Thomas Cook has seen online booking conversions more than double since it launched an ‘Ask & Answer’ feature on selected acccommodation on its website.
John Straw, chairman of the Digital Advisory Board at Thomas Cook, said the new feature has pushed up the conversion rate of bookings by 147%, the booking value by 9% and the time people are spending on the website by 127%.
The tour operator received 4,200 questions in the first 12 weeks of going live with the new system, which allows customers to ask detailed questions about the holiday they are hoping to book.
Queries such as how many power sockets there are, how long the transfer from the airport to the hotel is and whether are towels provided.
He said he was "astounded" at how bad the travel industry is at having the right content on websites, with only three people in every 1000 booking a holiday when they search.
He added that Trip Advisor was the best at ‘longtail’ keywords due to the amount of content on its site from holidaymakers’ reviews.
Straw said: "Most people come from Google to a site and then come back as they are not satisfied with the content we’ve shown them.
"We are very good at dragging people into our collective websites but then we’re not converting them into bookings."
by Diane Evans
