Search engines drive10 million travel bookings in the UK in three months.

Research by Yahoo! has measured the importance of search engines to travel purchases in the UK. Searches in December 2005 had generated 10 million bookings from 7.5 million consumers by the end of February 2006.

Only 10% of the purchases were made immediately after the search, with 45% within four weeks and the remaining 45% within eight weeks.  The study identified two types of searches - searches for destinations and searches for suppliers. Interestingly, searches for suppliers converted 16% immediately but searches for destinations only converted 5% immediately.

Other finding were that 40% of all searchers conducted a travel search in December 2005.  Interviews with some of the searchers revealed that almost 40% looked at a travel website they hadn't intended to because it was among the first few web results and a third clicked on sponsored ads (such as Pay per Click) because they included relevant offers.

Not being on the first page of the search engines results is not the end of the world though, as 60% go beyond the first page to find what they want.

Significance

With volumes like this and the willingness to look at unknown travel websites, travel companies need to do well in search engine rankings and have eye-catching entries there (even if that means not being in the top 10) and in paid advertising on search engines.