Booking Secrets of Sucessful

[pic 1]THE SECRETS BEHIND BOOKING.COM’S SUCCESS        MAY 2018

The Secrets Behind

Booking.com’s Success

May 2018

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THE SECRETS BEHIND BOOKING.COM’S SUCCESS

Contents

Methodology

Introduction

Booking.com Through the Year

Booking.com Around the World

US

Russia

UK

Germany

About SimilarWeb

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MAY 2018

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Methodology

This whitepaper looks at desktop and mobile traffic for booking.com, from several countries around the world with a focus on the US, Russia, the UK and Germany, covering the years from May 2016 through April 2018.

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THE SECRETS BEHIND BOOKING.COM’S SUCCESS

Introduction

In February 2018, the Priceline Group announced that it was rebranding itself as Booking Holdings. This change reflects the huge value to the company of its subsidiary Booking.com.

Founded in 1996, Booking.com is now among the world’s leading OTAs, with over 1.5 million room nights reserved every day through the platform.

This report will look at the ways Booking.com has adjusted its digital marketing to suit the localized needs in each geographic territory. Specifically, we will focus on the US, Russia, the UK and Germany as these are consistently among the countries sending the most traffic to booking.com.

March 2018

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Key Takeaways

1.        Booking.com enjoys enormous global success sourcing traffic from Russia, Italy, Germany and other smaller territories, benefitting from a single URL which is also the company’s brand.

2. The core digital strategy for booking.com is implemented with localized variations, customized for specific market needs.

3. Booking.com performs differently in each country as it competes to be the leading OTA for lodgings against other global players like Airbnb.

4. Booking.com’s referral strategy includes strategic partnerships with global players like TripAdvisor as well as local metasearch engines like Aviasales in Russia.

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THE SECRETS BEHIND BOOKING.COM’S SUCCESS

Booking.com Through the Year

Booking.com is the most visited Travel website in the world, averaging over 426M visits per month.

Just like its nearest rival, airbnb.com, traffic to booking.com is highly seasonal. Visits to booking.com in July and August of 2017 were 33% and 27% higher than the monthly average for the site. Traffic in November 2017 was 21% lower than average.

While global trafic rose by almost 8% over the previous 12 months, there was no change in the distribution of that traffic across platforms with a steady 55.6% of visits coming from the mobile web.

MAY 2018

Monthly Traffic

Global, Desktop and Mobile, May 2017 - Apr 2018

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Desktop vs Mobile Share

Global, May 2017 - Apr 2018

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THE SECRETS BEHIND BOOKING.COM’S SUCCESS

Booking.com Around the World

Booking.com uses the same URL throughout the world, turning their URL into their brand.

In the past 12 months Russia overtook the US as the largest source of traffic to the site, although the lead changes from month to month. Germany’s share of traffic has also risen along with several countries outside the top ten.

This indicates that the site is further diversifying taking in smaller countries as it continues to compete directly with Airbnb in each country.

MAY 2018

Traffic Share by Country

Desktop, May 2017 - Apr 2018

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THE SECRETS BEHIND BOOKING.COM’S SUCCESS

Different Markets, Different Marketing Strategies

The largest proportion of traffic in the US, UK and, Germany arrives directly to the site. In Russia, traffic splits relatively evenly across direct, organic search, referrals, paid search and email. Traffic from France falls somewhere between these two patterns with less direct traffic than elsewhere in Europe but a higher proportion of traffic from email and search.

Germany has the highest proportion of paid vs organic search traffic at 57%. This traffic from PPC also delivers higher engagement across all metrics for traffic quality.

Referrals are also a significant source of traffic to booking.com across all territories with the US and Russia seeing the highest proportions of referral traffic.

The high proportions of paid search, combined with referrals, which are also mostly paid, is an indication of competitive nature of the OTA market globally.

MAY 2018

Traffic Sources for booking.com

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Desktop, US, Russia, UK & Germany, May 2017 - Apr 2018

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THE SECRETS BEHIND BOOKING.COM’S SUCCESS

Booking.com

in the US

In the US, booking.com received an average of 40 million visits in the months between May 2017 and April 2018.

Until the first half of 2017, traffic to booking.com was consistently ahead of airbnb.com in the US. In September of last year, Airbnb pulled ahead for the first time and maintained its lead throughout the rest of the year and into 2018. Visits to airbnb.com also lasted longer, took in more pages and enjoyed a lower bounce rate.

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