Travelers watch on average about two hours of videos a day, travel five times a year, and spend $3,657 a year on trips.
These are a few of the findings from a new piece of research by Google, presented at the Web In Travel conference in Singapore.
Calling these people “Youtube enthusiasts”, Ryan Ferguson, sector lead for travel in Asia-Pacific, shared some data from the search giant about travelers who use Youtube as a research platform for trips.
- They travel and spend 75% more than the average traveller.
- More than 75% own a credit or debit card, making online bookings and payments easier.
- They take twice as many international trips
- They are thrice as likely to research on trips when they get their bonuses
- They are twice as likely to book a trip when there is a price promotion
- They are twice as interested in shopping and adventure travel
- They are 2.5 times more likely to be triggered by online advertisements
- While researching a holiday, they watch give travel videos per week around their destination.
Based on these findings, Ferguson says the industry needs to look at video engagement. Youtube - the video platform owned by Google (“it is also the world’s second largest search engine") - reaches 83% of audiences in Asia-Pacific, he claims.
The video platform has seen queries on travel grow 16% year-on-year and approximately 65% of those queries are destination-specific. There are also between 1.1 billion to 1.3 billion video users in Asia-Pacific, he says.
"Consumers are leaning into these platforms and really asking the platforms where they should be going, what does the destination look like?," he adds.
Ferguson says Booking.com is an example of a company doing a good job with using video to attract travellers.
"Their propensity is to look at strategy, dig deep into data, and learn how to target audience correctly. They curated a bunch of videos specific to their audience signals and intent.
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"They understand local profiles and search volume, so the video message they create is consistent with what users are looking for. They have driven a million engagements in Japan alone.
"Videos today are no longer about Christmas, no longer about one campaign at a time."
* This article was originally published on Web In Travel.