Summer travel plans are well underway for most and it’s particularly a very popular time for family travel. Catering to families is a smart strategy for many in the travel industry, and there’s growing evidence that even in these tough economic times the family vacation has become more important than ever—with families working hard to find more value for their travels, rather than sacrifice the idea of taking a vacation.
We decided to take a look into the online habits of the segment of Family Travelers to understand how their search activity for travel may differ from the online population. Before visiting the websites within the Travel Agencies category, they had a much higher propensity to search terms related to ‘deals’, ‘all-inclusive’ and ‘packages’. Agency names that they seemed to favor more than the online population include Bookit.com, Priceline and Expedia during the 12 weeks ending June 30, 2012 .
To identify what Family Travelers are interested in and care about – we can look at what types of sites they visit before travel sites. Not too surprisingly, children’s sites topped the list but when you look further there is an array of sporting & gaming sites –skateboarding/skating, watersports and entertainment sites including wrestling – that they had a higher propensity to visit than the online population. Activity based vacations, excursions and related offerings would likely catch their eye.
To capture the attention and summer travel bookings from Family Travelers it’s critical to focus on value/deal oriented messages, and you can find them online with highly targeted advertising on children and youth oriented websites.