Waiting for guests to check out left me with a little time to review this survey and I found a few things to comment on - would love others' take on this too. First and formost, we must remember that this survey was taken by individuals who
already use the internet to search for travel (and most likely other things as well), so this should be taken into account when basing these facts. Also, I find that this survey was created primarily to show the travel industry that they should continue and most likely increase their online marketing stratagies.
- It was not suprising to find that those that have used the Internet to do travel research will continue to do so. What I was suprised in was the fact that there virtually no increase from 2007 to 2008. (pg 17)
- Page 16 shows really no shift in how they search - If they use preselected sites they will be more than likely to return to their tried and true than to use any new method. (This contradicts one of my posts which I thought searchers would - in time - start using seach engines over directories...)
- Few hold real value in the review sites - only ~25% (page 16 & 28) and only 3% of their time used on research is spent on these sites (pg 15)
- According to page 15, 31% of their time is spent online travel agent (OTA) sites (would include hotels.com, expedia etc) during research, only 9% of their time is spent on hotel sites. What I take from this is that individuals that use these OTA sites are not set on a certain hotel, they are looking for something that meets their needs.
