HOSPITALITY BRAND

Sabre released their 2020 brand.com benchmark report showing that a higher percentage of traffic came to hotel websites via CPC/Paid Search; up to 18% of all traffic in 2019 from 14% in the previous year.   While Organic Search continues to drive the most traffic (44%), it has decreased 5pts from 2018.  This highlights the continued importance of SEO in driving traffic organically, as well as the importance of a healthy investment in Paid Search and CPC.  This suggests an increase in hotel investments in CPC, as well as, an increase in the ability for paid search to drive traffic.   Key Takeaways Organic Search continues to reign at the top for driving traffic CPC/Paid Search continues to grow in importance for the hotel industry Direct traffic importance has not changed in the last year Show me the data Brand.com Traffic Change from 2018 to 2019 Show me the numbers Sources Tables and charts by HospitalityBrand.com with data from Sabre's past 2 reports Sabre 2020 benchmark report (

Google search data shows that people are not searching for the popular "Hotel", "Flights", and "Travel" terms anywhere near as much as last year, or earlier in the year for that matter.  Furthermore, most of the related searches for "Travel" and "Flights" are around cancellations and Covid19 restrictions.  On the bright side during the week leading into July 4th, search for "Hotels" was at roughly 75% of last years levels. The term "Travel" is roughly at the same level as last year but searches for "Flights" are considerably down.  What am I looking at? In the graph above, you are seeing US search volume for the terms "Hotels" in blue, "Travel" in red, and "Flights"in yellow--from June 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020.  The lines compare search volume across the terms and across time.  The scale is relative to the highest searched term at a particular period in time.  A value of