The online path to purchase for North American travelers

Our recent custom research with Luth Research explores traveler behavior insights across seven geographic markets to uncover opportunities for your business. The research was conducted using digital tracking and survey data from respondents across the geographic markets: Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S. 

Recently, we highlighted findings from the global aggregate, and now, we’re doing a deeper dive into travelers from the Americas based on digital tracking data from a panel of more than 27,000 travelers and survey data from more than 2,400 respondents across Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. Read on for insights to help you engage and convert North American travelers throughout the various phases of their online travel purchase journey.

Page views occur on different online resources, but online travel agencies (OTAs) are a dominant resource, accounting for 40% of the total page views for Americas travelers. Throughout their path to purchase, 80% of Americas travelers, and as many as 83% of travelers from Mexico, visited an OTA at some point. This indicates that even if travelers ultimately book on another website, they likely visited an OTA for inspiration, research, or planning purposes.  

Travelers from the Americas also spend nearly 6.5 hours with travel content in the 45 days leading up to booking a trip, higher than the average of approximately five hours across all regions. In the U.S., travelers spend close to nine hours with travel content before booking.  

With so many opportunities to get in front of travelers, it’s important to find ways to stand out from the crowd to keep your content top of mind, including strategic partnerships and innovative travel solutions. We provide travelers around the world with everything needed throughout the path to purchase — from inspiration and recommendations to accommodation, transportation, and activity options — for all types of travel, which brings you demand.

Travelers from the Americas rely on multiple travel inspiration sources. This creates an opportunity for you to connect with travelers across multiple touchpoints throughout the journey, including social media, which is the most popular resource used for inspiration.

Integrating social media into your content strategy, whether sponsored content or affiliate links, can help ensure your brand stays top of mind early in decision making process and influence traveler choices.

Consider creating advertising content that highlights breathtaking locations and unique experiences with compelling deals and a clear call to action to engage with your brand. Our Media Solutions products can help your brand target and connect with hundreds of millions of travelers around the world through a variety of advertising formats, from native and sponsored listings to display and custom campaigns.

This illustrates an opportunity for you to highlight features, flexibility, and transparency, as well as competitive pricing, in your messaging and content throughout the travel shopping journey. One way to connect with travelers is through offering Members Only Deals, which allows properties like the Horton Grand Hotel to target high-value members of our rewards program with specialized offers.

Promote your loyalty benefits in your content and across channels and ensure you’re offering discounts, perks and amenities, and points for future travel to connect with loyalty travelers wherever they are booking. Our One Key^™ rewards program allows travelers to leverage our OneKeyCash™ while still booking with their favorite brands. We offer a mix of flexible tools, custom offers, and promotions so you can target rewards members in a way that works best for your business.

For more insight into what drives decisions for Americas travelers throughout the online path to purchase, download the country snapshots and check out the full Path to Purchase study for more global insights. 

To stay up to date on the latest travel industry insights and for more traveler behavior studies, visit our Resources Page.