Since 2011 we have been analysing where direct bookings come from on a yearly basis.
Every year, after the summer holidays, we gather several months of answers from guests that booked directly with hotels and ask them how they heard about the hotel they eventually booked in.
NB: This is an analysis by Martin Soler, vice president of marketing at World Independent Hotels Promotion (WIHP).
This year the survey consists of more than 12,000 guest replies.
The results vary from year to year (see our previous articles here for 2011, 2012, 2013), but they never change wildly.
However, the biggest change this time round is actually in first position, which previously belonged to TripAdvisor in 2013 and this year has returned to Friends and Family.
Last year, we were surprised to see it taking the top spot and speculated that this could have been due to its recently launched TripConnect platform, but that doesn’t seem to be the source.
The fact remains that respondents are saying it isn’t how they discovered the hotel.
Another interesting fact is that OTAs are steadily declining as a source of direct bookings for hotels.
While still high at 16.2%, it is interesting that they are declining showing that perhaps the hotel industry's strategy to try and retain guests is working somewhat.
Considering that Priceline reports that 30% of its revenue is spent on marketing, it arguably needs to optimize this as much as possible to retain visitors and ensure it remains the "first port of call" in the hotel ecosystem.
Repeat guests are an increasing category and this could be attributed to implementing better long term marketing strategies with clients.
As these surveys are conducted with WIHP clients and we work with hotels to increase the repeat guests, this may not be an international trend.
Still, an area that is steadily decreasing, and bears more looking into, is how people are less affected by blogs to find their hotels, even while the influencer marketing platform Snaptraveller has been working with hotels to increase notoriety through multiple channels (Instagram, Twitter, in addition to articles on blogs).
Here are the full results (click image for a larger version):
NB: This is an analysis by Martin Soler, vice president of marketing at World Independent Hotels Promotion (WIHP).
NB2:Hotel mouse image via Shutterstock.
NB3: A marketing survey was placed at the payment step of the booking engine on several hundred hotels in WIHP’s portfolio, asking guests how they discovered the hotel. A dropdown of possible replies were suggested to the guest which are represented above. No changes have been made to the possible replies in the last four years in order to keep the integrity of the survey. A quarter of the hotels selected for the survey vary year over year.