Travel Queries on Cities in the United States: Implications for Search Engine Marketing in Tourism

14 years 6 months ago

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Given the growing importance of online search in travel planning, marketers need to better understand the behavioural aspect of travel planning using search engines. The goal of this study is to identify patterns in online travel-related queries across tourist destinations. Utilizing transaction log files from a number of search engines, the analysis indicates both commonalities and differences in online queries about different cities in the United States. The ratio of travel queries among all queries about a specific city seems to associate with the levels of “touristic” of that city. Also, keywords in travellers’ queries reflect the images of the city and those of its competitors. This paper offers insights into the way tourism destinations are searched online and implications for search engine marketing in tourism.

Zheng Xiang, Bing Pan

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