Travel Weekly Blog: Research: Only 7% use travel blogs - but appetite for indie voices is huge

Research: Only 7% use travel blogs - but appetite for indie voices is huge

April 17, 2009

Travolution reports some new research on internet usage (pdf) in the travel planning process.

Online agencies come top with 37%, independent review sites second with 31%. The lowly blog comes second from bottom, with only 7% saying they consult them.

Indeed, Travo's headline points out that this comes below car rental sites (8%) - though this isn't terribly surprising, since car rental's a key component of many holidays.

Anyway. If you wanted to pit independent against commercial content (and traditional journalism) the picture becomes slightly different: club blogs and UGC review sites together and they top the tree with 38%.

It all depends what you want to ask, of course - if you're broadly interested in what kind of voices consumers want to hear, indie vs corporate is interesting.

If you're a media planner you're more interested in where the traffic goes, so you'd pay attention to popularity of review sites over blogs... and probably breathe a sigh of relief at not having to tiptoe through the bloggers vs marketers minefield.

I don't think the low score for blogs means they aren't valuable. I think it reinforces the rather obvious point that they're about engagement, not volume - a strong destination-focused blog specialises and inspires, and will attract a small but receptive audience.

There's still no consensus on how suppliers can try to reach that audience, though - remember the heated discussions about blogging and PRs at Travel Blog Camp 2008? - so for now perhaps the most useful lessons are to be learnt from the general appetite for independent voices.