Don’t shoot the observer … Shoot at the observation!

The online travel sector has experienced a general downturn in visitors looking to “get out of dodge” in the fourth quarter of 2008. Its easy to explain, but hard to deal with. Money’s tight, transportation costs are up, the economy is staggering, and attentions have been focused on politics, just to mention a few factors. Estimates from various sources inside the travel industry put the decline in traffic from 10% to over 40% compared year over year, 2007 to 2008.

Looking at some of the online travel blue-chips metrics courtesy of Alexa you can see an overall trending decline since summer.

Here we Compare Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz traffic trends for the last 12+ months.

There is no quick and easy turn-around solution, but let me give you a formula for failure; Worry and Wait to see what happens. The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines the word, “Wait” as “to remain temporarily neglected or unrealized…” Now that’s no way to build your business!

Here is what are we doing over at Netrafic to help you fight this trend. Plus, some ideas to help you keep and grow your market-share during this stagnant period.

Build Organic (free) Traffic:

Netrafic Can Help With the Following:
Tune your organic SEO program to get the best positions you can.

Optimize your inclusion in Local Search

Build additional relevant pages about your market to attract more natural search.

Launch a blog, news feed, or article area on your site to keep fresh content in front of the search engines.

Socialize your brand by creating content on top visited networks like YouTube, delivering visitors.

Ideas You Should Explore Within Your Organization:
Create alliances with similar businesses in your market to swap banner advertising. Pick up the phone to expedite this.

Offer an incentive or discount; price conscious travelers are looking for saving.

Joint Venture with website owners that send out regular emails to your demographic. Ask for a plug, and return the favor by offering a link, a banner ad, or some other exchange.

Tap your email database to offer past customers incentives to return and revisit.

Re-market to your current visitors by offering an incentive to return this season, stay longer, or a “friends and family” style discount.

Increase Paid Advertising:

Analyze your Pay Per Click advertising for ad effectiveness and ROI.

Lower your PPC advertising cost by improving the quality of your landing pages. Google rewards websites that offer top quality content with a reduced cost per click, without losing position.

Improve the conversion potential of your landing pages by offering multiple methods of contacting you or finding out more about your service or offer. Keep it simple!

If You are a Netrafic PPC Client We Already Have You Covered!

The good times will roll again, things will get better, and businesses that market aggressively will survive. If your travel market segment is winter travel, pray for snow. If you are a warm weather destination, pray for more snow!

Travel Stocks, Now That’s Another Story…

Tags: metrics, stats, travel

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