• by John Hallenborg , June 13, 2002

For travel advertisers, the quest for direct-response results on the web needn’t become a trip and a half.
The Internet has been a boon to travelers. Trip configuration tools, online flight and hotel specials, targeted emails, and other features drive millions of eyeballs to travel websites every day. Media buyers know that clients have a strong business and leisure demo to appeal to, but considerable care must be taken if campaigns are to pull good numbers in an unstable economic climate.

Christine Dennis, interactive media strategist for the Fallon McElligott agency, counts United Airlines among her clients. “Given the state of the economy, we use a mix of direct-response vehicles to drive potential customers directly to the site (united.com), as there is less of a focus on branding” in current campaigns. She says that right now, a combination of advertising on portals, travel research sites, and other leisure sites works well.

The Internet Advertising Bureau pegged online spending at travel sites at $163.7 million for the first three quarters of 2000, placing travel second, after automotive, among five consumer sectors analyzed. AdNet also tracks travel site revenues by unique site. In their full-year 2000 results, Mapquest.com stands out, with more than $12 million, followed by Travelocity.com at $4.7 million, Travelweb.com at $1.7 million, TheTrip.com at $1.6 million, and Travelon.com at nearly $1.4 million.

Joe Hartnett is chief integrated marketing officer with The Phelps Group, an agency that serves several travel industry clients including Destinations, Tahiti Tourism, Switzerland Tourism, and crystalcruises.com. Phelps integrates several approaches—online ads, sponsorships, public relations, promotions, and most recently, customer relationship management capability. “This effort entails newsletters and opt-in emails that either stand alone or augment offline direct initiatives,” he reports.

Hartnett says that “there has been a significant change in online advertising in that it has only been in the last two years that online ad sizes have been standardized” the way TV has 15-, 30-, and 60-second spots. He believes that evaluation skills have lagged behind the ability to measure every unit of activity.

Hartnett expects to see an increase in strategic alliances, co-branding, and booking engines high up in the hierarchy of search engines. One of his clients, Eurovacations.com, went to Travelocity with a vacation package engine that gives you one price. Banner ads “would be sixth or seventh on my list of preferred tactics for an online campaign,” Hartnett concludes, adding that Crystal Cruises is about to launch a significant email program.

For some buyers, evaluation does not necessarily culminate in narrowly focused targeting. Steve Elson, a buyer and account manager with Beyond Interactive, oversees online efforts for the 14 Camino Real hotel properties in Mexico. He says that targeting does not have to be intense in order to get web surfers at travel sites with Mexico-related content to click through at a high rate. “Banners work as a standard ad placement vehicle,” he says, “but we also buy keyword placements, and one PDA buy that posted some interesting results.” Elson is looking forward to a May campaign that will include interstitial pop-ups.

Despite a 90-plus percent drop in his firm’s stock price, Brian Ek, Priceline’s vice president of communications, is upbeat about his business and the travel sector generally. With a customer base of 9 million, $1 billion in sales in 2000, and the most-recognized e-commerce brand in the U.S. (according to Opinion Research Corporation), “we haven’t done bad so far,” Ek says. Priceline has a very extensive affiliates program whereby websites put up a Priceline banner and get paid for every click-through that results in a sale, according to Ek.

In considering buys for Priceline, Ek monitors and evaluates strategy, adding that early on in the Internet’s evolution, he looked at different advertising avenues and found that online advertising, particularly with the major portals, was at least as expensive as traditional media. “It became an either-or decision for us,” Ek says. Hence, Priceline’s famous TV campaign with William Shatner was born.

One of Priceline’s chief competitors, Travelocity, is seeking longer term relationships with advertisers, according to Chris McAndrews, senior vice president. He feels that getting value is a matter of generating greater visibility. With 7.5 million unique visitors per month and $2.5 billion in travel sold last year, Travelocity’s business is an online paradigm.

What types of online ads are most effective? McAndrews finds that “geo-targeting, aiming close to point-of-purchase, can influence a brand selection, so the closer we get to people who’ve expressed a clear interest,” the better the results. He also recommends keyword buys or strong placement on search engines and animated banners that have drop-down menus, so that users are sent directly to purchase URLs.

“We need to be more contextually sensitive to where people are looking, so that they’re not going to a generic page,” he says, adding that buyers should “marry the creative to the context and keep user meandering to a minimum.”

Freelance writer John Hallenborg can be reached at jchborg@aol.com.