Travelodge top online hotel chain

Travelodge has emerged as the most popular hotel chain searched for by UK internet users.

The budget chain claimed a 25% market share, followed by InterContinental Hotels (19%) and Premier Travel Inn (14%).

The ratings are based on a top 20 analysis by online competitive intelligence firm Hitwise based on UK internet visits in April.

A Hitwise spokesman said: “Hotel brands have made great efforts in in the past two years to strengthen their online presence, and have made public commitments to offer the best price by booking on the hotel website.

“They have also stepped up their online marketing efforts and are in many cases competing directly with travel agencies.

While hotel websites are making gains from search engines, they continue to rely heavily on their brand for traffic with more than half of traffic coming from search, according to Hitwise.

Search Engines category accounted for 52.55% of visits, while traffic from search engines increased year on year by 9.4%.

Yahoo! UK had the largest increase year on year of the top five search engines with 29% increase in visits to hotels.

More than 15% of traffic came from other hotel websites and agencies such as Active Hotels and Lastminute.com.

Buy the number one search term accounting for 7.39% of search traffic was “travel lodge”.

Yet Travelodge, the number one hotel website, receives the smallest amount of traffic from paid search, with 3% of search traffic coming from paid listings, according to Hitwise. This is far below the average for the top 10 hotel websites of 28.9%:

Meanwhile, Intercontinental Hotels received the largest share of its search traffic from paid listings among the top 10 Hotels websites, at 57%.

Top 20 Hotels by market share of UK internet visits, April 2007 (Source: Hitwise UK)

Rank

Name

Domain

Market Share

Session Duration

Travelodge UK

www.travelodge.co.uk

25.38%

06:35

InterContinental Hotels Group