Hurricane Metasearch Trends: Hotel for Lassie

Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen a huge impact on campaigns due to Hurricane Matthew. As mentioned in the previous post, people weren’t just looking for a hotel for themselves.  They were also looking for a place for their pets.  Many people see pets as a major part of their family and will not leave them behind during an evacuation.

For Florida users, the top hotel related terms on Google the past 30 days were the following:

  • hotels tallahassee fl
  • dog friendly hotels
  • map of florida

South Carolina users had similar search terms but didn’t want to exclude cats:

  • pet friendly hotels
  • asheville nc hotels
  • hotels columbia sc

By just searching “dog friendly hotels”, Google automatically applies a “Pet-Friendly” filter to the ad unit (doesn’t work when searching “cat friendly hotels” though… sorry).

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We found that many of the hotels which experienced a click spike surrounding the hurricane appeared on the front page when searching for pet-friendly hotels in major inland cities.

Now for a broader question, do we see a difference in how pet-friendly hotels worldwide perform versus the latter? Yes. While both groups experience the same average room night, pet-friendly hotels yield a 30% greater revenue-per-booking since 09/01. This is without the added pet fee as many websites do not provide the option through the online checkout.

It is also important to note the difference in hotel types. Extended stay hotels yielded much of the pet-friendly volume. In general, people do not travel with their pets for business. They travel with Lassie and their 2.3 kids on a family vacation to visit grandma. They are also more likely to book a bigger hotel room with a kitchen.

While it is still a bit early to think about the holiday season, it will be interesting to see if these same pet-friendly hotels experience a spike in December.

So who’s up for a road trip?

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Metasearch