Content
Tourism Marketing Benchmarks
December 11, 2023
10 mins
As destinations and travel businesses strive to captivate audiences in a highly competitive market, company management should pay extra attention to the numbers that reflect the efficiency of marketing efforts. Understanding digital marketing benchmarks for travel industry will help narrow down the focus on the most efficient marketing strategies, tweaking them when necessary.
We have gathered the most recent travel industry-related benchmarks from various digital marketing channels to help you stay informed about the current state of affairs and determine KPIs relevant to your business.
Monitoring and adhering to website performance benchmarks is crucial as they provide measurable insights into the effectiveness of the efforts you put into this website. Your website serves two primary goals: reflecting your reputation and making sales. Your spends on developers, UX/UI and SEO should lead to improved results in how people interact with your website.
Here are some benchmarks for you to consider:
The average organic website traffic for the travel industry is 35%.
Source: searchenginejournal.com
Bounce rate tells us how many people leave a website after only checking out one page.
In the travel industry, the usual bounce rate is around 50.65%.
A survey looked at 273 travel sites and found that the average bounce rate from Google searches on a computer (desktop) was 42.0%, and from searches on a phone (mobile), it was 51.5%.
If a travel site has a bounce rate below 23.8% (desktop) or 36.5% (mobile), it's doing better than 80% of other sites.
If it's even lower, below 18.5% (desktop) or 31.4% (mobile), it's among the top 10%.
But if the bounce rate is higher than 67.6% (desktop) or 73.6% (mobile), that puts the site in the bottom 20%. If it goes over 80.0% (desktop) or 81.9% (mobile), it's one of the worst-performing travel sites.
The likelihood of a bounce rises by 32% when the page load time increases from 1 to 3 seconds.
A website that loads in one second experiences a 2.5 times higher conversion rate compared to a site with a five-second loading time. Striving for a shorter load speed (even milliseconds count) will ultimately lead to better conversions.
On average, it takes about 3.9 seconds for a whole page to load on a desktop.
If a site can load in less than 2.2 seconds, it's in the top 20%, and less than 1.7 seconds puts it in the top 10%.
But if it takes more than 6.3 seconds (bottom 20%) or over 7.6 seconds (worst-performing), that's not great.
Here's a big difference: websites load about 70.9% slower on phones compared to computers. So, if a travel site wants to keep visitors happy, making sure the page loads quickly, especially on phones, is super important.
Source: Littledata
A little more about devices.
In the travel industry, 60% of the traffic comes from mobile devices.
However, users tend to spend more time browsing on desktop, with an average of 6 minutes and 59 seconds, compared to only 3 minutes and 30 seconds on 🤳.
In the travel industry, conversion rates usually go from 0.2% to 4%.
If your rate is over 2%, that's good — it means you're in the top 20% of travel websites. And if your rate is between 3% to 4%, that's even better, putting you in the top 10%.
Source: Littledata
When customers move from putting items in their basket to reaching the checkout, 20% of them don't go through with the purchase.
On average, in the travel industry, about 80% of shopping carts get abandoned
Whereas other industries range from 68% to 74%.
There are no universal benchmarks for keywords, as it is you, who determine which keywords matter most and compare your results against competitors.
Benchmarking individual keyword positions, such as monitoring your website's rank for key terms like "day trips from Las Vegas," is essential for goal-setting and tracking progress.
When considering the average number of backlinks, a score between 60 and 100 is deemed excellent, 40 to 50 is considered acceptable, and less than 40 is not considered outstanding.
Remember that the number of links does not fully reflect the success of a link building campaign. It is better to get 50 links from different domains, than 500 from the same website.
The metric that might be even more important is Domain Authority.
Domain Authority (DA) shows how trustworthy a website is online. It predicts how well a site will show up on search engines. DA rate considers things like how many links a website has and what is their quality. A higher DA means a stronger site that's likely to rank higher.
Scores from 40 to 50 are seen as average. A Domain Authority between 50 and 60 is considered good, while scores above 60 are rated as excellent.
Check your domain’s authority score here. You can also check the DA of the websites you get backlinks from to determine their quality.
Here are some benchmarks to see how well your company or branch is doing on Google Business.
Attaining a 4.0 Google My Business rating results in a 99% year-over-year increase in search queries.
Social media marketing and paid ads are crucial for businesses to reach and connect with their audience in the online world. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow companies to create a presence, share content, and engage with their customers both through organic and paid traffic sources.
Here are some benchmarks to consider.
Brands that do well on social media usually get 6-8% increase each month.
If a brand is not doing so great, it means they're getting less than 5% more followers, or they might be getting fake followers from bots, free tools, or scammers. These fake followers won't become real customers who stick around, that’s why follower increase does not always mean a good thing.
Recent post and engagement benchmarks for travel industry (average from all socials combined):
If we take a look at engagement on different media, we’ll get the following numbers:
Instagram average engagement rate: 0.72%
Facebook average engagement rate: 0.11%
Twitter engagement rate: 0.03%
If you ignored TikTok as an advertising platform before, the numbers will change your mind:
TikTok engagement rate: 3.73%
Paid ads involve investing money to display advertisements to a targeted audience. These ads can appear on social media platforms and other online spaces.
Facebook CTR for travel industry- 1.78%
Youtube CTR for travel industry - 0.78%
Average CTR from Google Ads for the travel industry - 8.24%, which is the highest across all industries.
Source: Databox, Brafton
In the travel industry, conversion rates can vary from 0.2% to 4%.
If your rate is above 2%, your website is in the top 20% of travel sites. Achieving a rate between 3% to 4% would position you among the best 10%.
In May 2023, the typical monthly cost-per-click (CPC) for Google Ads search advertising in the United States travel industry was $1.34, which is the highest among all countries.
Facebook CPC for travel industry - 0.63$
Average open rate - 15.70%
Average - 1.60%
Average - 0.10%
Average - 0.50%
Source: webfx.com
In 2022, 62% of online bookings happened on phones because more people are using travel apps. This is why mobile apps are a crucial marketing channel and optimizing their performance should be a priority.
Let’s take a look at the current benchmarks brought by the Clevertap survey.
Within a week of installing a travel app, about 28% of new users sign up.
Demonstrating high intent, 80% of new travel app users register within just 31 seconds of launching the app for the first time.
While users have high intent, only 42% complete a transaction within the first month. To improve user engagement, travel app marketers can focus on streamlining the transaction process for quicker conversions.
36% of new travel app users convert within a week of onboarding.
For travel apps, the average click-through rate (CTR) for push notifications is 5.29% for Android users and 3.97% for iOS users.
In the travel industry, in-app notifications achieve an average clicked rate of 22.8%.
With users not consistently traveling, travel app marketers can focus on maximizing every session. For instance, if a user launches the app 12 times in a month, it may signal the need for UX improvement or be tied to natural usage patterns during specific trip-related activities.
A positive indicator for travel apps is when new users sign up and complete multiple transactions within the first week, with approximately 13% making repeat transactions. This reflects a positive initial experience and early recognition of the app's value.
Use these benchmarks wisely and shoot for the moon when optimizing your marketing efforts. There are many people out there who would love you to take them on an adventure. By striving to meet and exceed the benchmarks you will help them find you.
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