In an effort to determine benchmarks for online marketing practices and organization structures, a new study surveyed 426 senior marketing executives in lodging and destination organizations. The study, “2011 Travel Industry Benchmarking: Marketing ROI, Opportunities, and Challenges in Online and Social Media Channels for Destination and Marketing Firms,” is written by Cornell Professor Rohit Verma, executive director of the Center for Hospitality Research (CHR), and Ken McGill, executive vice president of research for Vantage Strategy. The report is available at no charge from the CHR at www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research.
“Each year well over 700 marketing executives gather for TravelCom, which is a high level marketing conference that was held this year in Las Vegas,” said Verma. “One major theme this year was online marketing, but we realized that there was no overall knowledge of where the industry stands in this area. This study provides those benchmarks.”
Using an internet-based survey, Verma and McGill polled senior marketers regarding budget levels, marketing strategies, and organizational structures. They found both a wide range of expenditure levels on online marketing and considerable diversity in organizational structures.
For social media campaigns, about 80 percent of the marketers said that they produced Twitter campaigns and social media promotions in-house, but such functions as search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising are largely outsourced. Accommodation firms are more likely to outsource all social media functions, including pay-per-call, Twitter campaigns, and pay-per-click management. Destination marketers, on the other hand, generally handle more functions in-house.
Two-thirds of the entire sample said their 2010 e-commerce budgets had increased with respect to 2009. Sixty percent of accommodation marketers anticipated a further increase in 2011, and 71 percent of the destination marketers said their 2011 budgets would increase.
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