Travel content designed for the Korean search ecosystem

Project Background#

Hotels.com is a leading hotel booking platform. As Korea’s independent travel market expanded and demand for individual accommodation bookings increased, attracting NAVER users became a priority: more than 80% of travel-related searches were concentrated on NAVER in the project context. The platform’s characteristics limited what on-site organic traffic alone could achieve, making an off-page content marketing strategy essential.

Delivery#

• Analysed travellers’ search journeys and accommodation selection behaviour.
• Continuously monitored NAVER policies and search conditions to refine the strategy.
• Used accumulated search data to establish seasonal keyword priorities.
• Planned content featuring verified first-hand hotel experiences.

Customer Understanding and Research#

1089MEDIA approached Hotels.com as a problem-solving partner for customers preparing to travel abroad, examining the challenges they encountered during planning.

Implementation and Improvement#

• Optimised messaging and planning through content experiments.
• Built models to forecast international travel demand and a process for testing hypotheses.
• Increased organic search traffic year by year, reaching 25 million annual visits in 2019.
• Converted organic traffic into brand-site visits, hotel bookings and improved ROI.

Lessons Learned#

The project showed why content should not prioritise a service’s advantages or vision over customer needs. Even with customer-centred intentions, foregrounding internal missions and targets can dilute the message. By focusing on behaviour, respecting platform policies and combining trustworthy customer-focused content, we exceeded traffic and performance expectations. These results depended not only on 1089MEDIA and 247COMPASS’s delivery, but also on the client team’s insights and timely decisions.