What Online Travel Shoppers Want - Sponsored Whitepaper

What Online Travel Shoppers Want: How Visual Merchandising Drives More Bookings

Author: John McAuliffe, Chief Marketing Officer, VFM Leonardo, Inc.

The world of travel shopping is changing in ways that reflect overall trends in Internet commerce. Online hotel shoppers – like online shoppers more generally – value rich visual content that informs and supports their buying decisions, according to market research. As their expectations grow, they are gravitating to hotels that most effectively present themselves online.

Recognizing these trends, hotel marketers are now moving aggressively to visually merchandise their properties and convey the unique value they offer their prospective guests. Like the online retailers that have pioneered visual merchandising, hoteliers are leveraging the growing capabilities of online media to make their offerings more clear, vivid and compelling.

Whether they are targeting business travelers, leisure travelers or meeting planners, hotel marketers are discovering that visually rich content – photos, video, virtual tours – can drive bookings and average daily rates to new levels.