Priceline, the owner of popular travel sites booking.com and kayak.co.uk, spent a one billion dollar budget on Google advertising, in order to ensure that its websites are the first ones to be seen by users who want to book their holidays. This decision turned out to be very effective, as half of travel bookings in Europe are made on Priceline websites, and US Priceline stock has been recently traded at exceptionally high prices.
The result of the huge Priceline investment in Google advertising demonstrates the power and effectiveness of digital marketing, but at the same time poses some questions on how it can affect the travel market and the power of travel brands: how can hotel groups, airlines or car hire companies make people chose their brand, if the majority of customers book their holiday through aggregators' websites like booking.com? At this point, what booking.com says about an Hilton hotel is much more powerful than what Hilton's website says.
A similar phenomenon is happening in retail (and other industries), where big online intermediaries like Amazon are making the life of retail brands much more difficult. So, how could "traditional" brands face this "Digital shock"?
Source: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/digital-marketing-advertising/a-billion-dollar-marketing-lesson/690
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