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The Billboard Effect: How To Dramatically Increase Your Direct Bookings

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Inventory distribution has both direct and indirect benefits.   Direct benefits are easy to track since they relate to being able to monitor the number of reservations, the revenue and source of channel.   Indirectly though, there are many benefits of distribution and one of the most powerful benefits is not discussed very often – the billboard effect.

The billboard effect occurs when a consumer finds your product on one of the large booking channels like Expedia, Booking.com or Airbnb and then uses the search engines to try to find your product directly to find out more information before they book or to double check pricing.

In 2009, a professor at Cornell, Chris Anderson – completed a study using direct data from both the hotels and Expedia and found that when hotels were on the first page of search results on the third party channel, it actually increased their own direct bookings at the hotel between 7.5% and 26%.  He repeated the study in 2011 and found similar results showing that for every booking obtained from an online travel agent (OTAs) website, the individual property manager/hotel received an average of three to nine direct reservations.

Several vacation rental managers have encountered similar results and it makes sense since there is an aspect of branding for both your company and your product that is not inherently obvious when you embark on a distribution strategy.   For example, how much would you pay for a banner ad on page one of search results for a site that gets as much travel specific traffic as Expedia or Booking.com?   

The billboard effect is just the terminology utilized when referencing direct bookings obtained from your placement on an online travel agent website, but the theory of “view through” conversions or “peel-away” revenue exists across many different advertising channels.   

Google started reporting on “view through conversions” in 2010 and has continued to support the statistic that measures the percentage of users who view an ad and neglect to click on it, but within a set period of time end up going to the specified website through means other than clicking on the original ad and end up converting.   Think about how branding efforts work on other mediums like television, radio and print?   It’s the same theory, that seeing your brand or product becomes a catalyst for searching for you later.

In order to maximize your benefit from the billboard effect on online travel agent websites and really all other mediums, you should make sure you’re following this branding and merchandising check list:

  1. Make sure that your brand can appear alongside with your product/property name.  You should never distribute your inventory under “blind branding” situations or you will lose out on this invaluable branding and revenue opportunity for consumers to search, find and book with you later.
  2. Make sure that you merchandise your properties just as well on your own direct channel as you do with the online travel agencies and channel partners.  For example, do not put more images, better images or a better description on your channel partner listings than a consumer can find directly on your website.  (Yes, we are mentioning this because it really does happen!)
  3. Pricing is a key motivator for consumers who find your inventory on a third party site but then go searching for the inventory directly.   Your own website and call center should always have the best available pricing and availability and vacation rentals could learn a thing or two from the general travel and retail sector by starting to widely adopt best rate guarantee language that has obvious placement near pricing details along the booking path.

A great way to measure if you are benefiting from the “billboard” effect is to use your Google Analytics data to track if your brand or product based keywords searches and click-throughs are higher after you have implemented a distribution strategy.   Use a property or two as a test case and replicate the Cornell study methodology to see if direct inquiries and bookings are impacted when you have your product listed and when it is removed.   

Good luck and let us know how your distribution adventure continues to evolve and if you are able to measure any impact on your direct bookings.

Original study from Cornell University – http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/chrpubs/2/

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