Booking.com leads UK in Ad Awareness, but Premier Inn wins on brand Value in 2024

While 2024 proved to be a standout year for Airbnb in the US, where it led in both advertising awareness and customer acquisition, the story in the UK market reveals a more complex picture. A comparative analysis of Airbnb, Booking.com and Premier Inn - using data from YouGov BrandIndex - highlights differing strengths across advertising, customer engagement, and broader brand health metrics.

Booking.com leads in Ad Awareness and Current Customer

In the UK, Booking.com emerged as the leader in advertising awareness in 2024, with 24.2% of Britons reporting they had seen an ad for the brand in the two weeks prior to being surveyed. In 2024, Booking.com rolled out its global campaign "Booking.yeah", featuring actress and comedian Tina Fey. The campaign encouraged travellers to "book whoever you want to be" and was widely promoted across television, streaming platforms, and social media.

This heightened ad awareness appears to have had some effect on customer acquisition. Booking.com led the competition in Current Customers, with 26% of respondents indicating they had recently booked through the platform. This outpaced Premier Inn at 21.7% and Airbnb at 18.4%.

Premier Inn leads in brand health metrics

Despite Booking.com’s dominance in Ad Awareness and Current Customer, it does not lead across all brand health indicators. YouGov BrandIndex data reveals Premier Inn’s strong performance in key areas such as Buzz, Impression, Value and Consideration.

Buzz, a net metric measuring whether people are hearing positive or negative information about a brand, shows Premier Inn with a leading score of 11.6, followed by Booking.com at 9.6. Airbnb trails significantly in this category, suggesting less favourable public discourse around these brands.

Premier Inn also outperforms its competitors in Impression, a net measure of overall public sentiment toward a brand. Premier Inn scores 44.5, far ahead of Booking.com (35.8), while Airbnb lags with a score of 14.2.

When it comes to Value, which gauges perceptions of value for money, Premier Inn again leads with a score of 43.9 - a significant lead over Booking.com’s 29 and Airbnb’s 15.4. This suggests that Premier Inn is perceived as offering better affordability and quality relative to its competitors.

Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. A brand’s Index score is an overall measure of brand health, made up of General Impression, Customer Satisfaction, Quality, Value, Corporate Reputation and Recommendation and delivered as a net score. Its Consideration score is based on the question: When you are next in the market to purchase chocolates, which of the following brands would you consider purchasing? Data from surveys of adults aged 18 years and above residing in the UK from January 2024 to December 2024. The figures are based on a monthly average. Learn more about BrandIndex.

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