Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Tourism Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

Travel queries on cities in the United States: Implications for search engine
marketing for tourist destinations
Zheng Xiang a, *, Bing Pan b,1
a
School of Merchandising and Hospitality Management, University of North Texas, 1155 Union Circle, #311100 Denton, TX 76203-5017, USA
b
Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, School of Business and Economics College of Charleston, 66 George Street, Charleston, SC 29424, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Given the growing importance of search in online travel planning, marketers need to better understand
Received 31 March 2009 the behavioural aspect of search engines use. Built upon a number of previous studies, the goal of this
Accepted 9 December 2009 research is to identify patterns in online travel queries across tourist destinations. Utilizing transaction
log files from a number of search engines, the analysis shows important patterns in the way travel
Keywords: queries are constructed as well as the commonalities and differences in travel queries about different
Internet
cities in the United States. The ratio of travel queries among all queries about a specific city seems to
Travel information search
associate with the ‘‘touristic’’ level of that city. Also, keywords in travelers’ queries reflect their knowl-
Travel queries
Search engines edge about the city and its competitors. This paper offers insights into the way tourism destinations are
Search engine marketing searched online as well as implications for search engine marketing for destinations.
Destination marketing Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the online world, particularly in the increasingly important

Information technology (IT), particularly the Internet, has
changed the way travel-related information is distributed and the
way people search for and consume travel (Beldona, 2005; Buhalis &
Law, 2008; Weber & Roehl, 1999; Werthner & Klein, 1999). In recent
years, search engines have become a dominant source in consumers’
use of the Internet to access travel products. For example, research
conducted by the Travel Industry Association of America found that
a substantial number of travelers use search engines for travel
planning (TIA, 2005, 2008). Another study showed that search
engines serve as the number one online information source for
American families in the context of vacation planning (eMarketer,
2008). A series of reports by the Internet research firm Hitwise have
documented the importance of search engines in terms of gener-
ating upstream traffic to hospitality websites, leading to direct
bookings for these businesses (e.g., Hopkins, 2008; Prescott, 2006).
As such, search engines can be seen as a powerful ‘‘gateway’’ for
online consumers to access travel-related information as well as an
important distribution channel for tourism destinations and busi-
nesses (Xiang, Wöber, & Fesenmaier, 2008).
Without doubt, the focus of the marketing and promotional
efforts of tourism destinations has been steadily shifting toward
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 940 369 7680; fax: þ1 940 565 4348.
E-mail address: philxz@unt.edu (Z. Xiang).
1
Tel.: þ1 843 953 2025; fax: þ1 843 953 5697. bingpan@gmail.com
domain of search (Buhalis, 1998, 2000; TIA, 2006; Wang &
Fesenmaier, 2006; Werthner & Ricci, 2004). As a result, search
engine marketing (SEM) has become one of the important stra-
tegic tools for tourism destinations and businesses to compete for
consumers’ attention on the Internet and engage direct conver-
sations with their potential guests (Sherman, 2007; TIA, 2008). For
example, tourism businesses have been using various forms of
SEM programs and tactics including directory listing, keyword
purchasing, meta tags, sponsored links, and search engine opti-
mization (Google, 2006; Wang & Fesenmaier, 2006; Xiang &
Fesenmaier, 2006). Especially, compared to traditional advertising
channels SEM is growing much faster. For instance, advertisers in
North America spent US$9.4 billion on search engines in 2006,
showing a 62% increase from 2005 and 750% increase from 2002
(Elliot, 2006). There are also cases in which destination marketing
organizations (DMOs) also successfully adopted SEM practices
(Google, 2006).
SEM is a controlled communication process with online trav-
elers. It requires a thorough understanding of travelers’ needs and
the ability to identify strategic responses in order to satisfy their
needs. One of the conditions for search engine marketing is to
understand search engine users’ behaviour, particularly queries
they use to search and contexts wherein these keywords are used
(Moran & Hunt, 2005). For example, one of the strategies in SEM is
to focus on what online consumers are searching for in order to
make certain their websites are visible in response to search
queries. However, little research with high relevance has been

0261-5177/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2009.12.004
 Z. Xiang, B. Pan / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97
conducted on this emergent marketing practice to offer useful
insights for the tourism industry.
Built upon a number of recent studies on travelers’ use of search
engines (Pan, Litvin, & O’Donnell, 2007b; Wöber, 2007; Xiang,
Gretzel, & Fesenmaier, 2009; Xiang et al., 2008), the goal of this
research is to provide an understanding of travelers’ search
behaviour by identifying general patterns in travel-related queries
on cities in the United States. By doing so, it is hoped that this study
will offer useful strategic insights in search engine marketing for
tourist destinations. The rest of the paper is organized as follows:
the Research Background section critically reviews relevant litera-
ture on travelers’ use of search engines and travel queries; then,
Research Questions are raised with respect to understanding
general patterns in travel queries on cities; the Methods section
explains the use of text mining techniques to extract and describe
travel queries based on a number of search engine transaction log
files; the Results section presents the findings of the study, followed
by the section of Conclusions and Implications wherein the
contribution of this study to our understanding of travel search
behaviour and implications are discussed; finally, Limitations and
Future Research directions are discussed.
2. Research background
The primary task in tourism businesses’ marketing and
promotional efforts is to ensure relevant information is made
visible and accessible to potential visitors (Buhalis, 1998; Werthner
& Klein, 1999). Within the context of online information search,
search engines serve as an important tool that bridges the traveler
and the tourism industry online. Like any other marketing prac-
tices, the success of search engine marketing, then, requires the
marketer to have a good understanding of consumer behaviour in
order to provide the information desired by these consumers. As
such, it is argued that understanding how search engines work and
how travelers use these tools provides one of the keys to successful
search engine marketing programs for tourist destinations. This
section reviews past literature on travelers’ use of search engines
for travel planning as well as the nature of travel queries. Limita-
tions of past studies are discussed to provide the rationale for the
present study.
2.1. Travelers’ use of search engines and search engine marketing
for destinations
The use of search engines to access a repository of information
has long been studied in fields such as information science, infor-
mation retrieval, computer science, as well as human-computer
interaction (Marchionini, 1997). In general, the process of using
a search engine can be understood as consisting of three steps (Kim
& Fesenmaier, 2008): first, the user enters a query into the interface.
Research has shown that three factors determine query formula-
tion and include the user’s understanding of how search engines
work, his/her knowledge of the domain, as well as the search task
itself; second, based upon the query, the search engine retrieves
and returns a number of search results that ‘‘match’’ the search
query and displays them in a pre-defined format; lastly, the
subsequent interaction with a search engine involves the user’s
reading and understanding of the search results and then navi-
gating back and forth between the result page and the following
websites originated from those results. This implies, then, that the
user makes a series of decisions based on the relevance of search
results in relation to the information-seeking task at hand.
Given the growing important role of search engines in bridging
the online consumers, especially travel information searchers,
a subject has recently emerged with the emphasis on
89
understanding the travelers’ behaviour in the use of search engine.
Following from the literature in fields such as information science,
travelers’ use of search engines can be seen as the interaction
between travelers’ information needs and the online tourism
domain, which is facilitated and mediated by the technological
interface (Pan & Fesenmaier, 2006; Xiang et al., 2008). A number of
interesting models have been raised with respect to this interac-
tion. For example, Pan and Fesenmaier (2006) argued that the
congruence between the traveler’s mental model and the online
tourism domain is an important indicator of the ‘‘fitness’’ between
the traveler’s information needs and the information being
searched. Xiang and Fesenmaier (2006) argue that travelers’ use of
search engines can be seen as the initial step in the persuasion
process for tourism organizations and destinations, and the effec-
tiveness of their marketing and promotional programs depends
upon the persuasiveness of the messages they deliver through
search engines. Further, Kim and Fesenmaier (2008) posited and
empirically tested that the use of search engines can have a signif-
icant impact on the formation of one’s first impression toward, and
subsequently the overall evaluation of, a destination marketing
organization’s website.
As such, search engines have the potential to influence an online
traveler’s impression, intention, as well as attitude toward the
website owned by a tourist destination and its tourism-related
businesses, or the destination and businesses themselves. Generally
speaking, when exposed to a list of search results, a number of
factors can influence the traveler’s evaluation and selection of search
results. Particularly, the ranking of a specific search result link along
with its relevancy to the search query is widely recognized as the
most important factor in influencing the travel information search-
er’s behaviour. For example, the majority of search engine users do
not look beyond the first three pages of search results (Henzinger,
2007). Also, the rank position of a specific search result has been
shown to determine whether it will be reviewed and evaluated by an
information searcher (Pan et al., 2007a).
Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet
marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their
visibility in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) (Moran & Hunt,
2005). In fact, search engine marketing encompasses a number of
techniques or strategies to improve and enhance the Website’s
visibility in SERPs (Moran & Hunt, 2005), including: 1) search
engine optimization involves adopting methods with the focus on
organic search that improve the ranking of a website when a user
types in relevant keywords in a search engine. These include
creating an efficient website structure, providing appropriate web
content, and managing inbound and outbound links to other sites;
2) paid inclusion involves paying search engine companies for
inclusion of the site in their organic listings; 3) Search engine
advertising, or paid placement, refers to buying display positions at
the paid listing area of a search engine. Google AdWords or Yahoo!
Precision Match are the two most popular programs, wherein paid
placement listings are shown as ‘‘Sponsored Links’’; and, 4) Direc-
tory listing refers to the submission of the website to a directory-
based search engine (e.g., Yahoo! Directory) to be shown under its
subject category list. The success of all these endeavors requires
a thorough understanding the way consumers use search engines
for travel-related information.
While search engines are becoming increasingly important for
online travelers, studies have shown that the visibility of many
tourism business’s websites to prospective visitors is diminishing.
Recently, for example, Wöber (2006) found that many tourism
businesses were ranked very low among the search results for
travel-related queries. This makes it extremely difficult for users to
directly access the individual tourism businesses and properties
through search engines. In another study conducted by Xiang et al.
90 Z. Xiang, B. Pan / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97
(2008), it was found that a handful of ‘‘big players’’ dominate search
results in Google, leading to the diminishing visibility of numerous
small and medium-size tourism enterprises. As such, it is increas-
ingly important for tourism marketers to understand how travelers
search information about destinations to improve their ranking and
visibility in search engines by identifying and implementing
effective strategies.
2.2. Travel queries in search engines
Search queries are perhaps the most important behavioural
aspect of the use of search engines. Studies of search engine user
search behaviour have a long history in fields such as information
and library science with the focus on the characteristics of search
queries, such as the length and depth of search, types of search
intent, search strategies, and changes of search characteristics over
time (Jansen & Molina, 2006). Generally speaking, due to the way
user-interface interaction has been designed, search queries are
short strings of words or terms that reflect the user’s search intent,
information needs, or goals as well as his/her search strategies
(Jansen & Spink, 2005). Particularly important is the emphasis on
understanding users’ goals through user queries on the Internet.
According to the Taxonomy of Web Search (Broder, 2002; Jan-
sen, Booth, & Spink, 2008; Rose & Levinson, 2004), there are basi-
cally three types of user goals possibly reflected in one’s queries: 1)
navigational goal which demonstrates a desire by the user to look
for the page of the organization or business in question. For
example, if a user types in ‘‘Marriott hotel’’ in a search engine, it is
very likely he/she intends to find the Web address of the hotel
chain; 2) informational goal, which focuses on obtaining informa-
tion about the query topic (e.g., a product). This includes a spectrum
of many possible ways to ask questions to the search engine. For
example, the question can be directed, with the intention to learn
something in particular about the topic (e.g., ‘‘Chicago Art Institute
admission price’’), or undirected, with the intention to learn about
anything related to a topic (e.g., ‘‘Chicago Art Institute’’); and, 3)
transactional goal, which focuses on carrying out certain action,
e.g., downloading a podcast or purchasing a book. Recently, Jansen
et al (2008) found that users queries in general are largely infor-
mational 81% (the other two categories: navigational 10%; and,
transactional 9%).
Recently, a number of studies have been conducted in the field
of tourism with the aim to understand the nature of travel queries.
One of underlying streams in this research is the analysis of search
queries on places. A study of Excite search engine log data in 2001
on geographic searches found that 14.8% of searches are related to
place names (Sanderson & Kohler, 2004). Another study on search
engine log data in Yahoo revealed that searches on places mainly
focus on city (84%), country (14%), and state (3%) (Jones et al.,
2006). Recently, Pan et al. (2007b) examined the structure of
query formulations in the context of searching for accommoda-
tions. Their study conducted four types of analysis, including types
of query keywords, types of whole queries, sequence of query
formulations, and associations of keyword types. Their results
suggest that travelers most often search for their accommodations
simultaneously with their search for other aspects of their travel,
such as destinations, attractions, transportations, and dining; and
that they most often begin their search for specific hotels in
conjunction with the city they are considering for a visit. A
sequential analysis also revealed that many users engage in
a switching behaviour that swings between broad and focused
research tactics. In addition, their study also demonstrated strong
associations between place names, particularly city names, with
‘specific hotel’ and ‘hotel brand’; and have weaker connections
with searches utilizing the keywords ‘hotel’ and ‘hotel type’. While
the inverse is of course true that ‘specific hotel’ and ‘hotel brand’
searches had the strongest connection with searches at the ‘city’
level, the study showed that they were weakly connected with
searches that employed keywords coded as ‘state’, ‘country’, and
‘region’.
Recently, Xiang et al. (2009) analyzed user queries pertaining to
a specific tourist destination (i.e., Chicago) related to potentially all
aspects of travel. Based upon a series of analyses of user queries
from search engine transaction files, their study demonstrated that
the majority of travel queries are short expressions of travelers’
information needs about different aspects of traveling to a place.
Their study shows that, overall, there are relatively few distinct
vocabularies in user queries that represent the majority of tourism-
related ‘‘things’’ (e.g., ‘‘Chicago hotel’’ and ‘‘Chicago attractions’’).
However, there is also a ‘‘long tail’’ of words that represent users’
heterogeneous information needs and their own mental images of
the tourism experience, which reflects the idiosyncratic nature of
places.
A study by Wöber (2007) examined keywords and phrases
extracted from the user log file in an Europe-based tourism website
to assess the image of a particular city. Information which describes
the users’ interests was extracted from entries into the fields
‘keyword’ and ‘city’. Text analysis in conjunction with multi-
dimensional scaling was used to identify patterns of competition
between a number of European cities. Instead of physical charac-
teristics commonly used in competitive studies of tourism desti-
nations, the approach considered the perception of consumers and
their information needs reflected from their queries. The findings
showed some interesting images of European cities perceived by
travelers. For example, cities like Madrid, Budapest, Prague, Nice
and Rotterdam were perceived as similar in travel queries
expressing information needs for ‘guided tours’, ‘operas’, ‘museum’
and ‘art’. Another group, with cities like Heidelberg, Lyons, Tallinn,
Bergen, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam, seemed to generate more
substantial travelers’ interests in ‘attractions’ and ‘events’. This
study reveals the ‘‘competition space’’ for destinations in online
travel information search.
As shown by these studies, travel queries are indeed expressions
of travelers’ information needs with a number of distinctive char-
acteristics. First, constrained by search engine interfaces, travel
queries manifest a simple but distinctive semantic or linguistic
structure in that they are usually short phrases, oftentimes formed
by the combination of city name plus a specific travel-related
keyword (Xiang et al., 2009). Also, the types of searched informa-
tion appear to reflect a spectrum of information needs ranging from
very general (the ‘‘head’’) to highly specific (the ‘‘long tail’’). These
findings are consistent with Pan and Fesenmaier’s (2006) study
which suggests that the majority of users search for information
that is very general (e.g., ‘‘Chicago hotel’’), while a relatively small
number of them directly search for specific information by
including the name of the business (e.g., ‘‘Chicago Wyndham
Hotel’’).
Second, generally speaking information needs reflected in travel
queries are basically ‘‘functional’’ with the emphasis on the utili-
tarian value. These findings appear to be consistent with previous
literature on tourism information search whereby most informa-
tion sought when planning a trip is functional rather than hedonic
(Fodness & Murray, 1997; Gursoy & McLeary, 2004; Vogt & Fesen-
maier, 1998). That is, travelers are much more likely to focus on
product attributes such as location, price, and availability, instead of
more experiential ones that are based upon sensory and emotional
aspects of the product (e.g., smell, atmosphere, sensation, and
emotions, etc.).
Third, while they are expressions of travelers’ needs and wants,
travel queries also reflect travelers’ experience, knowledge, and
 Z. Xiang, B. Pan / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97
perception of a destination. That is, travelers search for what they
know, or heard of, about the destination by using these queries.
Therefore, travel queries provide the ‘‘window’’ whereby the image
of a destination can be possibly understood and constructed within
a specific task context.
While past studies generated useful insights into the nature of
travel queries on the Internet, each of them has its own limitations,
particularly in their scopes of analysis. Specifically, while Pan et al.’s
(2007b) analysis of search strategy (i.e., the association between
place names and hospitality related keywords) provides insight
into the way travel queries are formulated, it only examined one
sub-domain of tourism, that is, the lodging sector; the Xiang et al.
(2009) study, while covering the tourism sectors in a more
comprehensive way (i.e., by including attractions, dining, parks,
nightlife, and shopping, etc in the analysis), solely focused on one
city as a tourist destination. Overall, the generalizability of these
studies is limited, particularly because they did not provide
a comparative analysis across different destinations. The Wöber
(2007) study compared destination image in relation to search
queries among a number of European cities. However, it was also
limited because the data used were from a tourism portal website,
instead of a general purpose search engine. As a result, its findings
cannot be generalized to a completely different task setting and,
thus, its insight is less valuable from a search engine marketing
standpoint. Therefore, it is necessary to gain a better and more
comprehensive understanding of information search behaviour
through travel queries in order to help tourist destinations improve
their marketing programs through search engines.
3. Research questions
Tourist destinations must understand what online travelers are
searching for as well as what destinations they are competing with
within the search context. It is argued that travel queries provide
the means to understand travelers’ search behaviour, particularly
travelers’ needs and wants as well as their knowledge about
destinations. In order to address the limitations in previous litera-
ture and provide more useful insights into search engine marketing
strategies for destinations, three research questions were formu-
lated to guide this study:
Q1. What keywords/phrases do travelers use to form queries to
search for information about cities in the United States?
Q2. What are the commonalities and differences in keywords
used to search for those cities?
Q3. How these keywords are associated with those cities?
From the marketing perspective, these questions can be re-
phrased as: what keywords should a city-level DMO focus on or bid
on? How should a DMO compete with similar cities in search
engines?
4. Methods
Research methods employed in this study consisted of a series of
text analyses performed on user queries extracted from a number of
transaction logs from search engines including Excite (from the years
of 1997, 1999, and 2001), AllTheWeb (from the years of 2001 and
2002), and AltaVista (from the year of 2002). These search engines
were selected because they shared the same user interface typical for
mainstream search engines. That is, like today’s Google, these search
engines all employed a textbox to allow users to enter search queries
while also providing search results in a list format. Although these
transaction logs were fairly dated, they were considered appropriate
sources to understand search behaviour, because search engine
91
queries have not changed drastically in the past, particularly with
respect of the number of words searchers used to form queries
(Jansen & Molina, 2006). Furthermore, due to recent controversies on
violation of user privacy in releasing search engine log data (Barbaro
& Zeller, 2006; Fisher, 2006; Sanchez, 2006), the current search
engine logs are the best option available (Pan et al., 2007b).
4.1. Data
As a general practice, search engine transaction files usually
include a number of fields such as the user query (i.e., the
keywords/phrases a user types into the search box), the time
stamp, the user’s IP address, and links of the search results which
the user clicked on. While this research primarily focused on the
user queries, other types of information such as time stamps and IP
addresses were also used to infer about searching sessions for
a specific individual user. As suggested by Spink et al. (2002), search
keywords were defined as strings of characters with no space in-
between; the combination of keywords typed by a user defined
a search query; and user sessions were defined as sequences of
search queries in which the time between any two consecutive
queries was less than one hour. Fig. 1 provides an example of a user
search session (Pan et al., 2007b).
Because these transaction log files contain virtually all kinds of
queries about potentially any place in the world, a set of 18 tourist
destination names in the United States (e.g., ‘‘New York City’’ and
‘‘Chicago’’) were used as the sample of tourist cities. These 18 cities
include three tiers with six small cities, six medium-sized cities,
and six large cities based upon their 2002 U.S. Census population.
While it was a relatively small sample of all possible tourist desti-
nations, the rationale for this selection was to have a sample that, to
a certain degree, reflects the geographic and demographic diversity
and allows the researchers to examine commonalities and potential
nuances in travel queries. As such, cities within all three tiers were
picked from different census regions including the Northeast,
South, Midwest, and West. Specifically, these city names were used
as the ‘‘seed’’ words to extract all the queries containing these
destinations. These queries were then grouped together by unique
sessions by aforementioned criteria. In total, there were 54,840
queries and 13,649 query sessions which contain the names of
those 18 cities. Among them, many were about travel, consumer
products, and others (e.g., pornography searches).
4.2. Analysis methods
To answer the research questions, data analysis involved three
steps. The first step focused on identifying travel queries. In order to
establish the validity of the study, one of the key considerations in
this analysis was to determine, among around half a million of
search engine transaction records on cities, which queries were
indeed travel-related queries. Two content coders were hired to
determine whether a specific query should be considered a travel
query within the context of one search session. Since there is no
existing rules to determine this, coders were asked to use their
Query ID User Session ID Time Query Keywords
orlando motel hotel
50000 000000000000283b 192749
crestwood
50101 000000000000283b 194447
crestwood hotel
50102 000000000000283b 194831
crestwood hotel orlando
50103 000000000000283b 195826
crestwood orlando hotel
50104 000000000000283b 200749
Fig. 1. An example of a user search session.
92 Z. Xiang, B. Pan / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97

judgment by ‘‘thinking’’ like a traveler who was looking for desti-

nation related information. For example, a query like ‘‘Chicago
museums’’ within a short search session (usually with less than
four queries) was more likely to be a travel-related query. Inter-
coder reliability was checked using Krippendorf’s Alpha (2004),
which was .86, indicating there was a high level agreement
between the two coders. One of the researchers then went through
those queries in disagreement and assigned them as either travel-
related or non-travel-related according to the session contexts.
The second step of analysis aimed at identifying keywords in
query sessions for those cities. Text mining software CATPAC
(Woelfel, 1998) was used as the main tool to calculate word
frequencies because it allows the researcher iterate through the
data set easily. A number of important decisions were made in this
process: first, certain keywords were stemmed (e.g., converting
‘‘parties’’ into ‘‘party’’) and tokenized (e.g., converting ‘‘bed break-
fast’’ and ‘‘bed and breakfast’’ into ‘‘bnb’’). The goals of these
treatments were to make certain words in different tenses and
numbers were treated as the same (stemming) and phrases such as
Fig. 2. Distribution of session length in number of queries.
(‘‘bed and breakfast’’) in its entirety instead of three different words
(tokenization), respectively. Second, stop words (e.g., ‘‘the’’, ‘‘a’’)
were identified and dropped from the analysis because they do not consistent with the literature which shows that, in general, search
add meanings to search queries. Third, destination specific words sessions are usually fairly short, consisting of only a few queries
(e.g., ‘‘Chicago’’ in ‘‘Chicago Museum’’) were also dropped, because (e.g., Jansen & Spink, 2005). As shown in Fig. 2, more than half
they do not provide the ground for comparison between destina- (52.3%) of all travel search sessions consisted of only one query and
tions. After the data were ‘‘cleaned’’, the number of queries was more than 80% of all travel search sessions consisted of no more
calculated for each of the pre-identified cities and plotted against than three queries. This indicates that, although travel information
their 2002 population to explore possible relationships. search is often a complex task, the use of search engines in one
The third step aimed at examining the associations between session only takes a very short time.
common keywords in travel queries and destinations. This was Also, travel queries are comprised of relatively a small number of
achieved using correspondence analysis based upon a co-occur- keywords or terms. As shown in Fig. 3, the majority (approx. 91%) of
rence matrix of destinations and keywords. The top 10 destinations travel queries were formed with no more than four keywords or
with the highest number of travel queries were selected. Also, the terms. This is also consistent with previous findings that show
top 60 keywords were used because their total frequencies repre- search queries in general and travel queries in particular are,
sented approximately 45% of the total frequencies of all unique indeed, short expressions of user needs (Jansen & Spink, 2005;
words. All the query sessions were manually examined to make Xiang et al., 2009)
sure extreme cases were neither included nor overrepresented. For Table 1 lists the number of travel query sessions for the pre-
instance, because the word ‘‘gift’’ occurred more than 50 times in identified 18 cities in the United States. These cities were catego-
several query sessions about New York City from a single IP address, rized into three tiers: Small Cities (with population less than
those specific query sessions were dropped from the analysis. In 150,000), Mid-Sized Cities (with population between 150,000 and
addition, each unique word was calculated only once when 700,000), and Large Cities (with population more than 700,000). As
building the co-occurrence matrix to control the effect of potential can be seen, a number of cities, including Las Vegas, Chicago,
overrepresentation of certain keywords; for example, some Orlando, and New York City, stood out as the ones with relatively
sessions may contain the same keywords multiple times and, larger numbers of travel queries. Cities such as Americus, Aiken,
sometimes, within the same query. Scripts written in Perl
programming language were used to calculate the frequencies of
co-occurrences, and correspondence analysis was conducted to
examine the association between keywords and destinations based
upon the 10 by 60 matrix.

5. Results

The findings of this study are presented in three sections: the

first section provides the descriptive statistics on identified travel
query sessions, especially on the ratios of travel query sessions
among all sessions for all the cities; the second section shows the
keywords identified in travel queries especially the most frequently
used; and, the third section provides the results of the correspon-
dence analysis to show the association between keywords and
destinations.

5.1. Search sessions of travel queries for cities

In total, 5032 travel search sessions and 19,016 travel queries

were identified, resulting in approx. 3.8 queries per session. This is Fig. 3. Distribution of query length (number of keywords).
 Z. Xiang, B. Pan / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97 93

Table 1 cities like New York, Fort Worth, and Indianapolis seem to be less
Number of travel query sessions for 18 U.S. cities. ‘‘touristic’’ with disproportionate low number of travel-related
Destination City Num of Number of Ratio of 2002 queries compared to their relatively large populations. The ‘‘tour-
category Travel query non-travel travel query Population istic’’ level of a city can be roughly defined as the levels of reliance of
sessions query sessions the destination’s economy on the tourism economy. The concept is
sessions
similar to the concept of ‘‘Tourist Ratio’’: ratio of the number of
Small Americus 0 5 0 16,955
tourists to the number of residents in a specific city, which is an
cities Myrtle Beach 183 87 0.68 24,832
Aiken 1 34 0.03 26,620 indication of tourist influx and has been shown to be associated with
Bradenton 0 29 0 51,458 different stages of destination lifecycle (Butler, 2006; Faulkner &
Champaign 11 65 0.14 71,987 Tideswell, 1997; Russo, 2002; Saveriades, 2000). ‘‘Touristic’’ level
Pueblo 34 81 0.30 103,679 refers the ratio of the relative size of the tourism industry to the local
Mid-sized Chattanooga 31 77 0.29 156,067 economy, while Tourist Ratio is about the ratio of the number of
cities Orlando 554 485 0.53 197,058 visitors to that of local people. The results of this study show the
Las Vegas 1,997 774 0.72 507,461
connections between the volume and the ratios of travel queries to
Fort Worth 35 111 0.24 569,747
Baltimore 169 459 0.27 636,302 the ‘‘touristic’’ level of a city. For a city which is largely depending on
Memphis 112 307 0.27 676,323 tourism industry, the ratio and volumes of travel queries will be
higher than other less touristic cities.
Large San Francisco 469 1205 0.28 763,400
cities Indianapolis 82 321 0.20 782,538
San Jose 123 351 0.26 898,713 5.2. Keywords in travel queries
Dallas 248 1530 0.14 1,205,785
Chicago 640 2060 0.24 2,889,446
New York City 343 636 0.35 8,106,876
After discounting stop words and destination specific words,
there are, in total, only 372 unique keywords in identified travel-
related queries. This indicates that travelers tend to use very similar
and Bradenton almost did not attract any travel queries. The ratio of keywords to form their queries. Also, the cumulative frequencies of
travel queries over all queries was also calculated and presented in the most frequently used keywords constitute large proportions of
this table. Interestingly, it seems that this ratio reflects the degree of all the unique keywords. For instance, the top 30 most frequently
‘‘touristic’’ of a city, i.e., the status of being a tourist destination, used keyword represent approximately 35% of the total frequency
which is not necessarily related to the size of the city. For example, of all unique keywords; the top 40 approximately 40%; the top 60
the travel query ratio for the small city Myrtle Beach is extremely approximately 45%. As reflected in previous studies (Pan et al.,
high (.68), while that for a big city like Dallas is fairly low (.14) 2007b; Xiang et al., 2009), this indicates that travelers have a great
compared to other cities with similar population. deal in common when they search for tourism products online.
To further illustrate this point, the number of travel queries was Among all the 18 cities, ‘‘hotel’’ stands out as the most searched
plotted against its 2002 population in a 2-dimensional space (Fig. 4). keywords. The volume for ‘‘hotel’’ is almost three times than the
Obviously, the ratios of travel queries are positively related to the next keyword ‘‘airport’’. ‘‘Airport’’, ‘‘casino’’, and ‘‘beach’’, all appear
status of the cities as a tourist destination. In other words, this shows more than 300 times. Following those keywords are some general
how ‘‘touristic’’ the cities are. There are no search queries for some travel-related keywords, such as ‘‘map’’, ‘‘vacation’’, ‘‘travel’’,
small cities which have little tourism content, for example, Americus ‘‘park’’, and specific destinations, such as ‘‘Disney World’’. Inter-
or Bradenton. This graph clearly indicates Las Vegas, Orlando, Myrtle estingly, ‘‘restaurant’’ has only been searched around 100 times,
Beach, located in the upper-left half the graph, are the most ‘‘tour- much less than other aspects of the trip. The results indicate that
istic’’ cities, with Las Vegas being the extreme case. Orlando, as accommodation and transportation are most searched aspects of
a mid-sized city, also enjoys a high level of being ‘‘touristic’’ with a trip, followed by attractions. Dining and shopping are a lot less
almost equivalent number of travel query sessions with those of San frequently searched. Due to space limit, the top 30 keywords are
Francisco, Chicago, and New York City. However, on the other side, listed in Table 2.

5.3. Associations of keywords with Cities

A correspondence analysis was conducted to examine the

associations between search keywords and the city names. The co-

Table 2
Top 30 most frequently used keywords in user queries.

Keyword Frequency Keyword Frequency

Hotel 1144 Park 112
Airport 394 Resort 108
Casino 347 Restaurant 106
Beach 320 Art 98
Map 173 International 91
Vacation 170 Ticket 89
Basketball 159 Discount 88
Disney world 138 Golf 83
Shuttle 138 Club 73
Volleyball 135 Motel 68
Show 128 Picture 68
Museum 127 Rental 66
Football 121 Theatre 64
Airline 118 Bar 60
Travel 117 Entertainment 60
Fig. 4. Relationship between volumes of travel query sessions and destinations.
94 Z. Xiang, B. Pan / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97
Fig. 5. Correspondence map of association between keywords and destinations.
occurrence between those keywords and cities names was used to
measure the level of associations, and a co-occurrence matrix was
constructed using the top 60 keywords and top 10 city names. The
results (see Fig. 5) clearly indicate that certain destinations are
associated with specific keywords, reflecting travelers’ knowledge
about the cities as well as the competing space for those. It seems
that these 18 destinations can be roughly grouped into three
clusters in terms of the ways they are related to these keywords in
a two dimensional space: the first type is Las Vegas, which is more
closely associated with ‘‘show’’, ’’casino’’, ’’palace’’, and ‘‘enter-
tainment’’; the second type is Orlando, which is highly associated
with ‘‘disney world’’, ’’camp’’, ’’shuttle’’, and ‘‘airport’’; the third
type, including cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, New York City,
Dallas, Myrtle Beach, San Jose, Memphis, and Baltimore, are all
large or medium-sized cities with similar attractions, for example,
museum, art, history, festival, and events. Thus, they are clustered
together on the map. In addition, the two dimensions, namely F1
and F2, seem to reflect the types of tourist attractions within these
cities and their touristic level, respectively. For instance, along the
first dimension (F1) Orlando represents family-oriented tourism
products while Las Vegas entertainment-based ones. The majority
of the cities are situated in-between, suggesting the diversity of
their attractions. Along the other dimension (F2) Orlando and Las
Vegas are located far away from the rest, indicating these two
destinations are more ‘‘touristic’’ than others.
To further show how these destinations are similar to, and
different from, each other, the top search keywords for the 18
destinations were identified and presented in Table 3. Due to the
limitation of the space, it was decided to list a maximum of 15
keywords. Please note that the numbers of top keywords are
different for each city, since keywords with equal number of
frequencies were also kept. The first observation on these keywords
is that ‘‘hotel’’ is the most frequently searched one across all the
large cities except in the cases of Dallas and Indianapolis. If
discounting the state name (i.e., ‘‘Texas’’ and ‘‘Indiana’’) in the
searches related to these two cities, ‘‘hotel’’ then becomes the
number one most frequently used keyword among all large cities.
Even among the medium-sized cities, after discounting the state
names, ‘‘hotel’’ remains the number one search for cities like
Memphis, Las Vegas, and Orlando. The second observation is that
other top keywords are different from each other among these
cities. For example, it is ‘‘casino’’ in the case of Las Vegas, ‘‘golf’’ in
Myrtle Beach, and ‘‘museum’’ in Chicago. Thirdly, it seems that, for
those ‘‘touristic’’ cities, such as Las Vegas, Orlando, and Myrtle
Beach, there are more searches on their specific attractions, while
for the large cities, such as New York City, Chicago, and San Fran-
cisco, there are more searches on the location, transportation, map,
and general attractions (park, museum, city, etc.). Lastly, travel
were also searched in combination of our searches such as
‘‘attorney’’, ‘‘furniture’’, or ‘‘jobs’’, indicating that searchers might
be multi-tasking within one query session or these words reflected
their search goals (e.g., one might go to New York city to visit an
attorney) while planning trips.
6. Conclusions and implications
Due to their increased use for travel planning, search engines are
becoming an important channel for tourist destinations and busi-
nesses to communicate with their potential visitors (TIA, 2005,
2008). And, search engine marketing is gaining the status as one of
the major online marketing strategy for many destinations. A
successful SEM program requires a thorough understanding of
travelers’ search behaviour on the Internet. Built upon a number of
previous studies, this study examined the nature of travel queries
within a multiple destination setting by comparing and contrasting
travel queries on a set of U.S. cities extracted from transaction logs
on a number of general purpose search engines. As a result, this
study provides new insights into the nature of travel queries in
 Z. Xiang, B. Pan / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97 95

Table 3
Top queries for different cities.

Large cities

New York City Chicago Dallas San Jose Indianapolis San Francisco
Hotel Hotel Texas Hotel Indiana Hotel
New york Art Hotel California Hotel California
Map Museum Tx Airport Airport Bay
Museum Illinois Attorneys City Address Airport
Park Airport Lawyers Zoo Map Area
City City Fort worth Map American International
Vacation Restaurant Orlando Costa rica Wedding City
Guide Theatre Malpractice Ca Flags Map
Manhattan Institute Airline Arena Usa Sea
Restaurant Map Vacation New Directory Tourist
Lawyers Airline Airport Park Banquet Travel
Dallas Park Surgery Ticket Theatre Lions
Rentals Cleveland New State Email Restaurant
Attorneys Travel City Ice Search Ticket
Brooklyn American County Jobs History Theatre

Medium Cities

Memphis Baltimore Fort Worth Las Vegas Orlando Chattanooga

Tn Maryland Texas Hotel Hotel Tn
Hotel Airport Dallas Casino Airport Tenn
Tennessee Hotel Museum Miami Florida Inn
Nl Harbor Airport Nevada Shuttle Travel
Map Washington Tx Show Disney world Chatanooga
Washington City Hotel Vacation Credit Lauderdale
Motel Aquarium Airline Paris Furniture Online
Sale Inner Art Entertainment Office Cvb
Hall County Club Travel Discount Hotel
Luxery Bwi Fishing City Vacation Tennessee
University Club American Circus Used Park
International Sun Settlement Palace Repair Beach
West Ticket White Airline New orleans Motel
State Art Sea Hilton Las vegas Restaurant
Georgetown Zoo Inn Packages Car

Small cities

Pueblo Champaign Bradenton Aiken Myrtle Beach Americus

Hotel Il Florida Lodging South carolina None
Colorado Illinois Coast Woodside plantation Golf
Puerto rico Leonardo Gulf Sc Resort
Bonito Foster Tampa Phh Hotel
Mexico Bifurcate Newspaper Leasing Beach
Resort Expand Herald Motel Vacation
Anasazi Piano Vacation Rentals
Castles Serviette Resort North
Indians Heartbreak Beach Courses
Wireless Businesses Ocean
Beach North Spas
Elisa Bungalow Casino
Magellan Cvb Inn
Pacheco Airport
Rentals

search engines and offers important implications for search engine
marketing.
6.1. Nature of travel queries
First, this study further elucidates the nature of travel queries
through the analysis of search engine log data on multiple tourist
destinations. Search sessions containing these queries are usually
very short and consist of one to three queries. The study also reveals
the commonalities and differences of travel queries on cities in the
United States. Generally speaking, there are a relatively small
number of keywords commonly used by online travelers to look for
information about these destinations. This is consistent with Xiang
et al.’s (2009) finding that there is a ‘‘core’’ of the ‘‘tourist things’’
searched by travelers about a destination, which is commonly
shared by different destinations and reflects the multi-faceted
nature of travel decisions (Dellaert, Ettema, & Lindh, 1998; Sirakaya
& Woodside, 2005). In this particular case, accommodations and
transportations are the most searched information. However, there
seems to be differences in the ‘‘things’’ being searched depending
upon the size of the destination and the ‘‘touristic’’ level. For large
metropolitan cities, in addition to accommodation related queries,
searches for transportation, maps, parks, and attractions and other
general keywords dominate travel queries; for middle to smaller
sized tourist cities, more searches are focusing on specific attrac-
tions on those cities. This demonstrated that a traveler would like to
know first how to ‘‘get around’’ a big city like New York or Chicago
when planning a trip. Consistent with Wöber’s (2007) findings,
there are strong associations between keywords used by online
travelers and specific destinations, reflecting the knowledge about
96 Z. Xiang, B. Pan / Tourism Management 32 (2011) 88–97
a particular destination. As shown in the correspondence analysis,
the results indicate that those cities can be distinguished by the
activities they offer and their ‘‘touristic’’ level.
Second, this study established a preliminary understanding of
the ‘‘search economy’’ on the Internet. As can be seen from the
results, the volume of searches seems to be a direct indicator of how
‘‘touristic’’ cities are. The study also shows the interesting rela-
tionship between the ratio of travel queries (i.e., volume of travel
queries to volume of all queries about a city) and city population.
That is, the more ‘‘touristic’’ a city is, the more likely there are
higher percentages of travel-related queries about that city. It
makes intuitive sense in that more travelers will search for those
cities, compared to the residents in that city. Logically, the travel
search volume apparently reflects the ‘‘size’’ of tourism industry.
Thus, there seems to be a direct link between the ‘‘search economy’’
on the Internet and the tourism industry.
Third, this study further demonstrated the emergent role of
travel queries as data to understand online travel behaviour. Travel
queries are a valuable source of rich and authentic data that reflect
travelers’ experience, knowledge, as well as their information
needs pertaining to a specific destination. Considering that today’s
Internet based technologies, particularly the so-called Web 2.0,
support an exponential growth in text data created in the context of
tourism, this study shows that there are many opportunities for the
tourism research community as well as the industry to understand
travel behaviour through many existing and emergent forms of
‘‘language of tourism’’ (Dann, 1997).
6.2. Implications for search engine marketing for destinations
It is argued that travel queries hold the key to understanding
search engine marketing strategies because they reflect travelers’
information needs, search intent, and search strategies. This study
revealed the general patterns in travel-related queries, and it offers
several useful insights into search engine marketing for tourist
destinations, such as focusing or bidding on certain queries to
increase visibility and differentiate the positioning of certain
metropolitan cities.
First, travel search sessions are usually very short, consisting of
fewer than four queries for most sessions. This indicates that it is
extremely important for marketers to attract search engine users’
attention in very short period of time (Gladwell, 2005). This
confirms the importance of ‘‘first impression’’, as suggested by Kim
and Fesenmaier (2008). Those first impressions are created during
online travelers’ exposure to the persuasive messages in search
results retrieved by search engines.
Second, this study reveals that accommodation related keywords
are among the most frequently used queries by online travelers.
While providing information about accommodation is, perhaps, not
the task with the highest priority for destination marketing orga-
nizations (DMOs), the results of this study indicate that DMOs may
need to reconsider their both search engine optimization and
advertising strategies. For example, incorporating and embedding
accommodation related content into their websites should increase
the rankings of their websites in search engines and, thus, the
likelihood to be visited by online searchers. From a search engine
advertising standpoint, it might be worthwhile for them to ‘‘retool’’
their keywords purchasing or ads placement practices.
Third, this study shows that it requires different types of desti-
nations to adopt different strategies that best suit the information
needs of online travelers. As shown by this study, large scale and
less ‘‘touristic’’ cities need to focus more on functional searches on
transportation, map, and general keywords on attractions; more
‘‘touristic’’ cities (e.g., Las Vegas, Orlando, and Myrtle Beach) can
focus on keywords on specific attractions and their tourist
highlights.
Fourth, the analysis of query keywords in their associations with
destinations revealed the competing space in online search for
certain tourist destinations. Particularly, for metropolitan cities
with historically and naturally endowed resources (e.g., New York
City, Chicago, and Philadelphia, etc) there are potentially a large
number of destinations with similar products. They are similar to
each other in the minds of online travelers and, consequently, the
queries they use to search. These destinations must identify ways to
better position and/or distinguish themselves in the search engine
market.
Finally, due to possible links between the volumes of search and
the tourism economy, tourist destinations and DMOs need to track
and monitor search volume carefully. Potentially, this allows DMOs
to gain a better understanding of the dynamics in online search,
e.g., how travelers information needs and interests change over
time (e.g., due to seasonality) and in what ways they respond to
change in the tourism supply (e.g., due to certain events). This
allows DMOs to plan, both in short term and long term, for more
effective search engine marketing strategies with better informed
market intelligence.
7. Limitations and future research
Given its exploratory nature this study has a number of limita-
tions. Particularly, this study utilized a fairly small sample of cities
to represent tourist destinations in the United States. As a result,
the generalizability of the study is limited and the results should be
interpreted with caution. Also, this study utilized cross-sectional
data from a number of search engine transaction logs generated at
different times across a number of years. As such, there might be
a certain degree of ‘‘noise’’ in the data that reflects the seasonality
in travel queries. In addition, some datasets are almost nine years
old. Although the nature of travel queries, particularly in terms of
its format and basic utilitarian focus, might have not changed, it is
more desirable to validate the findings of the study, especially
specific claims about the types of travel-related information.
In order to address these limitations, future research can utilize
a larger sample of destinations that can truly represent the pop-
ulation of cities in the United States. More current search engine log
data need to be incorporated into the inquiry of travelers’ use of
search engines. For example, Google Keyword Tool (https://
adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) could be one
method to study recent keywords volumes. In addition, to help
tourist destination improve their search engine marketing
programs, certain tools, both theoretical and practical, must be
developed to allow DMOs to keep track the dynamics in online
search market, particularly the use of keywords in the competing
information space on search engines, in order to effectively respond
to market competition and change.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Dr. Daniel Fesenmaier for generously
sharing his insights and critical comments when we were working
on this paper.
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