In an online travel world that’s increasingly dominated by mobile, where you place your bets could make all the difference. Pamela Whitby reports

In the past six months or so, travel firms that started life online have become increasingly visible in the real world. Back in January metasearch player Skyscanner stepped up it’s marketing moves with its £3 million ‘Born Honest’ television campaign.

This was the first time that Skyscanner had put its media spend outside of search engine optimisation (SEO) and other digital advertising.

The move by Skyscanner, and others too, is the sign of a shifting landscape for marketers. For one the barriers to entry in the online travel space have risen and with it the cost of metasearch, search and digital advertising in general. In addition, private equity backers today are more focused on growth and in the past six months the online travel consumer is moving faster than ever before.

Against this challenging backdrop, let’s take a look at some driving trends for marketers today.

1. Marketing is not what it used to be

“With rising costs of digital advertising, a lot of OTAs have been forced to go back and question some of the marketing they haven’t done over the past few years,” says Alex Gisbert, chief marketing officer at Low Cost Travel Group.

With rising costs of digital advertising, a lot of OTAs have been forced to go back and question some of the marketing they haven’t done over the past few years

Alex Gisbert, Chief Marketing Officer, Low Cost Travel Group.

And what online travel brands are finding is that today television, print and ‘in-the-home’ media represent value for money. The challenge, however, says Gisbert, “is to bring these into your marketing mix as comfortably as you would have done in the past with search, natural search, affiliates, metasearch and so on”.

2. It’s a real world and brand matters

Like Skyscanner, Low Cost Travel Group has taken a bet on raising brand awareness.

“In the online travel space the best companies are willing to take bets and make predictions. We’re betting first on brand because we think there is long-term shareholder value in this,” says Gisbert.

It’s a three-year strategy for the group but Gisbert expects to see awareness of the Low Cost brand multiplied by five. “The more we focus on the low cost brand, the less generic the search term will become,” he says.

In London, at least, that seems to be paying off with a campaign that is clearly visible on billboards, on television screens and in print.

In keeping with the decision to bet on brand, the group has also made the call to invest strongly in mobile apps which gives them bigger advantage over the customer lifetime, he says.

3. Social permeates everything

One stark realisation for Gisbert is that that social media today “can no longer be contained in a PR bucket or a direct response bucket; social permeates every single thing we do”.

David Llewellyn who is head of mobile marketing at Skyscanner agrees: “We’re seeing a substantial amount of traffic coming from Facebook and that has grown significantly since the beginning of the year.” 

This explains why aside from using tools like Ad Ex and Google Analytics, Skyscanner is playing closer attention to Facebook’s tools.

We’re seeing a substantial amount of traffic coming from Facebook David Llewellyn, Head of Mobile Marketing, Skyscanner

And for good reason! As Dorianne Richelle, Travel Vertical Lead at Facebook, pointed out at the recent Travel Distribution Summit Europe, there are already a billion mobile users on Facebook and the next billion are going to come from mobile. She also pointed to the fact that 42% of Facebook users actively share travel content with friends.  

4. Measuring mobile is still a work in progress

Both Gisbert and Llewellyn agree that the mobile part of their business continues to grow apace, and this is backed up by recent EyeforTravel research:

• 62% of executives saying that they think mobile devices will see the biggest growth in booking volumes over the next 12 months
• Mobile advertising is expected to triple to $36.9 billion by 2015                                           

There are, however, hurdles to overcome.

Just because you can’t attribute it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it

“Mobile is the fastest growing part of our B2C business but the challenges of attribution are massive and particularly in the package holiday space that we operate in,” says Gisbert, adding that “this is something we are wrestling with all the time and will likely be central to discussions in Berlin”.

For Skyscanner, a major focus this year will be getting the right insights into the user journey from start to finish. “We still have a lot to do in terms of tracking and analytics capabilities,” admits Llewellyn.

Low Cost Group is also running quite a lot of analysis and tracking as much as possible, but Gisbert “doesn’t think we have cracked it yet at all!”

One thing seems certain, gone are the days of last-click attribution, where the customer began and ended the journey in one place. But while mobile attribution remains an elusive target Gisbert has this to say: “Just because you can’t attribute it, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it”.

And as mentioned earlier, in online travel it’s about making big bets and directing your technology towards what’s coming next.

To hear more marketing tips and trends and to better understand how to attribute mobile, join us in Berlin for Online Marketing Mobile & Social Media in Travel 2014 (Oct 1-2)