Travel queries on cities in the United States: Implications for search engine marketing for tourist destinations

Given the growing importance of search in online travel planning, marketers need to better understand the behavioural aspect of search engines use. Built upon a number of previous studies, the goal of this research is to identify patterns in online travel queries across tourist destinations. Utilizing transaction log files from a number of search engines, the analysis shows important patterns in the way travel queries are constructed as well as the commonalities and differences in travel queries about different cities in the United States. The ratio of travel queries among all queries about a specific city seems to associate with the “touristic” level of that city. Also, keywords in travelers' queries reflect their knowledge about the city and its competitors. This paper offers insights into the way tourism destinations are searched online as well as implications for search engine marketing for destinations.