Access exclusive travel research, data insights, and surveys
Online Travel
You are, therefore you book. From maps to mobile and wearables, booking becomes ubiquitous, ever-present.
Dennis Schaal, Skift | 9 years ago
Media and PR
While the Trivago Guy's love-him-or-hate him TV ads garnered a lot of media attention in 2014, it was the Expedia brand that really kicked butt on TV.
Expedia Inc. is following the TripAdvisor playbook on Trivago, which could go the spinoff/IPO route one day. The Priceline Group, meanwhile, is focusing on Booking.com and new-prize OpenTable as priorities while being measured about Kayak's international expansion.
Even large online travel agencies like Expedia need marketing partners, and that is where the metasearch sites come in. In Expedia's view, its own subsidiary Trivago is helping Expedia compensate for the traffic it is losing, and will continue to lose, from TripAdvisor.
You can see travel advertisers on TV trying to create memorable characters. There's Priceline's The Negotiator and attempts by Trivago with the Trivago Guy and Hotels.com with Captain Obvious. It's a very tough thing to do, and CheapOair is trying to take a shortcut.
With TV advertising for travel sites so competitive these days, getting noticed is a big hurdle. Few people are talking about TripAdvisor's ads, but the media and public are noticing the Trivago Guy, and will likely remember the name of the site. Whether they'll use it is another question.
Tim Williams is no William Shatner, but his TV commercials for Trivago are creating a lot of buzz, mostly unexpected, for the brand.
Summer is the time for group travel. Identify with your brand's audience through their families and friends.
Joyce Manalo, Skift | 9 years ago
Business Travel
Regardless of what their companies want, lots of road warriors are booking their hotels and flights on leisure travel sites, and hotel-metasearch sites, if they develop certain tracking and reporting tools, could one day play an even larger role in business travel.
At this point, vacationers have already made their holiday plans. It's good timing to publish videos that entertain as opposed to ones that promote.
