2022 update: winners & losers in travel SEO
We’ve just updated our travel SEO report, based on Sistrix organic visibility data, in order to show the latest trends from Jan 2022, and look back at progress over the last 12 months.
We launched the report in March 2021, and during that time the trends show packages and travel guides have seen the slowest growth / the biggest declines. Whilst transport, hotels + flights are increasing in visibility.
Overall leaders:
- Tripadvisor.co.uk have maintained a clear lead in organic visibility, despite a dip which has recently started to recover.
- Expedia has seen the biggest drop in organic visibility (58%), which takes them from 3rd to 5th overall.
- Tripadvisor.com, Trivago and Travelsupermarket all drop out of the top 10. Replaced by Hotels.com, Skyscanner and British Airways.
Biggest winners:
- Hotels.com have grown by 52% and are the biggest winners (based on visibility points increased over the last 12 months).
- Transport sites (TFL and National Rail) have performed well, which possibly indicates a reflection with increased search demand on 2021 vs 2020.
- Equally, flights have seen a big increase (EasyJet and British Airways both increasing their visibility).
- Within packages, it’s interesting to see a comeback for the relaunched Thomas Cook, alongside increases for TUI, Love Holidays and IHG (hotel group).
Biggest losers:
- Expedia has seen a significant drop in organic visibility (58%) over the last 12 months.
- TripAdvisor despite retaining a strong position as market leaders, have seen the 2nd biggest drop when you combine their .co.uk and .com domains.
- This appears to be a trend across price comparison OTAs, with Trivago, Booking.com, Lastminute.com, Kayak, and On the Beach struggling too.
- It also wasn’t a great year for content sites / guides, with Lonely Planet seeing a large drop, as did Culture Trip and Trip Savvy.
Key categories:
Within specific categories, you can see the progress vs closer competitors for each brand.
- Flights: you can see Sky Scanner and British Airways have started to pull away from the rest of the pack a little:
- Hotels: you can see Hotels.com have performed very well, whilst Trivago have struggled. IHG have gained visibility recently:
- Packages: the whole category has struggled to grow.Booking.com have dropped but retain their position as clear market leaders. Expedia have the biggest drop, which has seen LastMinute.com overtake them and TUI close the gap.
- Luxury: interestingly, Kuoni who have always been very dominant in this category have significantly dropped in organic visibility. Audley and Trail finders have closed that gap now, in what could be an important year for luxury, seeing there are many predictions of people going / spending big in 2022:
You can see more on the full report here.
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