Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
37
Foundations of search engine
marketing for tourist destinations
Zheng Xiang, Bing Pan and Daniel R. Fesenmaier
Introduction
The Internet has redefi ned the tourism industry in a number of important ways (Werthner and
Klein 1999). On the demand side, most travellers rely on the Internet to look for information as
part of the trip planning effort (USTA 2011), whereas on the supply side, tourism businesses and
organizations have adopted the Internet as one of the primary communication channels for
gaining and retaining visitors (Buhalis and Law 2008; Gretzel and Fesenmaier 2000). Indeed,
reports by the US Travel Association indicate that search engines are becoming one of the most
important channels used by a huge majority of online US travellers for vacation planning (USTA
2011). Additionally, studies indicate that the generation of online traffi c to hospitality websites
has led to a substantial number of direct bookings (Hopkins 2008; Prescott 2006). It was estimated
that the value of the North America search engine marketing industry was worth US$16.6
billion in 2010 (eConsultancy 2010). Thus, search engine marketing has emerged as one of the
most important strategic tools for marketing tourism destinations.
Search engines not only provide opportunities for tourism destinations and businesses to
engage their potential visitors, but also pose many challenges. However, research on SEM is
limited in both the marketing and tourism literature (Beckwith 2003; Ho and Liu 2005; Moran
and Hunt 2005; Pan, Litvin and O'Donnell 2007; Sen 2005; Xiang, Gretzel and Fesenmaier
2009). Existing studies of search engines are mostly conducted within the computer science and
information science fi elds, and focus primarily on the technical designs of search engines
as information retrieval systems. Perhaps most important, it is argued that dynamic relationships
exist between the search engine, tourism and other businesses, and the traveller as the search
engine user. And, these dynamics of online search have not been well documented, let alone
incorporated into SEM practices. From the destination marketing perspective, a series of
important questions remain unanswered such as: How can a destination compete with other
similar businesses knowing that they will probably adopt similar online marketing strategies? And
how does a destination marketing organization (DMO) compete on search engine visibility
given that search engines are constantly changing their algorithms?
With these questions in mind, the goal of this chapter is to synthesize the recent literature
related to search engine marketing in general and for tourism specifi cally. This chapter is
