on the UK Travel Industry.

The objectives of this paper are to study the impact of the Olympic Games on both UK inbound and outbound tourism. In addition, the paper also considers some of the factors around the legacy of the Games. We have made recommendations based on the analysis and identified the key trends that we are seeing in the market

You can access the whitepaper here.

Many thanks!

Posted by Anish Acharya, Industry Analyst, UK.

Youtube & Display for Travel

2011-11-22T14:32:00.003+01:00

Above is an amazing EMEA video showcasing how global brands are effectively utilising our platforms.

With Google's media and platform solutions, Travel advertisers can develop comprehensive, innovative, and scalable display solutions for their objectives. Whether that be driving bookings as efficiently as possible, driving awareness of a sale, or showcasing the value of their brand, the Google Display Network and YouTube can help.

Here are three key strategies that you don't want to miss:

1. Sell more as efficiently as possible by combining audience buying with Google's powerful contextual targeting technology.

2. Deliver additional reach at a more effective cost per point of reach with YouTube Skippable Ads, and pay only when users watch your ad (not for the impression).

3. Engage your users and develop true brand advocates with YouTube programs, especially leading up to the Olympics.

Learn more about Google's display solutions, trends, and tools at www.google.co.uk/watchthisspace.

Posted by Cristy Aragon, Industry Manager UK.

Travel Whitepaper Q3 2011

2011-11-03T12:11:00.006+01:00

We are pleased to release our latest travel whitepaper, Destination analysis Q3 2011. This destination-focused whitepaper is an attempt to go beyond the usual seasonality and event analysis, and delve a bit deeper into product-specific destination trends.

We hope this provides you with greater insight into evolving destination trends and your customer’s geographic preferences. We have proposed strategies which will hopefully enable you to navigate through this dynamic environment.

Posted by Stephen Cunningham, Industry Analyst

Mobile Masterclass

2011-10-31T12:27:00.007+01:00

On Wednesday 26th October, the Google UK Travel Team hosted a Mobile Masterclass. The event was a huge success and has really sparked interest in Google's Mobile offering. We wanted to share the link to the presentations which include best practice takeaways, Travel Mobile trends, Mobile site layout recommendations.

One of the highlights of the event was our conversion specialist's presentation on mobile site design where he imparted his words of wisdom in terms of a main rule of thumb - "if it can't be done with the thumb it can't be done!" Another talking point was the innovative demonstration session where attendees were shown exciting new Mobile features such as Google Voice & Chrome to Phone.

You can view the presentation at this link.

Thanks!
Divya Kukar, Account Strategist UK

Google Analytics Becomes Enterprise Ready

2011-09-30T11:33:00.003+02:00

The travel industry have long been known as digitally advanced, as consumers embraced online planning, research, and shopping from an early stage. Many Internet users’ first transaction online was booking a flight or hotel room. As travel planning now occurs across myriad devices and social interactions online, understanding how users find and engage with your site is essential to optimising both customer experience and marketing investment.

It’s a challenge which the Google Analytics team have been addressing through Multi-Channel Funnels - a set of reports enabling site owners and analysts to see how multiple marketing channels and online touchpoints contribute to bookings. The travel industry have embraced these reports - uncovering insights about path length, time to convert and channel contribution - even prompting them to re-evaluate long-held attribution assumptions.

Though many of our partners across travel base marketing and design decisions on insights drawn from Google Analytics, they've asked for ongoing additions to the product, to enable fuller adoption within their companies. We’re happy to share that today we’re launching Google Analytics Premium - everything customers currently enjoy about Google Analytics, with the addition of guarantees, support and extra processing power.

We’ve worked closely with a select group of partners through the development phase, and Travelocity was one of our first customers to benefit from access to the premium team. Learn more about how Travelocity and other partners are using Google Analytics Premium today by visiting www.google.com/analytics/premium.

Google Analytics Premium is available for a fixed annual cost in the United States, Canada, and the UK directly from Google, or through Google Analytics Premium Authorized Resellers. To learn more about Premium, you can contact the Google team or find our authorized resellers here.

Travel has embraced the mantra that decisions made using data trump those based on opinion. We’re confident that Google Analytics Premium will encourage more data-driven decisions throughout the industry, ultimately resulting in a better experience for travelers and marketers alike.

Nicolas Tully - Industry Analyst, Travel, United States

GDN Solutions

2011-09-22T17:54:00.004+02:00

"GDN Solutions" was a half day event for Travel and Finance advertisers, held at our new Soho offices on Sept 19th. With unmatched reach across UK audiences, the GDN offers performance at scale, whatever your marketing goals and solutions. Missed out and want to read more? You can find the presentation at this link!

Posted by Ellie England, Account Strategist

Think Mobile with ebookers

2011-08-19T16:18:00.006+02:00

Watch Robert Define, Director of Product Strategy give insight into the transactional and brand aspects of ebooker's mobile strategy, July 2011:

Posted by Ellie England, Account Strategist

Summer 2011 Whitepaper

2011-06-15T11:06:00.004+02:00

We are pleased to announce the release of our latest whitepaper, entitled Summer 2011. The paper looks at the potential development of a challenging and value-driven lates market for holiday suppliers. Throughout the paper, we've highlighted insights on the latest query trends and have provided data which will hopefully help travel advertisers plan for the summer ahead. We welcome any feedback as well as questions on the paper and hope that it proves insightful.

Please find the paper here.

Posted by Matt Kala, Industry Analyst

What's your video strategy?

2011-05-20T11:17:00.003+02:00

81% of internet users in the UK watch online videos.

On average, each user watches 173 videos every month.

Not only are people watching loads of videos, they are searching for videos related to travel information. As such, many travel brands have adopted YouTube as an engaging communication platform to speak with their audience. For example, Air New Zealand has been really great at keeping their YouTube brand channel fresh and fun, and in doing so have generated over 6 million views of their videos and more than 1 million visits to their brand channel.

No matter what you've chosen as your video strategy, we'll show you 10 steps to doing the basics brilliantly. Please check out our slideshow below:

Your Brand on YouTube

View more presentations from YouTube UK

Posted by Cristy Aragon, YouTube & Display Sales Manager, UK.

The Champions League Final

2011-04-13T10:27:00.007+02:00

The Champions League Final is on the 28th of May in Wembley. One English team, Manchester Utd., are definitely in the running to be Finalists. In previous years when English teams have been in the Final, we've seen huge query volumes for the city hosting the Final. This represents a unique opportunity this year, with the final taking place in Wembley, London. The usual queries are for Flights/Accommodation, but this year we can expect volume across Flights, Rail, Bus and even Ferries due to Irish fans travelling to the final.

We expect traffic to spike just after Easter, and the period will be very short (approximately one week). To help you prepare and capitalise on this unique opportunity, we have created a report and also a pre-recorded Webinar discussing the report.

Webinar Link:https://googleemea.connectsolutions.com/p55242231/

Stephen Cunningham, Industry Analyst

Destination Analysis Week 12

2011-04-06T17:08:00.004+02:00

Please see the destination analysis below for the usual 5 industries. We've started to see some uplift in many areas, most notably in Car Hire, with double figure growth week on week across many of the top destinations. This is reflected in other areas, but is most pronounced in Car Hire.

Version 3.0 is on the way - this will include updated destination lists, a more comprehensive keyword bucket for the analysis, and Q1 2011 statistics for ad depth and CPCs.

Hostels

Holidays

Flights

Car Hire

Hotels

Stephen Cunningham, Industry Analyst

Think Quarterly

2011-03-23T15:54:00.007+01:00

While we always think "travel first" on the Google UK Travel Blog, sometimes we would like to share with you information and ideas that are applicable to the wider community and all industries. Matt Brittin, Managing Director of UK & Ireland Operations for Google today kicked off Think Quarterly. Think Quarterly contains advice and wisdom from some of the brightest minds and leaders from Google and the UK business sector. In Matt's words, "Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It's a place to take time out and consider what's happening and why it matters." We hope you find it both enjoyable and useful.

Posted by Nate Bucholz, Industry Manager

Easter & Royal Bank Holiday Whitepaper

2011-03-09T12:50:00.008+01:00

2011 is a great year for Easter bank holidays! To help advertisers plan for the coming season, we have analysed trends in 2010 and 2011 (to date) and have written our findings in the latest whitepaper, which you can download here.

Travel query growth year-to-date suggests that demand from the online travel consumer continues to grow (29% year-to-date), and we expect this to carry through the Easter weekend. The upcoming Royal Wedding may increase tourism within the UK. Sweden had the last major European Royal Wedding in July 2010. During this month, queries for hotels in Sweden originating from the USA grew 40% year-on-year. More impressively, hotel queries within Sweden rose 124% Year-on-year.

We have also noticed more interest for short haul destinations when compared to long haul, the former growing 20% vs.7% year-on-year in January 2011.

For a more detailed analysis, please download the whitepaper. We hope you find the insights and recommendations helpful.

Jonny Cranmer, Industry Analyst

Destination Analysis: Week 8, 2011

2011-03-07T15:09:00.005+01:00

Attached is the destination analysis for the same 5 products:

Hotels
Hostels
Holidays
Car Hire
Flights

It's interesting to note the start of the summer curve; some destinations have been experiencing traffic increases over the past few weeks.

We are working on a revised set of destinations in order to capture the highest ranking destinations searched for in the UK. We will publish this revised list in the next iteration of our reports (in two weeks time).

Stephen Cunningham, Industry Analyst.

Destination Analysis: Week 6, 2011

2011-02-21T15:28:00.008+01:00

We've made a few small tweaks to the Destination Analysis Report this week:

1.We've added a new report for the UK Hostels Market - the set of destinations is different to the other 4 reports as there seems to be a different set of users searching for hostels than hotels/car hire etc.

2. We've included the Week Number and Source Market on the first sheet to ensure you know what market we've analysed and how up-to-date the report is.

3. In the previous version, there was an issue with one or two graphs not showing - this has been fixed.

Please find the analysis here:
Hostels

Holidays

*Please note: The Holidays report uploaded this morning (21st Feb) contained an issue around 2011's data. This has now been corrected and re-posted. Apologies for any inconveniences this may have caused.

Flights

Car Hire

Hotels

Posted by Stephen Cunningham, Industry Analyst UK and Ireland.

InterContintental Hotels Group sees monthly mobile site traffic increase by 20%

2011-02-15T12:49:00.007+01:00

InterContinental Hotels Group’s sophisticated mobile strategy is having a demonstrable impact on their business in Europe. The business operates seven hotel brands: InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites, and is the largest hotel group in the world by number of rooms.

We caught up with Marco De Rosa, IHG’s Mobile & Interactive Marketing Manager for EMEA, who’s been using Google AdWords mobile ads to reach new customers on their mobile devices. Recently, IHG began creating mobile-optimised websites and creating AdWords campaigns with messaging specifically targeted to users on their phones.

“By using text specifically aimed at mobile users, we saw revenue from our mobile search activity increase by 91% YoY,” says De Rosa. “Thanks to our current activity with Google, traffic to our mobile site is increasing by 20% MoM.”

Watch the full interview with Marco in the below video or visit the Google Mobile Ads Youtube Channel.

To read the full case study, please download this PDF.

Posted by Michael Schipper, Google Mobile Ads Marketing Team.

Destination Analysis

2011-02-07T10:52:00.007+01:00

The Destination Analysis attached provides details on the most searched for destinations from around the globe. Each report provides insight into the seasonality of these 50 destinations, as well as sharing AdWords Metrics (such as CPC and Ad Depth). This information is aimed at advertisers at every level of the auction to help them plan their campaigns with the most up to date information available.

We hope you find these reports useful. If so, we plan to share them on a regular basis:

Car Hire
Flights
Holidays
Hotels

Posted by Stephen Cunningham, Industry Analyst UK and Ireland