Metasearch Channel Selection
Dive deeper into metasearch as Brian touches on metasearch market share – and points out some notable characteristics of each metasearch channel.
View TranscriptHi there, Brian Fitzgerald here with the work hospitality marketing. Want to talk about meta search in a little bit more detail here today and talk specifically about channel selection and trying to figure out which channel should be part of your strategy as you embark on, on a meta search campaign.
So the first one that you’re absolutely going to consider is Google. Google has a, their hotel ads product. Um, this has about 55 plus percent market share.
Uh, they have grown that considerably over the last several years. This is an undoubtedly going to be a part of your strategy.
And part of your consideration, both if your focus is in North America, or if your focus is in, is in other countries, the second site that, uh, you should consider and, and very likely will consider is TripAdvisor.
So TripAdvisor has around 20, 22% market share. Uh, they have lost market share to Google over the last several years.
Uh, but they’re still the number two player in the space. And, uh, certainly a site that you’re going to consider again, a pretty wide footprint from a, um, from a geographic standpoint, from a country standpoint.
So certainly something that should be on your, on your consideration, uh, after these two, the considerations get a lot more specific.
So we look at something like Trivago, uh, very strong marketing campaigns here, here in the U S uh, about 19%, uh, market share in a very, uh, strong reputation in Europe.
So if Europe is, uh, a destination or geography that you’re trying to target and get European travelers to come to you Trivago may very well be something that you should consider, uh, being part of your, part of your strategy.
Now, there are a handful of other sites to maybe think about as well. So kayak and, uh, hotels combined are part of, uh, booking and Priceline, and they don’t have a large market share.
Um, but because they’re part of that booking Priceline ecosystem, they certainly do, uh, get, get a lot of visibility. And again, Mike might be something that you want to consider, or at least look at, uh, what their, what their geographic targeting is, what their international reaches, things of that nature Skyscanner, um, is maybe not a site that, that everyone has heard of.
Um, they’ve got a very, very large following, uh, particularly from the millennial generation. So as these folks, uh, grow up in their careers and get more and more disposable income, this been a site that they have used, um, much more, uh, and again might be depending on your, your hotel type and market and, and rate category might be something that you want to look at as, as part of your overall strategy.
Um, and then lastly, as we go, uh, we go has a very strong footprint in Asia. They’re based out of Singapore.
And so again, if you’re, uh, if you’re a destination that is targeting, uh, those, those, uh, countries in the Asia Pacific, we go might be something to think about as part of your channel selection.
Um, lastly, just two other considerations, you know, whether you’re a single property, uh, or portfolio, there’s going to be different considerations.
If you’re a single property, you might have to be a little bit more selective in the channels that you, that you opt to choose.
Uh, if you’re a portfolio you might have more of a branding and awareness consideration. If you’re trying to spread awareness of your brand or get the brand name out there more, you may want to go a little bit more broader on the channel selection.
Um, and then lastly is overall budget. Certainly your budget is going to dictate which of those channels and how many of those channels you can potentially participate in.
Uh, but what’s great about, meta-search like a lot of other digital marketing channels, as you can test it, you can, you can try different channels, spend some dollars and see what works.
So as you embark on figuring out your meta-search strategy and figuring out what channels make the most sense for you, uh, get in touch if we can help with that in any way.