New Skift Research Report: The Crisis in Online Travel Agency Advertising

Skift is dedicated to following the nuances of the online travel agency (OTA) market. With more happening online than ever, we will be breaking our OTA coverage into a multi-part series this year exploring different aspects of the business model in depth. The first part of our series looks at advertising spend by online travel agencies in North America and Europe. Upcoming parts of the series will include a look at OTA-supplier dynamics and emerging market OTAs.

To help you understand these questions and more, today we are launching the first Skift Research report in the series, The State of OTAs 2018 Part I: Advertising.

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In this report, we survey the state of online travel agency (OTA) ad spending in North America and Europe, specifically Booking Holdings and Expedia. These OTAs are well-oiled machines that are some of the largest marketers in the world.

However, they face growing challenges. Hotels and airlines have launched major campaigns encouraging consumers to book direct and search ad auctions are crowded. We analyze the state of OTA ad dollars and find that despite the large dollar figure, efficiency is declining. New ad dollars do not appear to generate as many bookings as they once did.

Ultimately the online travel agencies remain essential to the travel industry. They act as consolidators of and clearinghouses for advertising dollars throughout the space. We do not see OTAs being removed from this position easily, but they must remain nimble — upping their brand advertising, while tailoring their substantial ad spend for maximum booking potential — to keep pace.

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What you’ll learn from this report:

• Size of ad budgets at major online travel agencies.
• Comparison of ad spending in travel to other industries.
• A focus on what Amazon Prime can teach us about customer loyalty.
• Analysis of ad efficiency at OTAs.
• A look at the shifting landscape between brand and performance ad spending.
• Selling and Marketing margin analysis of OTAs.

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This is the latest Skift Research report aimed at analyzing the fault lines of disruption in travel. These reports are intended for the busy travel industry decision-maker. Tap into the opinions and insights of our seasoned network of staffers and contributors. More than 200 hours of desk research, data collection, and/or analysis goes into each report.

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