• by Susan Kuchinskas , February 22, 2007

The key to online conversion is hassle-free booking

Before they head out on vacation, most families go online to research destinations and make reservations. Online marketing and media programs should ignite their wanderlust, while making booking easier than a trip to the supermarket.

In 2006, a whopping $85 billion worth of travel was booked online, JupiterResearch reports. That's about 38 percent of all travel revenue. Jupiter projects $128 billion in travel-related services will be sold online in the U.S. in 2011.

Families represent an ample portion of online travel dollars. They're traveling more and spending more, accounting for $60 billion in domestic trips, according to Mintel's Leisure and Travel Attitudes and Trends. And marketing and research agency Yesawich, Pepperdine, Brown & Russell (YPBR) says family travel will continue to grow at a faster rate than all other segments of leisure travel.

Several trends are driving this robust market:

Togethering: The family vacation doesn't mean just Mom, Dad, and the kids, according to YPBR. Parents, grandparents, and other relatives use travel as a way to reunite and celebrate family milestones such as birthdays and anniversaries.

"Multigenerational travel is one of the fastest-growing sub-segments," says Gary Sain, YPBR's chief marketing officer. "Look at the number of boomers turning 65. They're semi-retired or retired, and they have disposable income and wealth. They'll take the grandchildren to locations like Orlando, with or without the parents."

Destination Resorts: "They're looking not only for exceptional experiences, but also exceptional hotels," Sain says. For example, Nickelodeon Family Suites by Holiday Inn caters to kids with crazy decor and costumed characters roaming the premises.

Upscale Trips: Dual-income families have disposable income but are time-impoverished, says Linda Hill, president of Hill & Company, an integrated marketing and advertising agency that specializes in Western resorts. "These are families who want quality time with the children, versus quantity, which is not available to them." They have no qualms about taking a two-year-old to Europe or a fancy U.S. resort.

Put Them in the Picture: Flash-packed rich media is a natural for attracting families booking vacations online. Video shows gorgeous scenery to advantage, while virtual tours give vacationers the sense of being there, Hill says.

Hawaii, one of the world's top destinations for families, sells itself, but the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau aims to make sure tourists get the full picture. It uses video banner ads to lure travelers to GoHawaii.com, its site designed for leisure travelers.

Another campaign invites locals to send in photos showing their favorite Hawaiian things. Site visitors can use them to create their own photo galleries. "The photos highlight what is truly authentic to different local people and lets them share that with others," says Kara Imai, director of online marketing. The site also lets visitors create a message using traditional Hula dance gestures and then send it to a friend.

All in the Family: Search and booking are important aspects of online travel marketing. Jupiter says travelers of all kinds have begun to prefer booking directly with the travel supplier instead of intermediaries. Suppliers' sites should take visitors as quickly as possible to what they want to do, says Anna Maria Arizzi, director of client services for Hill & Company. "Easy booking systems greatly appeal to this audience," she says. "Time-pressed parents can't be navigating multiple screens."

On the site Hill designed for the Grand Junction Visitor & Convention Bureau, the first screen lets visitors choose between leisure, group, and business travel. Rollover content lets them begin planning before they've made a single click.

There are some messages that appeal to the whole family: fun, togetherness, escape. But the two most important decision-makers are the mother and the kids, and they use media and respond to messages very differently.

In families with younger children, Mom is the researcher. She'll spend hours online researching destinations, hotels, and attractions. Her key concerns, says Sains, are that there are activities to keep everyone happy while providing lots of togetherness, as well as keeping the family safe and secure.

She doesn't have much time to read blogs, but she's more likely to seek out endorsements and read reviews of destinations and hotels. "Women are so fastidious in trying to determine if it's truly the right place to be and they'll do that extra research to make sure," Arizzi says. When the family includes teenagers, they drive the planning process, according to Arizzi and they're doing it all online. "They're not looking at travel magazines or going to libraries," she says. Social media is a huge attractor for teens.

Virgin America, a U.S. startup airline that hopes to begin flying in major American cities this year, can't afford to go head-to-head in advertising with the established carriers, so it plans to use social media to gain awareness, especially with kids. Its first test flight of viral video showed this idea has wings.

The company posted a time-lapse video of one of its planes being painted on YouTube. Evidently, watching paint dry can be plenty exciting. The video got a boost when someone posted it to Digg.com, a site where you can find the most popular news and videos as rated by other users. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

Jason Kelly, director of sales, distribution, and revenue management for Virgin America, says social media sites such as these reach kids, an important market segment for the airline. The planes will have onboard entertainment systems with kids' programming, video games, and TV incorporating parental controls.

"If you create interest with kids, that will translate into a conversation at home with parents when they decide to fly," Kelly says. "If kids think Virgin America is cool, that puts a bug into the ear of the whole family overall and gives us a chance for them to try our product."

Travelocity's iconic wandering gnome campaign, now in its fourth year, has wandered into social media. Originally designed to appeal to hip, tech-savvy early Internet adopters, the campaign by McKinney & Silver includes a page on Yahoo 360 where people can watch videos, learn the back story, leave messages, and post photos documenting their own gnome sightings.

The evolving story keeps the original target engaged, while creating multiple entry points to intrigue all members of the family. "Yahoo 360 works very well with the story we're trying to tell and allowed us to leverage our relationship with Yahoo," says David Griffith, director of account planning and McKinney & Silver's senior strategist on the Travelocity account.

"Look at the places he's been, the things he's seen," this campaign says. "Just click here to do likewise." Fabulous places, astonishingly easy planning and booking - sounds like a dream vacation.