Online travel consumers are known to conduct in-depth research, evidenced by the fact that they visited more than 17 travel sites and employed more than four travel searches on average before booking a hotel, according to Google and Compete’s “Key Travel Themes, Q4 2012” study of US consumers.
Along this winding path to purchase, organic search is most often the last exposure before a conversion, according to a report on the US and Europe by IgnitionOne. As a result, hotel companies place special emphasis on owning their brand keywords.
According to L2 Think Tank and SapientNitro’s “Digital IQ Index: Hotels,” in December 2012, nearly half (46%) of first-page organic search results for worldwide upscale hotel brand keywords belonged to brands themselves, as opposed to OTA sites or TripAdvisor links, among others.
Read full story at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Hotels-Strive-Own-Organic-Search-Results/1009694