3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.

com | New Life

3rd April 2013 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com

CJN 771 New Media and New Markets

Yalin Han

yhan6@suffolk.edu

Both Booking.com [http://booking.com/] and Hotels.com [http://hotels.com/] are websites offering online hotel reservation

service that has occupied a large part of the E-Commerce in the travel market. This paper has mainly compared these two

companies’ target market, website design and marketing communication.

Background

Booking.com B.V. was established in the year1996, and is owned and operated by Priceline.com [http://priceline.com/] now.

Priceline.com is a global company for online booking accommodations. The overview

[http://www.hotels.com/customer_care/about_us.html] of Booking.com said “Each day, over 425,000 room nights are reserved on

Booking.com. The Booking.com website and apps attract visitors from both the leisure and business sectors worldwide.”

Booking.com guarantees the best prices and various services for customers from different income classes and countries.

Booking.com can be accessed in over 40 languages in 180 countries. More than 290,757 properties serving for lodging in theses

countries can be searched and booked. The team of Booking.com has over 4750 employees all over the world, and the whole team

is dedicated to helping leisure and business travelers to discover, book and enjoy the best places in the world.

Hotels.com is an affiliate of Expedia, Inc., which is a website that focuses on providing hotel accommodations worldwide.

Hotels.com covers more than 160,000 hotels in over 60 countries. Its more than 7 million hotel reviews will help customers to find

their desired hotels. It also provides flight booking information to serve more people comprehensively. (“About us

[http://www.hotels.com/customer_care/about_us.html] ” from Hotels.com)

Target Market

These two companies almost share the same target market: consumers who have a need for searching travel information and

booking travel services on the Internet. More narrowly, Booking.com mainly provides hotel’ booking information such as prices,

locations, evaluations, and brief introductions of local attractions to leisure and business travelers worldwide. However, Hotels.com

not only provides booking information, but also includes information on flights and car renting, which are called package services.

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 1/9
3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com | New Life

As a result, because of the different kinds of services, Hotels.com has a wider range of consumers than the other website. More

details of these two websites’ potential target market can be found at Quantcast.com [http://quantcast.com/] and Alexa.com

[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/booking.com#] . The segmentations include gender, age, children, income and ethnicity.

Gender

Both Quantcast and Alexa show that the major gender of these two websites’ visitors is female, but the difference between

male and female is very small. Basically, the gender trend of both websites is not very obvious. Booking.com has 53%

[https://www.quantcast.com/booking.com#!demo&anchor=panel-GENDER] female visitors, and the number of Hotels.com is 56%

[http://www.quantcast.com/hotels.com#!demo&anchor=panel-GENDER] . This situation fits the report of “How Women and Men

Use the Internet.” (Fallows, 2005) According to that survey, 68% of men and 66% of women have bought tickets or made travel

reservation online, which means men and women are equally likely to go online to find travel services.

Age

About age, there is a difference between Booking.com and Hotels.com. The statistics in Table 1 can tell us which age group

will be more easily attracted by these two websites.

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-

qYuqpDS9iwc/UVtXeBvG39I/AAAAAAAAAik/iW_LiA3K2Os/s1600/%E5%B1%8F%E5%B9%95%E5%BF%AB%E7%85%A7+2013-

04-02+6.10.29+PM.png]

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 2/9
3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com | New Life

For Booking.com [http://www.quantcast.com/www.booking.com#!demo&anchor=age-gender-container] , 21% of its website

visitors are 45 to 54 years old, which is the largest percentage. For Hotels.com

[http://www.quantcast.com/hotels.com#!demo&anchor=age-gender-container] , 24% of its website visitors are in the age group of 35

to 44 years old. Compared to the Internet population, the max multiple of Booking.com shows up in the 55-64 and 65+ age group.

The max multiple of Hotels.com shows up in the 25-34 age group. This means that in the all website visitors, Booking.com attracts

more people who are older, For Hotels.com, most of its audience is people who are adults. Generally, the target market of

Booking.com should be older than the target market of Hotels.com.

Children in Household

Both Quantcast and Alexa provide a statistic about children. This segment will be very helpful for both websites to balance

and expand their service offerings. According to Quantcast, 67% [https://www.quantcast.com/booking.com#!demo&anchor=panel-

CHILDREN] of potential customers for Booking.com have no kids, and for Hotels.com, this percentage is 53%

[http://www.quantcast.com/hotels.com#!demo&anchor=panel-CHILDREN] . Compared to the customers without children, this

difference of Hotels.com is very little. So, the fact is that Hotels.com can offer more information about family trips to attract family

target market. If Booking.com also wants to expand its services to attract family customers, it needs to do more work.

Household Income

Quantcast lists the target market’s annual household income for these two websites. (See Table 2) This information could be

valuable to both companies for their pricing strategies.

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 3/9
3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com | New Life

B0Ew5va5yKg/UVtYEE_aYxI/AAAAAAAAAis/MVNdbPPocIc/s1600/%E5%B1%8F%E5%B9%95%E5%BF%AB%E7%85%A7+2013-

04-02+6.12.31+PM.png]

Booking.com’s max multiple [http://www.quantcast.com/www.booking.com#!demo&anchor=panel-INCOME] is in the group

of $150k+, which means that its audience is the More Affluent group. The max multiple of Hotels.com

[http://www.quantcast.com/hotels.com#!demo&anchor=panel-INCOME] is in the Affluent group of $100-150k. These are the target

audiences they should focus on.

Ethnicity

Both Booking.com and Hotels.com are running worldwide business, so the ethnicity segment is very important to their

global strategy.

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-

Qvzm38IkmG4/UVtYjzwVh4I/AAAAAAAAAi0/2EtH2VSULMM/s1600/%E5%B1%8F%E5%B9%95%E5%BF%AB%E7%85%A7+2013

-04-02+6.15.12+PM.png]

Table 3 shows that the max multiple of Booking.com [http://www.quantcast.com/www.booking.com#!demo&anchor=panel-

ETHNICITY] is the Asian group, and the max multiple of Hotels.com

[http://www.quantcast.com/hotels.com#!demo&anchor=panel-ETHNICITY] is the African American group.

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 4/9
3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com | New Life

Analysis

Both websites have used a lot of different tactics to appeal to different types of customers, which is a very strategical and

effective way to attract their potential target market. Here is a vivid example of how these two websites appeal to their target

audiences that speak different languages. Both Booking.com and Hotels.com have a function for the website visitors: setting

language. Visitors can choose their native language to do the following search. My test of the English and Chinese pages proved

that their translations were accurate. Booking.com not only translated the website content, but also customers’ evaluations exactly.

This is a brilliant tactic because Hotels.com does not have this function. In my opinion, only to translating the website content is not

enough to satisfy a traveler’s need. For the traveler who wants to book reservations online, he or she needs to know other

customers’ evaluations. Considering both websites are global, the translation function is important. As the slogan of Book.com

said: “We speak your language!” It did achieve that objective.

There are other factors that can prove the argument that the website of Booking.com is better than Hotels.com’s. For the

leisure travelers, Booking.com offers a special searching system based in every city’s scenic spots. All options will be arranged by

the length of the distance from the hotel to the spot, which is very convenient for the travelers to make a choice. Booking.com has a

diverse searching system including city, region, district and specific hotel. For the customers, that is very thoughtful. The searching

system of Hotels.com is not multiple. Its system only can recognize the specific information for searching, which can’t offer many

options to the travelers without a clear aim.

The design of Booking.com is also very clear. The websites can be evaluated from the handout (Boone, 2007)

[http://infoacrs.com/nm/evaluatingwebsites.html] . At the top of its homepage, the searching area is on the left position, and its

yellow color is contrasted with the background color, which is very eye-catching. There are also some recommendations with

pictures about the worldwide hot cities that the customers can decide their destination easily. The size of the words on the

homepage is very large, which is very convenient for its senior target marketing. For regular customers, all of the hotels viewed and

booked before will show up on the homepage. The advertising of Booking.com is very persuasive because it lists data to prove its

abilities. For instance, there is a question: “why use Booking.com?” The answer is: “Low rates for no booking fees, over 290,299

properties worldwide and 41,000 destinations, easily managing and free sign up, 18,490,000 unbiased reviews from real guests, and

services in 41 languages,” which is very simple and strong. It also offers a ranking from “Review Center,” to emphasize its

credibility. The homepage of Hotels.com is not as organized and visual as Booking.com’s. The color of the searching area is grey,

which is not very attractive. The advertising is not persuasive because its vague expression. Half of its homepage is used to

introduce the discount information but not the product, which may cause negative feelings of customers.

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 5/9
3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com | New Life

For Booking.com, besides the homepage, the design of the inside pages is also very persuasive. As Paul Rouke

said: “Persuasive design is something that has been around for many many years, not least in the way high street stores and

supermarkets lay out their stores to encourage and entice customers to buy as they arrive and walk around.” (Rouke, 2011

[http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8151-booking-com-improving-conversion-with-best-practice-persuasive-design] ) He believes that:

“PET (persuasion, emotion and trust) is an approach that was pioneered by Human Factors International, and alongside usability

and user experience, designing with persuasion in mind is an extremely powerful approach to positively impact on conversion

rates.” (Rouke, 2011 [http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/8151-booking-com-improving-conversion-with-best-practice-persuasive-

design] ) The details of Booking.com’s inside page have proved its persuasive design.

At first, the rating of each hotel is presented in stars and a thumb up, which is very vivid and easy to understand. The short

review is visualized, such as “Good,” “Very Good,” “Fabulous” and so on. Every short review has a number to calculate how many

people evaluated the hotel. There are also other persuasive elements to help it to promote sales. When a visitor is reading a specific

hotel’s page, a pop-up will prompt the user to know how many people are reading this hotel’s introduction as well. When the visitor

is choosing the type of the room, there will be another pop up to inform him or her when the last order is for the same room or

hotel. The notice beside the room’s type will tell the visitor if there is only one room left. All of these works will help customers to

make a decision quickly. For the pricing, the visitors can see both the original price and discounted price at the same time. The clear

price tags can make people trust it. Unfortunately, the design of Hotels.com’s inside page is too simple. For example, each hotel’s

specific introduction is not summarized but pasted completely, which is too long for customers to read. There is no specific

discount except a lowest price that cannot convince me. Compared to the design of Booking.com, there is still a lot of work that

Hotel.com need to perfect.

Marketing Communication

Social Networking

Both websites link to their social networking sites to promote their business. Booking.com has some links to Facebook,

Google+, and Twitter. Hotels.com has Facebook and Twitter. David Scott thinks that the company page on Facebook is the most

useful method to deliver information and ideas to a network of people who are interested in their product and services (Scott, 2011,

pp. 215-216). For these two companies, Facebook is a good worldwide platform to show their global image. On their Facebook

page, there are a lot of photos to introduce beautiful views of the world that is a special way to promotion. The pictures and travel

stories will make target market to remember the travel information easily, but not to sale information and services directly. Twitter

is another good marketing channel to interact with the customers. On their Twitter page, we can see a lot of discussions, travel

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 6/9
3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com | New Life

experiences and photos from their followers. Both of Booking.com and Hotels.com have done a great job to communicate with

their target audiences.

Mobile Marketing

David Scott believes that mobiles have massive implications for all kinds of business worldwide. “The ability to contact

consumers at the precise moment they’re near you and ready to buy exactly what you sell will transform how you market to them.

And the use of mobile reaches all levels of society, not just those who choose mobile because phones are cheaper than computers.”

(Scott, 2011, p. 204) Both of these websites have developed mobile applications for customers, which is a wise way to enlarge their

target audiences. All customers can submit orders anywhere and anytime on cell phones. Other functions of the websites can be

used on these applications. Both websites offer the links to download the mobile applications on the homepage. There is a reason to

believe that Booking.com and Hotels.com will have a bright future in the mobile marketing.

Conclusion

It cannot be denied that both Booking.com and Hotels.com are the significant components for the travel E-commerce

marketing. Their target markets are almost the same. According to the comparison between these two websites, Booking.com has a

better website design. For their marketing communication, they all did great efforts to appeal to the trends of the travel market.

References

About us. (n.d.). Hotels.com. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from http://www.hotels.com/customer_care/about_us.html

Boone, G. (2007). Second Website. Second Website. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from

http://infoacrs.com/nm/evaluatingwebsites.html

Booking.com: 290,299 hotels worldwide. 18+ million hotel reviews. (n.d.).Booking.com. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from

http://www.booking.com/index.en.html

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 7/9
3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com | New Life

Booking.com traffic and demographic statistics by Quantcast. (n.d.). Booking.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics by

Quantcast. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from http://www.quantcast.com/www.booking.com

Booking.com traffic and demographic statistics by Alexa (n.d.). Booking.com Site Info. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/booking.com

Fallows, D. (2005, December 28). How Women and Men Use the Internet. Background. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2005/How-Women-and-Men-Use-the-Internet/06-Activities-and-Trends.aspx?view=all

Hotel Search. (n.d.). Hotels.com. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from http://www.hotels.com/

Hotels.com traffic and demographic statistics by Quantcast. (n.d.). Hotels.com Traffic and Demographic Statistics by Quantcast.

Retrieved 2013, from https://www.quantcast.com/www.hotels.com

Hotels.com traffic and demographic statistics by Alexa (n.d.). Hotels.com Site Info. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/hotels.com

Overview about Booking.com. (n.d.). Booking.com. Retrieved March 31, 2013, from http://www.booking.com/general.en-us.html?

aid=356980

Rouke, P. (2011). “Booking.com: Improving conversion with best practice persuasive design.” Econsultancy. N.p., 18 Oct. 2011.

Web. 02 Apr. 2013

Retrieved March 31, 2013, from http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/8151-booking-com-improving-conversion-with-best-practice-

persuasive-design

Posted 3rd April 2013 by Anonymous

2 View comments

TripTheEarth December 21, 2016 at 12:34 AM

Nice Article. Thanks for share the information . I am lookine new Article on this topic Resorts Booking | Hotels
Booking
Reply

Mel's Hotel January 26, 2017 at 11:00 PM

Thank you so much for sharing such informative post. For Hotel Booking Visit.
Reply

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 8/9
3/28/2020 E-Marketing Paper: Booking.com V.S. Hotels.com | New Life

Enter your comment...

Comment as: r.ellyebaccus@ Sign out

Publish Preview Notify me

yalinhan.blogspot.com/2013/04/both-booking.html?view=magazine 9/9