Written by Catlyn Origitano, Sojern

From Search Engine to Booking Engine: Sojern’s 2017 Hotel Report uncovers the path to purchase for hotel guests. By teaming up with Google, Sojern’s report offers an unprecedented look across devices, from their start at a search engine down to their final booking.

We’ve highlighted the report’s most interesting family-specific findings, and what you can do to take your travel marketing to the next level:

Last-Minute Family Travel
We compared solo, single night stays to a family looking to stay for five or more days to understand the diverging planning and booking behaviors. Though most might expect last-minute hotel bookings to be dominated by solo travelers, we see a sizeable amount coming from family, leisure travel:

• 15% of hotel searches and 22% of bookings are conducted 0 to 7 days before their trip.
• 6% of flight searches and 10% of bookings are conducted 0 to 7 days before their trip.

If you’re running packages for last-minute deals, consider ensuring that some of those ads are family friendly in order to capitalize on these planners.

Early Planners
Traditionally families are early planners, given the amount of coordination and price for family trips. For example, we see:

• 40% of hotel searches and 30% of bookings are conducted 30+ days before their trip
• 56% of flight searches and 46% of bookings are conducted 30+ days before their trip

If your campaigns only focus on those lower in the funnel who are ready to convert, you’re missing out on families, and their spending power, as they shop a lot earlier on. By leveraging data, you can develop custom content for each of your target audiences. Then focus on reaching them at the right time on the right device. Get more insights in our new report.