travel

Hotels.com Wins In Summer Travel Searches

Hotels.com is the most-used travel site, according to Adthena.

The AI and machine learning-powered search intelligence company polled 600 U.S. consumers ages 18 and older on how they search for travel options online. Hotels.com (40%), Trivago (34%) and Booking.com (34%) were the most cited. Kayak (24%) and Cheapflights (21%) were used less by summer travelers. 

“Travel year-round is one of the hottest areas in search to follow, and hotels are obviously one of the biggest items on travel itineraries,” says Ashley Fletcher, vice president of marketing, Adthena, in a release.

“Furthermore, many waves were recently made with Google’s recent debut of its Hotel Ad buying campaigns to Google Ads. These findings underscore just how big of a player hotels are in search today.”

Most travelers (54%) conduct travel searches on desktop versus just 20% who use mobile devices. Moreover, 26% of respondents said that they used mobile and desktops equally.

“Given how mobile-focused the industry has become over the past few years, this is definitely one of the most interesting findings in our study,” Fletcher says. “It goes to show that even though mobile is hot, the need for a multifront approach to search is still pivotal to success.”

More than a third (37%) said hotels were their top search, followed by local attractions (27%) and airline flights (25%).

An overwhelming majority of respondents (78%) say pricing and deals are the determining factors in making buying decisions when doing travel research via search. Only a minority cite the brand or loyalty programs as a deciding factor.

Nearly 80% of those surveyed say they have used search engines when planning for their summer travel, with 32% saying that they typically do four or more searches during their travel prep. Additionally, 46% of respondents spend at least “a few days” using search engines before making travel bookings.

More than three-quarters of respondents (76%) say that they have made purchases for summer travel via paid search ads, with 17% of respondents saying that they buy from paid search ads “very often.” In addition, 51% of respondents said that paid search ads were either “very helpful” or “somewhat helpful” when planning their summer travel.

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