Travel, tourism needs a Travel 2.0 Internet marketing strategy
According to a new report from PhoCusWright Inc., next year for the first time transactions on the Internet will account for over half (54%) of all U.S. travel bookings.
The US market is way ahead of the pack in using the Net to buy travel. While the U.S. represented just one third of total online and offline travel bookings for North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific markets in 2005, the U.S. share of online bookings was over 60 percent.
Travel 2.0
The advanced level of the U.S. online travel market creates an atmosphere in which search engine optimization becomes vital and user-generated content includes the new online capabilities that PhoCusWright has termed Travel 2.0—the travel industry’s application of Web 2.0 practices empowering the online consumer.
If you’re in the travel our tourism business in the US or Canada, and you have not yet mastered the Web 2.0 and SEO PR strategies like news search, blogging, RSS feeds and social media, better get prepared.
Otherwise you’re likely to be left behind as your competitors rush to service this predicted boom in online travel sales.