The News: In October, Hotels.com added a new room rate calendar feature to their “Rooms & Rates” page. The service is designed to allow travelers who are flexible on dates to find the lowest prices available within a selected timeframe. The new tool can be used with all lodging options and offers prices six months into the future.

Compete Analysis: The new calendar functionality exists on the highly trafficked “Rooms & Rates” page of Hotels.com, which consistently receives between 250,000 and 600,000 US hotel shoppers per month. The page receives its largest audience during the travel-heavy summer months but experienced its 13 month low in December 2007 with 250,000 travelers reaching it.

The subsequent step in the Hotels.com booking funnel after the “Rooms & Rates” page is the “Personal Info” page. Since releasing the new calendar an increasing percentage of “Rooms & Rates” visitors on Hotels.com navigated to this next step, a positive indication of the effectiveness of the tool. Hotels.com’s 62% mark in this department led all online travel agencies in December 2007.

Takeaways: The Hotels.com room rate calendar functionality is a highly visible tool designed to engage consumers further into the booking funnel, with hopes of capturing transactions among consumers who may have otherwise defected after seeing an initial rate. Although Hotels.com experienced a 13 month low in visitors to their “Rooms & Rates” page in December, they were able to lead all OTAs in funneling these consumers one step closer to booking. As evidenced by the advanced rate sorting and viewing popularity on Meta Search sites such as Kayak and Sidestep, consumers are actively looking for ways to get a complete picture of all of their travel options in one place. Hotels.com’s room rate calendar is a step in that direction, and other travel sites that further this cause will see their conversion rates increase.

The News: In early October Travelocity launched FareWatcher Plus, an email alert system that notifies users of price fluctuations on selected flights. The product is designed to not only assist travelers in finding the cheapest airfare but also provide ideas for low price travel packages.

Compete Analysis: Product Interest (defined as visitors to the FareWatcher Plus homepage) and Product Usage (defined as FareWatcher Plus visitors selecting a destination for which they would like to track airfare) have been strong in the product’s first months. Interest in FareWatcher Plus was driven by a promotional link on Travelocity’s homepage, which attracted an average of 117,000 travelers per month between October and December 2007.

The percentage of FareWatcher Plus users who book a flight with Travelocity has been erratic initially. While users of the product were more likely to book a flight than the average Travelocity user in October and November, the contrary occurred in December when FareWatcher Plus users had a below-average booking rate of just 2%.

Takeaways: The FareWatcher Plus product has generated significant interest and usage in its first three months. The booking rate of these users has spanned from a high of 7% in November to a low of 2% in December, evidence that user’s booking behavior may be seasonal as well as dependent upon airfare prices. Since users of this product must register an email address, Travelocity has an opportunity to reengage those that have signed up for the service but may not have it front-of-mind when researching and booking future flights. If with a few tweaks Travelocity turns FareWatcher Plus into a true homerun as is its potential, other agency and supplier sites will have to develop similar functionality in order to keep up.

The News: In November, Expedia and InterContinental Hotels Group announced a new media-based relationship bringing 3,700 IHG properties to the hotel sections of all Expedia Inc. sites (Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Expedia Corporate Travel). While most supplier and online travel agency contracts are based solely upon bookings at the agency site, this innovative partnership also involves a media pricing component derived from the volume of customers viewing a IHG property on one of Expedia’s sites.

Compete Analysis: Among major hotel supplier sites, IHG captures an average of 12% of online hotel bookings. Given these figures, the addition of IHG inventory to Expedia’s sites could theoretically boost hotel bookings on Expedia by 8% to 16% depending upon the month, and Expedia’s effectiveness in marketing the brands.

Looking specifically at the interplay between Expedia.com and InterContinental websites, Compete shows that an average of 28,000 monthly Expedia hotel shoppers ultimately left the site and instead booked on an IHG brand website. Most of this was during a period when consumers could find no IHG inventory on Expedia. Over 2007, IHG was responsible for between 6% and 14% of Expedia’s monthly lost bookings to supplier sites. Since the Expedia and IHG partnership began in November, IHG sites received an average of 9% of Expedia.com’s lost-bookings to hotel suppliers, slightly down from levels earlier in the year.

Takeaways: The partnership between InterContinental Hotels Group and Expedia Inc. is the first supplier/OTA contract with a media exposure component. As consumers increasingly purchase at supplier sites after having shopped on an OTA, developing ancillary forms of revenue to gain credit for part of this activity could become ever more important for OTA’s. With specific regards to the performance of the Expedia/IHG relationship, Compete’s initial data is suggesting that Expedia shoppers are somewhat less likely to book on IHG websites now that they can find the inventory at the OTA. Yet with over 20,000 transactions still taking place on an IHG site after a consumer had likely seen the inventory first on Expedia, the media-based fees could be significant.

The News: Prior to December 2007, travel lead generator Cheapflights.com consistently attracted 1.5 million US unique visitors per month. However, in January and February, Cheapflights managed to attract 3.5 million monthly visitors, representing a 233% traffic increase. Compete uncovered what traffic sources provided Cheapflights with the increased volume and gauged the quality of these new users.

Compete Analysis: Varied categories of travel websites contributed to the rapid traffic increase, however the most notable referral spike came from Search & Portal sites. Search & Portal, which contributed 400,000 more referrals in January than November, was larger than all other high-growth categories combined.

Compete’s Search Analytics Select™, a new tool for analyzing search performance, pulls back the curtains on search traffic and its role in creating important business results such as generating travel leads and bookings for partner sites.

Search Analytics Select data suggests that the Search traffic gains at Cheapflights.com translated into revenue gains. In January 2008, “revenue generating” traffic from Google – defined as referrals from Google to Cheapflights who then transfer to one of Cheapflight’s partner sites – doubled from the previous month’s level. Below, a Search Analytics Select graph shows the strong growth in outbound Cheapflights leads generated by traffic from Google:

Takeaways: A site redesign with better SEO, increased SEM, and enhanced visibility of partner sites has set Cheapflights on a new course. The traffic growth improved the site’s visibility in the travel vertical and additionally appears to have driven noteworthy revenue gains, particularly from Search.

Traffic of 3.5 million monthly visitors is within striking distance of Shermanstravel.com and Travelzoo.com, some of the biggest travel lead generator websites. As travel lead generators and Meta Search engines become increasingly influential in online travel distribution, understanding the performance of these brands will help travel marketers improve the efficiencies of their online campaigns.