This week at the annual Expedia Partner Conference in Las Vegas, our Expedia Media Solutions team hosted a Learning Lab, where we shared insights about online traveler behaviors from custom studies we did with third-party research firms as well as learnings and success stories from a few of our marketing partners, including Destination BC, Visit Britain and The Cape Los Cabos and introduced the new Expedia brand campaign.
Luth Research kicked off our Learning Lab to share findings from the new study we commissioned on the bleisure traveler, or business travelers who extend their business trips with leisure activities. The study uncovers the habits of this growing sector in the travel market, including what factors influence a business traveler’s decision to extend a trip for leisure. Some interesting findings include:
- Nearly half (43 percent) of all business trips, across domestic and international destinations, are bleisure trips.
- Those who participate in bleisure travel, tend to be more frequent business travelers; 32 percent travel for work once or twice a month.
- Business trips for conferences or conventions are more likely to turn into bleisure trips (43 percent) than a team offsite (24 percent) or sales trips (9 percent).
- The majority of bleisure trips are spent in the same city or area as the business trip (84 percent), and more than 80 percent tend to stay at the hotel.
For more findings on the bleisure traveler, download the full study: http://bit.ly/bleisure-traveler
Next we heard from our marketing partners, including Jorge Villarreal, director of sales and marketing at The Cape Los Cabos, on how our sponsored listing solution helped drive demand to the new property for a return on investment of 10:1; Maria Greene, director of global marketing at Destination BC, shared how to outsmart, not outspend, the competition with our strategic partnership on an industry award-winning creative and interactive custom content campaign that has driven demand; and Carol Dray, commercial director of Visit Britain, on our multi-year partnership that spans across Expedia to creatively showcase all that the destination has to offer travelers throughout the year, with early results pointing to strong engagement and increases in demand.
We also had the privilege of seeing the new Expedia brand campaign that Vic Walia, senior director of brand marketing at Expedia.com, shared called Travel the World Better, which showcases how Expedia brings the power of travel to the masses.
Closing out the Learning Lab was Matthew Reichek, our global vice president of product and analytics, who shared findings from our recent study on the Traveler’s Path to Purchase, which explores how the interaction between travel booking websites and other influential online and offline touchpoints can impact the purchase journey for American, British and Canadian travelers.
While travelers in each region are consuming travel content at different rates, they all share some behavioral similarities when it comes to travel planning. For instance, they are actively seeking travel content and are receptive to new information, and nearly one third or more of online travel bookers across the three countries were influenced by advertising. For additional insights and findings on the Traveler’s Path to Purchase, download the full study {{cta(‘b0044d27-f505-45fa-b5e8-c02fe2d31817’)}}
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