It has come to my hands an interesting academic study on most wanted tourist activities in the internet from United States. In this study searches, search intent, satisfaction with the results, how they have searched, etc. are analyzed In general, valuable information to plan the SEO strategy destinations and tourism businesses.
The study was conducted in the US with 10,000 users. The only criticism is that it uses very current data (which have academic research) and works with data from 2008 and 2009, which is an eternity in internet. Still, the results are interesting and I think that still apply in early 2013.
One of the most significant tables and I think it may be more useful, is analyzing the most sought type of tourist activity on the Internet (Table 1 study).
Types of planning of tourist activities online through a search engine:
| Finding information about a particular destination | 76.2 % |
| Searches prices hotel or a similar establishment | 68.6% |
| Searches prices and airline schedules | 62.2% |
| Searches for maps and directions to a destination | 55% |
| Search of things to do at the destination | 52.6% |
| Searches travel discounts and promotions | 45.3% |
| Searches of potential destinations to visit | 42.6% |
| Searches for places to eat or leisure destination | 41.8% |
| Price Search for rental cars | 35.9% |
| Find a local calendar to see events destination | 33.4% |
| Searches of packages in resorts | 25.3% |
| Searches of shops and places where to buy | 23.5% |
| Searches related to cruises | 22.8% |
| Searches of websites that distribute free travel brochures | 15.1% |
| Searches of 800 numbers (of information) | 8.4% |
This information can be useful to us, for example, to the web of a hotel. If we know that 52.3% of searches are related to things to do in a destination, we can create a section on our web site precisely with this information, and title it "What to do ... (name of destination)", if a 41.8% are looking for places to eat at a particular destination, can do the same: create a section on our website where we offer this information. In short it is making "content marketing"Ie create complementary to our content and serve to attract visitors from search engines to our website.
Returning to the article in question, also it indicates that searches tend to be getting longer, but the authors do not see a correlation between long searches and satisfaction with the results. Both those doing long searches as those who make short, are equally satisfied with the results: about 44%.
On the other hand, the study analyzes what word used in first position when searching (see Table 8 of the document). For queries related to hotels, usually the name of the hotel or directly to your website, for tourist attractions, is usually part of the slogan of advertising, for destinations is the destination name or the name of the journal in which the they have been cited for routes is very tight, so much the name as the slogan, like the website, however, to find a means of transport is the name of an intermediary (a portal intermediation) used.
The entire document is downloadable from this link: A Framework of Search Engine Use for Travel Planning
I warn those who are not accustomed to rubbing shoulders academic documentation is a little hard to read why it is full of appointments and methodological clarifications, which on the other hand is necessary to give academic validity and rigor in conducting research. Luckily, you can go to the data tables and perform our own analysis directly.
I hope you find it useful.
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