According to recent figures from some of the bigger players in the UK travel industry, spend in online marketing services such as SEO, behavioural and PPC is significantly up on previous years, as advertisers within the sector look at making the marketing spend go further. Some reports suggest that for many travel vendors online marketing delivers nearly half the inbound sales, with many advertisers now employing a mix of more traditional above and below the line activity to compliment the increased spend in online marketing.

Evidence of this increased spend can be seen in many of the big players, with organisations such as Centre Parcs believed to have spent approximately £300000 online as the support vehicle to its offline advertising (primarily TV advertising). They are not the only advertisers with many other advertisers significantly increasing spend and online marketing activity during the first couple of months of 2008.

With the reported economic slowdown on the horizon many advertisers are looking for increased performance from the advertising, one thing Online can deliver in abundance. Certainly, with travel seen as early adopters of many new advertising channels it will be interesting to see if this shift is reflected again in other mainstream sectors.