Written by Fernando Maciá
Víctor Hernández,(@VictorHdez), Search Manager at Casa Batlló.
Google, new OTA
Google is becoming a new OTA. It is taking the whole customer journey of the tourism sector and you can plan when it is cheaper or more expensive and it competes with the big companies like Booking or Trip Advisor, etc.
The pie is being shared among the big players because people are no longer searching Google as much. Apps are used instead.
Knowing the world is one of the most widespread desires, the irruption of apps changes the context and experiences are sought at the destination.
Google is going to open a Youtube channel where they do interviews with famous presenters and visit the sites with the highest number of reviews: i.e. using influencers to fight against Trip Advisor, Booking, etc. to keep those users.
Digital ecosystem
We need to understand the digital ecosystem. 95% of travelers read 7 reviews before deciding and are wary if they are all positive. 20% of the opinions are false.
It is also important to make friends with your enemies. Influencers are like meigas: there are some, there are some. Social media can be people who help users keep you top of mind. But care must be taken. Not all influencers can help sell afterwards.
Sistrix will provide all kinds of indicators of Instagram accounts with which we will be able to qualify which influencers may or may not be of interest to us.
Linkbuilding
We also do linkbuilding. We rely on semantics, affinity and relevance with the Linkaffinity tool.
We managed to position ourselves for Sant Jordi: there are several houses fighting to appropriate this legend. Casa Batlló ranks well for this keyword.
Monitor your competition: detect opportunities, take advantage and improve your profile and detect anomalies in your competition. Remember to check your popularity profile so that there are no incidents.
Seasonality
In the case of tourism, it is important to respect seasonality in order to generate link building. We try to predict what the demand for tourism is going to be in order to know the size of the market we could target at any given time. This will also allow us to run PPC campaigns with a tighter budget.
