The biggest change that Ali Yilmaz, the former head of travel for Google South-east Asia has seen in his 19 months in the role, is how big mobile has become as a channel for travel.

In his presentation at the WIT Conference 2012 last month, Yilmaz shared statistics which showed:

• 23% of all queries in APAC came from mobile devices in Q2 2012 compared with Q2 2011

• 62% of all travel queries were on hotels and destinations

• mobile queries in the APAC travel category grew by an overall 141%

• and that by 2014, 30-43% of all travel queries would be on mobile

When he started his travel role in Singapore, mobile was 5pc of travel queries; today it’s about 20%. “Japan has a big effect on that – mobile queries from Japan are affecting all regional statistics.”

Yilmaz, who left Google and Singapore last month to return to Istanbul to head up a digital agency, SEM, said with the growth in mobile, one thing is clear for 2013 – travel companies have to do something about it.

“Whether it’s a mobile website or an app or anything that makes them look good or people can reach out to them on mobile, they have to have a rethink on mobile – if you see most of the bookings coming from last minute, for example, why do you put 170,000 hotels on your mobile app when maybe you can just show them 50 hotels. Tailor your content to the location of the person.”

The other challenge is how companies can monetize the mobile traffic. “If your traffic is growing on a smaller screen, you have to change business models – Facebook and Google’s ad business is created for bigger screens, not small screens,” he said.

Travel companies also have to think about how best to service customers via mobile, he said. Generally, people search on mobile and transact on the web and companies have to get smart about cross-device tracking, he said.

What he’s personally seen is smartphones being used for more last minute and short-term hotel bookings while planning was still being done on desktop and handheld devices. “For airlines, there is a bigger possibility for mobile bookings,” he noted.

Marketers essentially have to rethink how they advertise. “When companies started advertising on mobile, they looked at it the same way as they did the web – banner ads and widgets which can annoy people. Kiip, “rewards in your pocket”, found a different way of advertising, they only thought of mobile.”

Ironically he said that the digital age has created even more confusion in advertising and marketing. “Previously, you just had to do what you were doing with print or TV and maybe radio. The online world has more channels than the offline world – and it’s time consuming and while the media itself may not be expensive, the management of it is because it’s all happening real-time – unlike a print ad where you can run it for a month or more.”

Take social media, an area where he said people are still confused about. “I am not sure people understand it yet and we will know more when social media sites come up with better tools to reach out to consumers beyond likes.”

Search, he said, remains the most cost-effective sales channel for airlines and while it may not be the most cost-effective for smaller hotels, it can still be profitable. For OTAs, while it may not be the most profitable, search drives the most volume for them. “You have to measure all channels and you should reconsider the ones that you are not making money from.“

For small companies, his advice is to do it by trial and error. “Start with the cheaper stuff, focus on niche areas and grow from there, it’s hard to compete with companies like booking.com or Agoda but you can focus like ImpulseFlyer. You can also experiment with less crowded mediums such as Pinterest and Instagram.’

And because video advertising is measurable, Yilmaz said travel companies were starting to take advantage of it.

Asked if prompts such as “you can skip this ad” were educating consumers to hate advertising, Yilmaz said, “A lot of people like that because they are given the option. On television, you have to watch the ads. On YouTube, you are now given the option and in future, we may have the option for ads or no ads.”

And one thing he’s learnt during his time with Google – there is no such thing as perception, it’s all about data. Apparently, 70-80% of people skip ads (on YouTube videos) and 20-30% watch them.

The winners, he said, will be those who look at and measure data. He cites an example of Swissotel Stamford which decided to segment customers according to where they were coming from – UK, US and Australia.

“After segmenting, they looked at what they were doing on the website. Before Australians booked a room, they looked at tour packages and then booked. The British tended to look at hotel amenities before booking, and spend twice as much as Australians.

“So the hotel focused on the UK customer and for the landing page of their ad, they featured amenities such as a Michelin star restaurant. They increased booking value by 60%. For Australians, they put packages on the landing page and saw better traffic and more conversions.”

Yilmaz said with so much noise in the online channel, it was important for travel marketers to understand the basics first before trying to do anything else.

“Everyone’s talking big data but big data is essentially a bigger version of CRM – and if you haven’t done basic CRM, don’t even attempt big data. It always puzzles me why hotels don’t do better CRM – they have such good data, my passport number, my birthday – they know everything about me, but they don’t use it.”

Yilmaz, who spent six years with Google and the previous eight with IBM, said he is ready for life in a smaller company where he can set up his own rules and pursue his own goals.

So after 14 years in corporate life, Yilmaz will be heading up SEM, which is looking to establish an agency network in Eastern Europe, first in Turkey and then further afield. The company is also looking into investing in start-ups, a personal passion of Yilmaz.

When he first started his role in Google in Singapore, Yilmaz said he didn’t see many start-up activity. “There were not many investors in Singapore and the few around only wanted to invest in businesses that are already making money. It was exactly the same in Turkey – investors only wanted to invest in replicated models. That’s what happens in emerging markets.

“But it’s changing now. Investors are coming to Turkey now and there are foreign and local funds.”

Singapore is in the same phase, he said, except for one difference – “Turkey has a young and crowded population with lots of innovation. In Singapore, innovation is less and most people are employed.”