Black Friday Saw 57.5% Increase in Conversions for Hotels

This Cyber Weekend was a big one for hotels. With more European hotels than ever before participating in Cyber Weekend, the four days from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. A relatively recent phenomenon on this side of the Atlantic – it’s fascinating to see how quickly the trend has been picked up by consumers and sellers alike.

We took a look at the ecommerce aspect for hotels.

Social and mobile were the real winners this weekend. Both soared, with many customers travelling from ads and offers on Facebook to book directly on their mobile devices.

Here are the 3 most important stats from Cyber Weekend:

1. Ecommerce

   • Ecommerce conversion rates on Cyber Weekend were 7% above the month’s average, showing a definite uptake in purchases driven by sales and offers put forth by hotels.
   • Average Booking Value (ABV) was 8.3% below the month’s average. This is due to the nature of the holiday – it’s all about the discounts!

2. Mobile

   • Mobile transactions increased by 19%. Since traffic grew only 7.5%, we can clearly see the increased conversion rate mentioned above.
   • Mobile ecommerce peaked on Sunday, where 41% of revenue and transactions and 62% of traffic came from mobile.

3. Social

   • Social was far and away the star of Cyber Weekend. 10% of revenue and 6% of transactions came directly from social channels – a 954% increase in transactions from social, and that’s not even including assisted conversions!
   • 33% of this month’s social revenue happened on Black Friday alone.

All told, organic and paid search were the strongest drives of revenue over Cyber Weekend, as is the case during the rest of the year. However, on Black Friday, email rose above paid search in importance, and social saw unprecedented, soaring growth.

Cyber Weekend has officially hopped across the pond, and the numbers now reflect that. Social and email saw enormous growth over the weekend, and while ABVs are a bit lower, most hotels can agree that the the benefits are definitely outweighing the costs.

How did your hotel perform this Cyber Weekend? Which offers were most successful?

Words by Tayor Smariga