Greenlight has just announced its results for the most visible hotel websites in December 2010.
Laterooms.com comes top in Greenlight study
Laterooms.com achieved the highest integrated search ranking for the hotel sector in December 2010, according to figures from search consultancy Greenlight.
The hotel booking site captured 61% of the audience in natural search and 52% in paid search, placing it comfortably above rival booking.com, which achieved 10% and 86% respectively.
The Greenlight study measured natural and paid search along with social media across 1.4 million queries.
The top five companies in natural search all gained more than 20% reach:
1. Laterooms.com
2. Expedia.co.uk
3. Lastminute.com
4. Tripadvisor.co.uk
5. Cheaperthanhotels.co.uk
The top five businesses in paid search were:
1. Booking.com
2. Laterooms.com
3. Expedia.co.uk
4. Holidayinn.com
5. Travelsupermarket.com
They bid on 115 of the 120 keywords analysed and achieved an average ad position of two.
Booking.com’s aggressive bidding strategy did not follow consumer behavioural trends, as evidenced by the graph below:
Instead, Booking.com kept its bidding at just below 15% for the entire week. Their simple strategy outperformed companies like Hotels.com whose bidding tracked consumer trends closely.
Along with paid search Greenlight also analysed how companies used social media. They found lastminute.com had the best social media strategy. The company regularly posts on Facebook and uses Twitter, and has the largest number of followers/fans.
The top five hotels in social media were:
1. Lastminute.com
2. Hilton.co.uk
3. Booking.com
4. Laterooms.com
5. Premierinn.com
These companies had well over 10,000 followers/fans, and are engaged in regular tweeting or posting.
> Download the full report from Greenlight’s hotels sector page
