Hotel Digital Marketing Bechmarking 2012

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1 2012 HOTEL DIGITAL MARKETING BENCHMARKS

2012 Hotel Digital Marketing Benchmarks

a report by buuteeq

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About the report How to use this report About buuteeq Key Findings Hotel Digital Marketing Benchmark Report Deep Dive: Discovery Deep Dive: Visits and Looks Deep Dive: BackOffice Summary Main Takeaways Appendix

Table of Contents

02 03 04 05 06 14 18 22 22 27 30

2012 Hotel Digital Marketing Benchmark Report buuteeq’s Hotel Benchmark Report details the performance of hotel digital channels in aggregate for 2012. The data points were extracted by analyzing over 11M visits, 43M page views, and over 3B seconds of time on site – equivalent to 95 years. This analysis uses a sample of over 700 small, medium, and large hotel websites representative of buuteeq’s global customer base. The data was collected using buuteeq’s visitor and bookings tracking technology. For the purposes of this report, hotels are segmented based on number of rooms. B&B: 1-5 rooms Inn: 6-20 rooms Small Hotel: 21-50 rooms Medium Hotel: 51-99 rooms Large Hotel: 100+ rooms We would love to hear about your own experiences in 2012. Email, call, or connect with us (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and Web) and let us know how your 2012 marketing results compared to our findings.






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How to use this report? Use this report to evaluate your current marketing results and plan your future campaigns. As you read this report, you might discover that you are doing better or worse than these published benchmarks and discover areas of strength and opportunity for your marketing activities. To truly measure your performance, we encourage you to create your own assessments. To help you with this effort, we’ve included next steps and tips at the end of the report that will get you started. Thank you for reading!

Who should read this report? This report is for digital marketers at hotels of all sizes – owners, general managers, revenue managers, and marketing managers - who are just starting or already knee-deep in the world of digital marketing.

Brian Saab Co-Founder buuteeq, Inc.






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buuteeq is an innovator and award winning provider of mobile first, user proven, Google optimized digital marketing Software-as-a-Service for hotels worldwide so you can book more rooms directly. buuteeq powered digital marketing enables you to gain insights into your guests, meet them on their smartphones, desktops, and tablets, provide them with compelling marketing options, and take reservations – all from a single command post. With buuteeq’s digital marketing system, you get free, ongoing updates and capabilities so that your online hotel presence never falls behind technologically. buuteeq offers tailored editions of our solution (features, services, and pricing). For more information on products, pricing, or partnerships, please visit us at www.buuteeq.com or call +1 (800) 734-1769. Visit the buuteeq BLOG and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

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Key Findings: 1. Mobile traffic is clearly on the rise. While it makes up

only 15% of current traffic volumes, smartphone activity has tripled in the last year alone.

2. Bounce rates remain steady at <40% across hotel types and channels despite increases in traffic volumes.

3. Not surprisingly, page views on desktops are higher than their mobile counterparts, but time spent is still the same regardless of channel.

4. Both SEO and SEM are necessary if hotels require broad reach. Properties with SEM investments see an uptick of nearly 3X traffic than their pure SEO counterparts.

5. Top three referrer sites make up at least 50% of referrals and include local directories, tourism sites, and deal-of-the-day websites.






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Hotel Digital Marketing Benchmark Report






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Hotels saw an increase of 56% in average visits per hotel from 2011 to 2012.

2012 Traffic Trend

0

2

4

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Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

AV

ERA

GE

VIS

ITS

/ H

OTE

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2012

2011

56%






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2012 Traffic by Channel

5% 15%

While a majority of traffic continues to come from the hotel website, mobile sites contributed an average of

15% of the total traffic – regardless of hotel type.

2012

2011






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7.6%

21.1%

0

100

200

300

400

500

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEPT OCT NOV DEC

AV

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BILE

Across the board, average mobile visits by month nearly tripled during 2012.

Mobile Traffic Growth, 2012

3X






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2012 Bounce Rates

0

40

80

B&B INN SMALL HOTEL MEDIUM HOTEL

LARGE HOTEL

BOU

NC

E RA

TE (%

)

MOBILE

WEBSITE

INDUSTRY AVERAGE

INDUSTRY MOBILE

buuteeq hotels show consistent bounce rates from channel to channel with both mobile and website rates hovering between 33% and 41%. Given increases in mobile volume and known industry disparities between web and mobile performance, these findings support the mobile-first design investments made to buuteeq’s Cloud DMS.






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23.5%

25.0%

28.4%

24.5%

26.8% 27.2%

29.1%

25.2%

20%

30%

B&B INN SMALL HOTEL MEDIUM HOTEL LARGE HOTEL

Mobile visits-to-looks outpace their website counterparts. Medium Hotels lead the pack with

28.1%. (29.1% mobile).

2012 Conversion Rates (1)

23.9%

25.4%

visit to look - mobile

visit to look - web

.






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As for look-to-book ratios, B&Bs lead the pack with 4.8%. Across the board, average look to book was 3.7%.

2012 Conversion Rates (2)

4.8%

3.6% 4.1%

2.4%

3.6%

0%

10%

B&B INN SMALL HOTEL MEDIUM HOTEL LARGE HOTEL

look to book - total






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0

1

2

3

4

5

B&B INN SMALL HOTEL MEDIUM HOTEL BIG HOTEL

AV

ERA

GE

PAG

ES /

VIS

IT /

HO

TEL

MOBILE PAGES WEBSITE PAGES

Not surprisingly, mobile visitors view fewer pages per visit per hotel than their desktop counterparts.

2012 Page Views per Visit






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Visitors spend nearly the same amount of time on a hotel site regardless of channel.

2012 Time Spent per Visit

B&B

4.32 min

INN

4.97 min

SMALL HOTEL

4.45 min

MEDIUM HOTEL

4.15 min

BIG HOTEL

4.62 min






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Deep Dive: Discovery






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Hotels with Locale Specific Strategies Content with SEO

While “SEO versus SEM” discussions are common practice for industry pundits, buuteeq data indicates that a successful strategy includes both and depends largely on the inherent strengths and goals of each property. SEO traffic is up for those smaller properties that focus on building content around local activities to boost their site visits. In fact, in some cases, organic traffic is catching up to paid traffic over time but the increase averages <1% month over month.

0%

15%

30%

45%

MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC JAN (2013)

PAID ORGANIC






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Hotel Type Bounce Rate % Organic Traffic

B&B 0.11% 73.49%

Inn 20.3% 45.21%

Small 4.8% 21.67%

Medium 20.0% 40.1%

Large 26.1% 70.5%

Looking at select hotels with exceptionally low bounce rates, we find no correlation between percent of traffic from organic traffic and bounce rate, indicating that bounce rate itself measures a complex interaction

of traffic quality, quantity, site design and content strategy.

SEO Effects on Bounce Rate






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Higher Traffic Targets Necessitate the Addition of SEM

organic

paid

referral

direct

visits

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2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

20

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC JAN

VIS

ITS

(00

0S)

% O

F TR

AFF

IC

NO SEM SEM

For larger properties requiring a broader reach and burst of traffic, SEM is a must-have. buuteeq customers see an average of 3X increase in traffic to their sites when transitioning from an organic-only to an organic + paid strategy over time.

3X






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Deep Dive: Visits and Books






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Top Page Types Visited

1. Home page 2. Rooms Matrix 3. Reservations 4. Photo Gallery 5. Promotions 6. Location 7. About 8. Amenities

Eight page types lead in the category of most viewed web pages regardless of channel:






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Page Types Visited Visitors spend nearly the same amount of time (4 – 5 minutes per site) on a hotel site regardless of web or mobile usage. There are, however, some differences in behavior and preferences across these modalities.

For desktop visitors, the remaining pages (~ 30% in aggregate) include individual room types and locale specific details. For B&Bs and Inns, the “About” pages tend to rank slightly higher. For larger hotels, “Promotions” related pages tend to garner more attention.

27.9%

11.6%

8.4% 6.0%

4.5% 4.4% 4.3% 3.6%

0%

10%

20%

30%

Long tail (~30%) Individual Rooms






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Page Types Visited - Mobile Compared to the web behavior, visitors on mobile devices look at more individual room photography.

These findings are in line with industry indicators that mobile users are more task driven than their web counterparts and tend toward information that will help them book rooms right away. In fact, promotions pages that offer same day savings tend to be visited 1-2% higher than their counterparts.

23%

7.5% 5.8%

3.4% 2.9% 2.7% 2.4% 2.1%

0%

10%

20%

30%

HOME PAGE RESERVATIONS ROOM OPTIONS

PROMOTIONS AMENITIES LOCATION ABOUT PHOTO GALLERY

Long tail (~50%) Individual Rooms






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Category Example

Local Directory smallhotelsofpalmsprings.com

Tourism Site visitsedona.com

Deal of the Day Site Groupon, livingsocial.com

Associations resortsandlodges.com

Property Group Marriott.com

Top Referrers

Top referrers to hotel sites include the “usual suspects” as well as a few surprises. Looking at top referrers in 2012, top three categories are local directories, tourism sites, and deal-of-the-day websites. Locale-specific and reputation-related searches for hotels dominate. The majority of referrer source types suggest that many customers are likely in the awareness and interest stages of the purchasing funnel. That said, deal of the day websites such as Groupon and livingsocial rank surprisingly high at 14% for hotels. It is interesting to note that nearly one out of ten referrals comes from Facebook.

Local Directories,

20%

Tourism Sites, 16%

Deal-of-the-day Websites,

14% TripAdvisor,

13%

Associations, 12%

Google, 9%

Facebook, 9%

Property Groups, 4%

Local Search Services, 3%






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Deep Dive: BackOffice






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average

0

30

60

SESS

ION

S

HOTELS

2012 Sessions in BackOffice buuteeq’s BackOffice functionality allows a glimpse into hotel

activities at a given point in time.

32,000 sessions

In 2012, hotels logged

In a typical 7-day week,

600 hotels used BackOffice with a mean of 20 sessions per hotel.






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Types of Marketing Activity Most popular marketing activities include quick checks of the hotel

dashboard, updates to locale specific activities on the website (article and homepage edits), and promotions.

Dashboard, 23%

Articles, 15%

Homepage, 13%

Promotions, 11%

Photos, 10%

Account Settings, 6%

Reservations, 6%

Rooms, 6%

Availability, 3%

Location, 3% Policies, 2% Pricing, 2%






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Summary






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Key Findings Revisited

4. Top three web page types visited include homepage,

rooms, and reservations. Mobile device activity indicates a preference for individual room photos and same-day promotions.

5. When obstacles to access are removed, hotels are surprisingly active in managing their websites. The average hotel checks progress or updates their website nearly 4 times a day in buuteeq’s BackOffice.

1. Organic search, on average, provides at least 40% of site traffic. Given the increase in mobile activity and local search trends industry-wide, locale-specific referrers (local tourism, local directories) are responsible for 1 in 3 visits.

2. Despite a 3X increase YoY, mobile remains a small fraction of traffic (~15% across hotel types). Mobile bounce rates remain steady and comparable to their web counterparts (<40%) despite increases in traffic.

3. Not surprisingly, visitors view more pages on their desktops than their mobile phones but they spend the same amount of time on both (4-5 minutes) .






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Main Takeaways • All sources of traffic have value if your hotel is ready to receive

direct bookings. We found that even though more searches came from local sources, visit to look ratios averaged 27% and look to books hovered around 3.7%. Hotels with seamless booking engine integration were able to take advantage of the visitor opportunity and convert to sales.

• If SEM investments make sense for your hotel, put your efforts

there. Those hotels who can successfully manage paid search campaigns benefit from dramatic traffic increases.

• Seek digital marketing systems that remove barriers to operations,

hidden costs, and layers of management. Given the dynamism of visitor behavior and technology changes in the digital world, hotels can only benefit from infrastructure that allows easy, cost-free, anytime anywhere access to their digital assets.






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Step 1 Tally your current digital assets – website, mobile, and social presence

Step 2 Determine what performance metrics you want to benchmark

Step 3 Specify the time intervals for data collection

Step 4 Establish baselines and start collecting data

Creating your own Digital Marketing Approach

buuteeq provides free web assessments. Call or email us for details.

[email protected] +1 (800) 734-1769






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Infographics http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/infographic-hotel-digital-marketing-web-mobile-social/ http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/hotel-mobile-website-checklist/ Blog http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/ Whitepapers Hotel Booking Engines SEO for Hotels Mobile Hotel Websites

Resources






http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/infographic-hotel-digital-marketing-web-mobile-social/













http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/hotel-mobile-website-checklist/







http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/

http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/hotel-booking-engines/

http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/seo-for-hotels/

http://www.buuteeq.com/blog/whitepaper-mobile-hotel-websites/

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All Stars Some buuteeq customers routinely outperform industry benchmarks.

Names have been replaced with their locations to protect the successful.






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82.4%

73.9% 70.7%

MASSACHUSETTS MASSACHUSETTS NEW YORK

Total Visit-to-Look






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21% 22%

10%

OREGON WASHINGTON VIETNAM

% of Looks from Mobile Sites






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57%

20% 20%

ARIZONA MEXICO CHILE

Total Look-to-Book






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94% 85%

75%

MASSACHUSETTS NEW YORK HONDURAS

9.7% 6.2% 5.2%

CHILE CHILE CHILE

Mobile Visit-to-Look Mobile Look-to-Book






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Thanks! buuteeq provides free web assessments.

Call or email us for details. 1 (800) 734-1769 / [email protected]






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Hotel Digital Marketing Bechmarking 2012