Poll: The Travel Companies With the Highest Brand Equity

The competition between airlines, hotels and booking sites isn’t getting any lighter, and Harris Poll fueled the fire even more this week by announcing which companies have the highest brand equity in each sector.

The report is based off the Brand Equity Index, part of the EquiTrend program, providing an understanding of a brand's overall strength. A brand's equity is determined by a calculation of familiarity, quality and purchase consideration. These were three main categories of the 170 used to rank more than 1,500 brands part of the study, which also included non-travel industry brands.

Expedia wins online travel service brand of the year for the second year in a row, with the report citing its win is due to high marks in all three main categories. Alaska Airlines continues to top the airline industry’s leaderboard, winning full service airline brand of the year for the third consecutive year, while Southwest Airlines wins value airline brand of the year for the fourth consecutive year. Southwest ranked the highest for it’s commitment to maintain its original branding, even as it became a major national carrier, according to the report.

Omni Hotels and Resorts took back the luxury hotel brand of the year title in 2014, having last won in 2011. The report cites Omni doing well with the purchase consideration metric as a chief reason for its win. Marriott Hotels won full service hotel brand of the year again, with its last win in 2012, and receives the recognition for year-over-year increases in its brand’s familiarity.

See below for some of the other rankings highlighted in the report:

Source: 2014 Harris Poll EquiTrend