In March, Hotwire.com drove 1.1 million of its US unique visitors to promotional content on the site, representing 21% of its total traffic. This high Promotions Penetration is possible because in addition to offering a traditional “Deals” tab on its site, Hotwire publishes promotional content via Travel Ticker - a section dedicated to “insider deals” that are time sensitive and expire quickly.

Travel Ticker is responsible for half of all promotional activity on Hotwire, averaging 550,000 monthly US users from January to April 2008.

The content offered on Travel Ticker refreshes every week on Wednesdays, and all registered users receive an email with the updates. Consequently, the majority of Travel Ticker activity occurs each Wednesday as users come to check out the new deals. Each Wednesday in April, an average of 130,000 users clicked through to the Travel Ticker content. The average daily volume for the remaining six days of the week was 25,000, highlighting the effectiveness of using email to build the brand of Hotwire’s promotional section.

Travel Ticker visitors do not convert (book) at a rate as high as those looking at other Hotwire promotions, however it is a different type of visitor. The majority of Travel Ticker usage is being driven by email campaigns to consumers who are not actively shopping for travel, therefore lighter conversion rates should be expected. A healthy volume of bookings are still generated, though, with much of it newly created demand among consumers who were compelled by a last minute deal. Other travel marketers looking to improve their promotions effectiveness should look to the performance of campaigns like Hotwire’s Travel Ticker.

Utilizing its BehaviorMatch suite of products, Compete continuously monitors each travel brand’s ability to attract and engage key consumer segments. A focused analysis on BestWestern.com’s positioning among different demographic groups highlights how quickly consumer preferences can shift.

BestWestern.com captures an average of 9.0% of all of the visits to hotel chain websites. Specifically among people aged 45-54, however, BestWestern.com captures 9.7% of hotel site visits, meaning it outperforms its average market position, and over-indexes among this age group.

A four-month trend of how BestWestern.com indexes among each key age group illustrates the brand’s greatest strength is in pulling shoppers in the 55-64 and 65+ brackets. Weakness has been emerging, however, among the core travel segment of 45-54 year olds. Generation X and Y shoppers, critical to the brand’s ability to bring new customers into its portfolio of properties, are under-indexed consistently. Best Western does not attract its fair share of young consumers given the size of its position in the marketplace.

Within income brackets, BestWestern.com consistently is able to draw strong relative volumes of consumers in the $30-60K tier. Its strong position among higher-spending $60-100K travelers, however, is at risk and has eroded since the beginning of 2008.

At the start of the year Best Western’s strength was in drawing men to its site to consider the brand, yet this too has shifted with its share of male hotel shoppers now even with its overall share of hotel shopping online.

Moving beyond demographics, affinity groups and lifestyle segments can similarly be monitored – and tracked competitively. Best Western which maintains a “Best Western Racing” promotional website and NASCAR sponsorship, over-indexes in attracting hotel shoppers who are NASCAR enthusiasts. However competitor hotel chains are in some cases even stronger with this segment, as brands such as Super8, Hampton Inn, and Days Inn have managed to resonate even more strongly among this cohort.

As travel brands such as Best Western increasingly rely upon the Internet as a sales and distribution channel, tracking competitive positioning among key consumer segments becomes critical. Contact Compete to learn more about using Behavior Match to help your organization measure and improve marketing effectiveness.

The News: Since March of this year, a strengthened partnership between Travelocity and IHG has continued to allow consumers shopping for hotels on Travelocity to see IHG properties integrated into their search results and to book IHG properties through Travelocity. The new agreement provides tighter technical integration between IHG’s properties and Travelocity.

Compete Analysis: Compete assessed how IHG hotel shoppers jump from Travelocity to IHG’s website on their own. A trended view of hotel shoppers on Travelocity leaving the site to go directly to IHG’s website illustrates a sharp seasonal trend. IHG shopping on Travelocity peaks in July/August and subsequently declines quickly. The green bars identify the period following improved integration of IHG properties on Travelocity, and show that compared to a year ago fewer shoppers now defect from the Travelocity website.

Distributing on Travelocity serves to expand IHG’s reach among hotel shoppers in different stages of the consideration process. IHG’s website conversion rate is consistently higher than the conversion rate on Travelocity’s hotel site, suggesting that the two sites play into consumers’ hotel purchase timelines differently. Travelocity tends to attract more hotel shoppers who are still comparing options and not ready to book.

Takeaways: Since tightening its integration with Travelocity, fewer of IHG’s shoppers have been defecting from the Travelocity website compared to a year ago. While hotel conversion rates on the IHG website are higher than on Travelocity, each site attracts a core audience at differing points within the consideration process. For IHG, the value of having its brand present at all points in this process makes it beneficial to have continued and enhanced collaboration with Online Travel Agencies.