Google whitepa­per reveals how video is being used by trav­el con­sumers to research, eval­u­ate, and inspire their pur­chas­ing deci­sions. The data paints a pow­er­ful pic­ture of how video can empow­er con­sumer pur­chase cycles. Do trav­el brands need to be get­ting onboard?

Trav­el­ers are spend­ing more time watch­ing online videos than ever before, accord­ing to a new whitepa­per from Think With Google. An analy­sis of YouTube data revealed that views of trav­el-relat­ed con­tent are up 118 per­cent year over year (YoY).

The increas­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of mobile devices to con­sume video has made an impact on the rise in trav­el video view­ings. In 2013, mobile devices account­ed for 30 per­cent of trav­el video views, but these have risen 97 per­cent on smart­phones and 205 per­cent on tablets YoY.

When Are Consumers Watching Travel Videos?

As the graph below shows, there is a strong rise in trav­el video views in evening peri­ods, sug­gest­ing that videos are play­ing a key part in the research and con­sid­er­a­tion stages of the con­sumer jour­ney.

This is sup­port­ed by evi­dence in Google’s whitepa­per where it states that “accord­ing to a recent study con­duct­ed with Ipsos Medi­aCT, two out of three U.S. con­sumers watch online trav­el videos when they’re think­ing about tak­ing a trip.”

Videos At The Top Of The Funnel

As fur­ther proof of the impor­tance of videos at the top of the pur­chase fun­nel, the whitepa­per reveals that the vast major­i­ty, 71 per­cent to be exact, of trav­el video search­es are based on des­ti­na­tion names.

Search­es for gen­er­al trav­el queries (8 per­cent), local attrac­tions (9 per­cent), trav­el prod­ucts (6 per­cent), and trav­el brands (6 per­cent), were all con­sid­er­ably low­er.

This is in stark con­trast to the role search plays in the the trav­el con­sumers jour­ney, where search­es for spe­cif­ic brands of com­pa­nies (i.e., bot­tom of the fun­nel pur­chas­es), form a mas­sive 58 per­cent of trav­el search­es. It fig­ures make a remark­able con­trast and clear­ly illus­trate the vary­ing roles the chan­nels have in the pur­chase cycle.

Brand vs. Community Generated Content

There is a grow­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty for trav­el brand mar­keters. Six­ty-sev­en per­cent of trav­el-relat­ed video views were for brand or pro­fes­sion­al­ly released videos, accord­ing to Google’s data. In total, views of brand­ed videos have risen 394 per­cent YoY, with com­pa­nies with a strong brand pres­ence, such as Turk­ish Air­lines, Dis­ney Parks & Resorts and Expe­dia, mak­ing the most of the oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Fur­ther­more, view­er­ship for trav­el videos increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly across cat­e­gories. The major­i­ty of users are tun­ing in to watch videos about tourist des­ti­na­tions and attrac­tions (40 per­cent of the total trav­el views), how­ev­er the the largest YoY growth can be seen in the cruis­es and char­ters cat­e­go­ry, up an impres­sive 262 per­cent. This rise is large­ly due to an increase in video con­tent pro­duced by com­pa­nies such as Car­ni­val Cruise Lines, Viking Riv­er Cruis­es, and Princess Cruis­es.

Percent Of Travel Channel Subscriptions By Format

As well as watch­ing videos, con­sumers are also engag­ing with con­tent cre­ators and con­nect­ing with brands. In 2014 year to date, sub­scrip­tions to top trav­el chan­nels on YouTube have increased 106 per­cent, with sub­scribers watch­ing 86 per­cent longer per view than non-sub­scribers.

They’re also extreme­ly inter­est­ed in hear­ing real-life sto­ries. Near­ly half of the trav­el (48 per­cent) sub­scrip­tions are to vlogs (video blogs) that fea­ture per­son­al trav­el expe­ri­ences.

Influ­encers have a key role to play in the con­sid­er­a­tion and research phas­es, and the long pur­chase cycles of trav­el means that per­son­al con­tent (and rec­om­men­da­tions) are espe­cial­ly impor­tant in this ver­ti­cal in par­tic­u­lar. Reas­sur­ing­ly for brands, con­sumers also have an appetite for brand­ed con­tent, with 19 per­cent of trav­el sub­scrip­tions for offi­cial trav­el brand chan­nels.

Travel Channel Subscribers By Age Group

In terms of age, peo­ple of all ages sub­scribe to YouTube trav­el con­tent. Fifty per­cent of trav­el chan­nel sub­scribers are aged 25–64, while 38 per­cent fall in the 18–24 age range.

Amongst the younger audi­ence, sub­scribers tends to favor trav­el vlogs, sug­gest­ing they have more of an inter­est in “authen­tic” con­tent, whilst the 25- to 64-year-olds seem to be inter­est­ed in a broad­er range of con­tent asso­ci­at­ed with deci­sions fur­ther down the trav­el pur­chase path, such as brand infor­ma­tion, reviews, and tips.

What Does This Mean For Marketers?

As Google points out in the whitepa­per, the rise in online video con­sump­tion rep­re­sents a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty for brands and mar­keters:

“Across indus­tries, adver­tis­ers are increas­ing­ly embrac­ing online video to dri­ve aware­ness and engage­ment, and this trend is only expect­ed to accel­er­ate. For trav­el adver­tis­ers, online video is a pow­er­ful way to con­vey excite­ment about a des­ti­na­tion, prod­uct, ser­vice or brand.”

You can read the full report on trav­el YouTube videos here.

Q&A with Greg Jarboe

To fur­ther find out how trav­el brands can real­ly under­stand and engage with both video, and YouTube as a chan­nel, we inter­viewed Greg Jar­boe, Founder of SEO-PR and author of YouTube and Video Mar­ket­ing: An Hour a Day, which you can read below:

Patrick Hong: What kind of trav­el videos are see­ing the most lift on YouTube? Where do these fit in the trav­el pur­chase cycle?

Greg Jar­boe: Accord­ing to a recent study Google con­duct­ed with Ipsos Medi­aCT, two out of three U.S. con­sumers watch online trav­el videos when they’re think­ing about tak­ing a trip. What exact­ly are trav­el­ers look­ing for? The data now shows that 88 per­cent of YouTube trav­el search­es focus on des­ti­na­tions, attractions/points of inter­est or gen­er­al trav­el ideas. This new study con­firms the data that I pre­sent­ed in March at my YouTube Mar­ket­ing and Tourism ses­sion at the Be-Wiz­ard! con­fer­ence in Rim­i­ni, Italy. I said trav­el­ers watch up to an hour of relat­ed YouTube videos before they book a trip.

Patrick Hong: What advice do you have for small­er brands and oper­a­tors look­ing to per­form on the chan­nel?

Jar­boe: Actu­al­ly, some of the small­er brands and oper­a­tors are doing much bet­ter on YouTube than most of the big­ger brands and oper­a­tors. For my pre­sen­ta­tion at Be-Wiz­ard, Unruly pro­vid­ed me with a cus­tom chart of the share of social videos being shared in the Trav­el and Trans­port ver­ti­cal from Feb. 17, 2013, to Feb. 17, 2014. The chart showed Turk­ish Air­ways in first place with a 29.5percent share, fol­lowed by Qatar Air­ways in sec­ond place with 26.3 per­cent, Air New Zealand in third place with 14.1 per­cent, and British Air­ways in fourth place with 12 per­cent. So, my advice is pay atten­tion to the small­er brands and oper­a­tors who have the largest share of shares. You’ll learn more by exam­in­ing the Turk­ish Air­lines chan­nel on YouTube or the Air New Zealand chan­nel than you will by round­ing up the usu­al sus­pects.

Patrick Hong: How are trav­el brands mea­sur­ing their suc­cess with video?

Jar­boe: Unfor­tu­nate­ly, most trav­el brands are still using “views” as their mea­sure of suc­cess. But I inter­viewed Sarah Wood, the COO and co-founder of Unruly, for Search Engine Watch back in Jan­u­ary of this year. She pre­dict­ed that brands would begin to ques­tion the val­ue of a view. She said, “The val­ue of a video view will come under huge scruti­ny in 2014, as more and more brands will want to know their ad is actu­al­ly in view and we’ll see a grow­ing demand for guar­an­teed viewa­bil­i­ty. Sec­ond­ly, the main pur­pose of dig­i­tal video will change from pure­ly brand aware­ness (cit­ed by 94.6 per­cent of U.S. media agen­cies as the prime objec­tive of their cam­paigns) to oth­er met­rics fur­ther down the fun­nel. It’s not just about YouTube now. Smart mar­keters and brands are engag­ing con­sumers in their own native envi­ron­ments across the Open Web.” From my per­spec­tive, she was spot on.

Patrick Hong: What are some of your most mem­o­rable YouTube trav­el cam­paigns you’ve seen this year?

Jar­boe: Well, one of my favorites is “West­Jet Christ­mas Mir­a­cle: Real Time Giv­ing”. It was pub­lished on Dec. 8, 2013, so I guess that — tech­ni­cal­ly — I saw it last year. But it is so com­pelling that I’d make an excep­tion for it.

But, if I’m lim­it­ed to this year, then it has to be “Delta’s 80’s In-Flight Safe­ty Video”. Pub­lished on Jan. 28, 2014, It was “wicked awe­some, dude!”

This arti­cle first appeared on the Linkdex blog.

If you haven’t already done so, I’d high­ly rec­om­mend a quick watch of both West­Jet’s and Delta Air­lines videos for great exam­ples of what’s pos­si­ble for trav­el brands to achieve with video. Do you agree?