The travel experience starts from the mobile

Traveller behaviour has shifted dramatically with the internet, especially when it comes to booking a trip. Earlier, travellers would go to a travel agency and pay any fare that had been set at that moment.

The digital space is now considered by many to be the main arena where airlines, online travel agencies, travel bloggers and airline review sites compete with one another for top ranked positions. The majority of travellers in the region use a search engine as their starting point for information. As such, 60 per cent of leisure travellers use search engines to initiate their search.

The online customer experience has been dramatically enhanced over the past five years through the development of new services and features. These had a significant effect for airlines with features such as Google Flights, the Knowledge Graph and Google City Guides, making it easy for travellers to quickly access all the information they need.

As an agency based in the Gulf, Red Blue Blur Ideas (RBBi) conducted a case study called “State of Search in Mena Airlines Industry”, which analyses the GCC’s major carriers in order to assess the overall organic visibility online for each of these brands and whether the increasingly positive passenger experience offered by these carriers is replicated online.

The study revealed some interesting data that can help players in the aviation industry as well as other brands that are present online improve visibility and build loyal relations with customers. For example, the study shows that the majority of all travellers in the region (60 per cent of leisure and 55 per cent of business travellers) use a search engine as their first port of call for travel information.

Travel brands that are not present at this crucial stage of the user journey risk losing out on bookings. It is also interesting that when looking for such information, travellers mainly use their mobile devices. About 60 per cent of searches for destination information come from mobile devices.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have some of the highest smartphone penetration rates, so having a mobile-friendly website will offer brands a better user experience, and will allow users to engage more naturally with these websites.

Not many brands know that Google will soon release a mobile-first index update that will negatively impact all non-mobile-friendly websites. Any website that does not properly function on a mobile device will rank lower on search engine results pages, while mobile-friendly websites are favoured with a higher rank in a user’s search results.

Despite mobile being the preferred device for searching for travel information and making bookings, only two brands from the top 10 Middle Eastern airlines have fully mobile-friendly websites (Etihad.com and flydubai.com). Ensuring websites are as mobile-friendly as possible will enable brands to capitalise on this opportunity.

The study also revealed that search engines are increasingly prioritising sites that offer a good user experience such as shorter page loading times. By reducing image size, minimising resources such as JavaScript files and HTML, and avoiding redirections, brands can significantly improve site performance.

A comprehensive content analysis showed that only a few airline brands have optimised their URLs using Arabic characters. This represents a significant missed opportunity for Arabic keyword searches online, especially from those searching from the GCC. Etihad did well on integrating Arabic URLs for their most important landing pages.

Brands shouldn’t underestimate the benefits of image optimisations on their websites as well, as it helps Google understand the content of a website better and rank it higher.

Going forward, Middle Eastern airlines that want to improve their online visibility should take advantage of such search engine optimisation opportunities as mobile-first approach, Arabic content localisation, local search optimisation as well as optimisation of their video presence online. It will help travellers find information about their destinations fast and make decisions easily staying connected with their favourite airline.

-The writer is SEO Department lead at RBBi.