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I-Want-to-Get-Away Moments: What They Mean for Travel Marketing

Half the fun in traveling is dreaming up the destination. Part two of this six-part series on travel micro-moments dives into I-want-to-get-away moments—the dreaming moments before a trip is planned—and how travel marketers can capitalize on these early moments of inspiration.

You know the feeling. Maybe you've just gotten back from your most recent trip. Or maybe you can't remember the last time you even took a trip. Regardless of when it strikes you, you can probably relate to the vacation itch.

In these I-want-to-get-away moments, people are at the early stages of thinking about their next trip. They're exploring destination options and dreaming about what their next getaway could look like.

Most consumers aren't brand-committed in these moments. For example, 78% of leisure travelers haven't decided what airline they will travel with, and 82% haven't chosen the accommodation provider they will book with when they first start thinking about a trip. 1

Think with Google

Source: Google/Ipsos MediaCT, “The 2015 Traveler's Road to Decision,” base: U.S. leisure travelers who booked a flight in the last six months, n=1,798; base: U.S. leisure travelers who booked overnight accommodation in the last six months, n=2,711, Aug. 2015.

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Not only have travelers not decided on what brand they'll book with, but they don't necessarily have a destination picked out either. When first thinking about a personal trip, one in three travelers says they haven't typically decided on a specific destination. 2 Since many travelers still have an open mind about where they'll go and who they'll book with, these are prime opportunities for travel brands to make an impression.

Snapshot of a real traveler's decision-making journey

Online interactions are increasingly shaping how people dream up their next trip. New clickstream data from Luth Research's opt-in panel (illustrating the pages a user visited, and in which order) provides a snapshot of what a real traveler's I-want-to-get-away moments actually looked like. By analyzing this traveler's searches, clicks, website visits, and video views while he was in dreaming mode for his upcoming travel plans, we can start to see exactly how and how much digital played a role in influencing his destinations.

Meet Liam. Liam is 30 years old, and he's not just planning one trip, but three: a vacation to Miami, a trip for his friends' wedding in the Northeast U.S., and his own destination wedding in the Dominican Republic. He's also open to planning even more travel, should he be inspired during his research.

Take a look at Liam's travel micro-moments over the course of four months:

Source: Google partnered with Luth to analyze the digital activity of its opt-in panel participants during a one-month, live-tracking study. This article details the cross-device clickstream data of one of those participants. Liam is a pseudonym. The participant agreed to the publication of this research for marketing purposes under the condition of anonymity. Liam did not disclose mobile data, so all data is desktop-only.

And here's a real sample of one of Liam's research paths in an I-want-to-get-away moment that started with a search:

Source: Google/Mindswarms, U.S. Methodology: Google partnered with Mindswarms to select and interview the participants of this live-tracking pilot study. The participants answered questions about their shopping behaviors and digital activity via video.

How to win I-want-to-get-away moments: Be there and be useful

At this early stage in the travel decision-making process, people want brands to provide content to inspire and to help narrow down choices. What's in it for hotel marketers, airline marketers, and other travel marketers? Sixty-seven percent of travelers are more likely to book with a travel brand that provides relevant information for the destinations they're interested in. 3

Here are some concrete tips for providing people with relevant and useful content in their I-want-to-get-away moments:

Ensure you're showing up for the searches people are doing in these moments—even on mobile. If you want to be in the consideration set, you have to be present in the I-want-to-get-away moments. And remember that the smallest screen increasingly helps plan the biggest of purchases, travel included. 

Food for thought as you consider your "be there" search strategy: People often search for inspiration for vacation destinations based on geography or on a type of trip someone has in mind. "Honeymoon destinations" and "europe destinations" are common searches we see like this on Google. While these searches happen on all screens, 60% of searches for destination information come from mobile devices. 4 "Best time to visit [destination]" searches are common as well, and increasingly so on mobile. As of March 2016, searches like this have increased 50% year over year on smartphones. 5

Source: Destinations on Google Data, U.S., Mar. 2016.

Provide visual content for people's I-want-to-get-away moments, especially on mobile. When it makes sense, highlight what the experience will be like when they arrive, including what is available to see and to do while on the trip.

Travelers use Destinations on Google to learn about different destinations, explore points of interest, and get a snapshot of what a week-long trip might cost. From this behavior, we are able to glean insights into what is most useful for people as they decide where to go using mobile. On the Travel Guide tab, one of the most engaged-with elements on the page is the main photo for that destination. We see that people who tap on this image look at 10 images on average. 4 This makes sense, as 54% of leisure travelers say that pictures of a destination are important when choosing where to go. 6

Video plays a big role in the dreaming stage. In any given month, over 100 million of YouTube's unique visitors are travelers. 7 Sixty-four percent of people who watch travel-related videos do so when thinking about taking a trip. 8 And three in five travelers who watch online video use it to narrow down their brand, destination, or activity choices. 9

And travelers are watching more video on their smartphones. In fact, mobile screens are increasingly where travelers watch video: Approximately two-thirds of watch time for top travel videos happens on mobile. 10 And that watch time on mobile devices has grown by over 65% year over year. 10 This makes sense as travelers pick up their phones in slices of time throughout their day to learn about new places they want to visit.

When it comes to what kinds of videos travelers are watching, 65% of travelers search for videos online by destination. For example, top destinations searched on YouTube include "barcelona," "canada," "dubai," "australia," and "new york." 11 And the most popular type of travel videos watched on YouTube are travel vlogs. 12

Source: Google/Ipsos MediaCT, “The 2015 Traveler's Road to Decision,” base: U.S. leisure and business travelers, leisure n=1,230, business n=87, Aug. 2015.

Even though travel vlogs are the most viewed and most engaging type of travel videos, only 14% of vlogs on YouTube are created by brands; 86% come from YouTube creators. 12 This is a good opportunity for brands: Make sure you're creating content that speaks to the needs of your audience in engaging formats.

How hospitality and airline marketers are meeting consumer needs

Marriott Hotels is a great example of a brand meeting travelers in their I-want-to-get-away moments. Marriott Hotels realized that next-generation travelers know that brands need to market to them, but they also appreciate entertaining and inspiring content offered in an authentic way. To build out content for travelers' I-want-to-get-away moments, the executive team appointed a VP of content creation, built its own in-house content creation studio, and created Marriott Traveler , an online travel magazine and content hub.

Now Marriott creates vlogs and a wide variety of other online content. The brand focuses on documentary-style videos and has partnered with YouTube creators like Taryn Southern , Casey Neistat , and Sonia Gil to cover cities around the world.

Marriott is also investing in longer-form content. Its 19-minute adventure Two Bellmen Two , set in Dubai, accumulated over seven million YouTube views in its first two months of release. To pick the destinations for these short films, Marriott identifies top searched-for destinations, using Google Search data and Marriott's own data, with the least amount of video content available.

Virgin America has taken a different approach to meeting customer needs in I-want-to-get-away moments.

Virgin America knows that its onboard amenities, comfortable seats, and hip mood-lighted vibe help set it apart in the airline industry. The brand wanted a way for guests who were unfamiliar with the product to experience it firsthand so they could realize what they were missing. The solution: an interactive brand campaign that allowed travelers to "test-drive" a flight before it took off.

Virgin America initially used Google Street View, and then Google Cardboard (a simple-to-use virtual reality tool) to give potential customers a 360-degree interactive tour of its Airbus A320 cabin. This interactive tour was able to communicate the unique benefits of traveling with Virgin. Views of the ample legroom and in-seat entertainment offer transparency to people in I-want-to-get-away moments as they think about where to go and who to go with. This new experience has generated over 600,000 interactions and a 15% overall lift in unique site visitors compared to the year prior.

Read on for the next article in this series.

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How the Travel Research Process Plays Out in Time-to-Make-a-Plan Moments

Travel booking trends revealed in let's-book-it moments, how mobile influences travel decision making in can't-wait-to-explore moments, the future of travel: new consumer behavior and the technology giving it flight, being there in micro-moments, especially on mobile, travel trends: 4 mobile moments changing the consumer journey, sources (12).

1 Google/Ipsos MediaCT, "The 2015 Traveler's Road to Decision," base: U.S. leisure travelers who booked a flight in the last six months, n=1,798; base: U.S. leisure travelers who booked overnight accommodation in the last six months, n=2,711, Aug. 2015. 2 Google/Ipsos Connect, travel playbook omnibus, n=1,664, among U.S. travelers 18+, Apr. 2016. 3 Google/Ipsos Connect, travel playbook omnibus, n=1664, among U.S. Travelers 18+, Apr. 2016. 4 Destinations on Google Data, U.S., Mar. 2016. 5 Google Data, U.S., Mar. 2016. 6 Google/Ipsos MediaCT, "The 2015 Traveler's Road to Decision," base: U.S. leisure travelers, n=3,500, Aug. 2015. 7 Google/Ipsos MediaCT, "The 2015 Travelers Road to Decision," base: leisure travelers n=3,500; base: business travelers n=1,500, Aug. 2015. 8 Google/Ipsos MediaCT, "The 2015 Traveler's Road to Decision," base: U.S. leisure and business travelers who watched/commented on travel-related video, leisure n=1,230, business n=87, Aug. 2015. 9 Google/Ipsos MediaCT, "The 2015 Traveler's Road to Decision," base: U.S. leisure and business travelers, leisure n=1,230, business n=87, Aug. 2015. 10 YouTube Data, U.S., classification as "top travel-related" videos was based on the top 100,000 videos using public data such as headlines, tags, etc., and may not account for every such video available on YouTube. Mobile devices include smartphones and tablets. Jan.–Mar. 2015 vs. Jan.–Mar. 2016. 11 Google/Ipsos Connect, travel playbook omnibus, n=817, among U.S. Travelers 18+ who search for travel videos online, Apr. 2016. 12 Google/Pixability, YouTube travel study, YouTube analysis, Global-English, Apr. 2016.

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Is Google Killing Online Travel?

Rashaad Jorden , Skift

May 24th, 2024 at 10:52 AM EDT

"The relationship between Google and the OTAs — it’s a symbiotic one. It’s a complex one. You could even say it’s a little bit abusive."

Rashaad Jorden

Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit and Head of Research Seth Borko talk travel every week.

Skift Research reported earlier this year that Booking and Expedia — two giants of online travel — are experiencing slower growth and greater pressure on profit margins as they face more competition from Google.

Senior Research Analyst Pranavi Agarwal joined Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit and Head of Research Seth Borko to discuss Google’s outsized role in online travel and its impact on the sector’s major players.

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What They Said

Pranavi Agarwal on Google and OTAs: “The relationship between Google and the OTAs — it’s a symbiotic one. It’s a complex one. You could even say it’s a little bit abusive because Google knows that Booking, Expedia can’t stop spending ad dollars on Google. They dare not bite the hand that feeds them.”

Seth Borko on Google’s Competitive Advantage: “Google really is a black box. And having this huge data set kind of lets us sort of reverse engineer and get a peek into that black box.”

Sarah Kopit on Reliance on Google: “I think all of us in the information space would like to stop relying so much on Google, but here we are.”

Sarah Kopit: Welcome back to the Skift Travel Podcast, everybody. I’m Skift’s Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit joined, as always, by Seth Borko, Skift’s Head of Research.

So it is said that talkies killed the silent film. And for those of us of a certain age, video killed the radio star. So today on the pod, we’re asking our industry’s disruptive technological question: Is Google killing online travel? In just a few short years, Google Hotels has become the largest and most comprehensive metasearch engine in travel. But it also attracts large numbers of consumers and drives hotel bookings.

It’s obliterating the very OTAs (that) are spending billions in advertising and Google every year. So here to help us sort through this and perhaps even answer that question is Skift’s Senior Research Analyst and author of a research series into Google Travel, Pranavi Agarwal. Hi, Pranavi.

Pranavi Agarwal: Hey, thanks for having me.

Kopit: So it’s so great to have you here with us today. Probably because at its core, Google remains a fairly black box. And so I am so curious how you and Skift Research were able to get in there and actually analyze all that data.

Agarwal: I like working with data and really in this kind of dawn of AI that we’re living in, things like web scraping and analysis of big data sets has really become a lot easier. So really in an effort to kind of do some really cool analysis, some kind of unique analysis, I decided to create this proprietary database by web scraping thousands of hotels — more than 20,000 hotels that are listed on Google, on a global basis.

And what I did is for each hotel, I scraped which OTA site and which direct site are bidding for bookings and at what prices they’re bidding for those bookings. And I did this across two parts of Google. So the first part of Google I scraped was the sponsored results which is where you have to pay to be featured.

And there are a maximum of four sponsored results per hotel. But then, I also scraped across Google’s organic search results, which is a new part of Google that they introduced a couple years ago. And this is the part of Google where you don’t have to pay. It’s free to list as long as you have a tech partner to enable that integration onto Google.

And there’s no limit to the number of sites that can bid for bookings. So in total, we were analyzing more than half a million data points across thousands of hotels. (That) really, really allowed us to come to some very interesting conclusions.

Google Travel Deep Dives

Updated Oct. 18, 2023

Borko: That’s really fascinating because like Sarah was saying, Google really is a black box. And having this huge data set kind of lets us sort of reverse engineer and get a peek into that black box. And it is so, so important to understand exactly how Google works. It is one of the largest partners — if not the largest player in terms of how travel industry companies acquire eyeballs.

We think the travel ecosystem as a whole is probably one of Google’s largest advertisers as far as the industry goes. I think we’ve done some estimates at Skift Research that the travel industry spends nearly 10 billion, if not more, every single year, just advertising on Google. Probably even more if you include YouTube, by the way.

And then of that, we think that the online travel agencies are some of the biggest spenders. And of those, the two largest online travel agencies in the U.S. and Europe — Booking and Expedia — we think that they’re some of Google’s single largest advertising clients. And we think they’re spending probably 3 billion plus a year annually. And that, a majority of their marketing spend at Expedia and Booking is being spent on Google.

So that’s what we thought in the past. Pranavi, when you did this — this web scraping result — did it back this up? Did you find that travel is large advertisers? And how did you find about Expedia and Booking?

Booking and Expedia’s Dominance

Agarwal: Yes, the OTAs are very reliant on Google. If you look at the results specifically on the Google-sponsored results, you will see that Booking Holdings and Expedia Group — collectively through their subbrands — completely dominate Google-sponsored results.

For example, in the U.S., Booking, Expedia, they have 80% share of those sponsored results. And it’s really Booking.com, in particular, which is featuring the most often. So Booking.com is really paying the most in order to feature on those paid results.

Borko: So when you say 80% market share, that means that when I search for a hotel on Google, eight times out of 10, I’m going to see Booking or Expedia bid on the sponsored results for that hotel.

Agarwal: Yes, they do.

Borko: That’s a very high number. Were there any other interesting results that you saw? Like right off the bat in terms of the dynamics on the Google marketplace.

Agarwal: Yeah, I mean, if you just focus on the sponsored results. So I said Booking.com dominates. But if you actually look at which site is most likely to be top of that list, it’s actually Expedia. So it’s a literal clear bid from Expedia to try and outcompete Booking on those sponsored results.

And I saw that across all the regions we looked at besides Europe, where Booking has a real stronghold. But if you look at the U.S., Asia, Middle East, Expedia is actually most likely to come top of that list. And it kind of gives a little bit of insight into marketing efficiencies as well.

And in the report we talk about how Booking and Expedia, though they spend so much money on Google, if you look at the actual share of room nights that they have and if you compare the two [i.e. share of actual room nights vs share of Google’s sponsored results] as a ratio, you can see that Booking is actually a lot more efficient than Expedia when it comes to Google-sponsored results.

Borko: So that’s interesting. Just to put that in context for some of our listeners who may not be as familiar with Google, what I think Pranavi is saying — I’m just restating it — is if Expedia is at the top of the list, and it means they paid more for that bid on that list that Booking did. Google’s holding a real time auction for every single click.

So Booking’s strategy seems to be “Get myself on sponsored listings” and Expedia’s strategy seems to be “Win the auction.” And one of those is a lot more expensive than the other, and it definitely shows up. It’s interesting to see that shows up in the financial statements as well.

Why Is Google So Powerful

Kopit: I’m curious if Google is crowding out all of these other travel metasearch companies like Tripadvisor and Trivago — we all remember, know and love the Trivago guy — they were once very vibrant hotel search platforms. But that’s not really the case anymore. Can you give us a little bit more insight into kind of what happened?

How did Google do this?

Agarwal: Yeah, I guess a few reasons why Google has become really so powerful in travel. I think firstly, it’s not just travel, right? Google is the biggest search engine in all aspects. It’s the biggest search engine in all aspects of our lives. So if you’re going to go to Google to search for things in life generally, why wouldn’t you do the same for travel?

“I’m going to Google. I’m going to Google it.” So what we’ve really seen is that Google has really risen to the top of that search funnel — not just in life, but also now in travel. Though you could argue that things like social media and Instagram and TikTok … they’re potentially usurping Google when it comes to that.

Who’s the top of the search funnel? And perhaps you can discuss that for another podcast. But it’s really that Google is the main site that you go to to search for things. But I think it’s also that Google is Google, right? I think you gotta appreciate that Google has the better product, it has more data, and it has a more user-friendly site when you compare it to Tripadvisor or Trivago.

I mean, if you go on TripAdvisor right now, I think the website looks the same as it’s done over the last decade or more. And Google on the other hand — it’s constantly tweaking its product, it’s constantly iterating its product offering. And I think that’s really what’s allowed it to become so powerful — as powerful as it is today.

Borko: That’s serious shots fired at TripAdvisor. I don’t know if they would agree with that. I don’t know if you said that to them, that they would agree with you.

Agarwal: I think they would agree with it because they are very clear that Google has completely outcompeted them. I think that is not new to anyone who has been looking at the travel industry.

Borko: Let me ask you a question. Has Google outcompeted them in part because they don’t need to make as much money? Google makes money from other platforms as well. They’re rich in cash, so they can afford to have more user-friendly features, whereas TripAdvisor needs to add a lot more metasearch and add options. Do you think that’s a piece of it?

Agarwal: Yeah, we can discuss why Google is doing all this. Google …. they don’t even list travel in their financial statements. This is a very, very tiny piece of the pie for them. So why are Google doing this? I think it comes back to Google being that search engine in all aspects of our life.

They want to dominate everything that you might search for in your life. Travel is a small part of it. But, for us [at Skift], it’s obviously a big part because we look at travel so much.

Borko: One of the things that I always think about with travel, and one of its biggest challenges, is that it is a very high ticket and very low-frequency purchase. And so it’s something that you do once or twice a year, and it’s really expensive and you spend a lot of time considering it. And so, therefore it’s really hard for a lot of these brands to kind of get those at bats with the consumer, so to speak with a lower ticket or a higher frequency purchase.

You’re willing to try other platforms. And I think that gives Google the advantage because you search on Google every single day. We’ve heard a couple of people sort of start to refer to Google as almost a tax on the ecosystem because Google has all those at bats because it has all those eyeballs. Companies need to pay the Google tax in order to rent Google’s eyeballs.

And we’re seeing whole companies restructure to try and avoid that tax. What do you make of those plays and those strategies?

The Past, Present and Future of Online Travel

The golden era of Booking and Expedia is facing challenges of slowing growth and increased competition, prompting a fierce battle for market share through innovation and expansion efforts amid a changing landscape.

Agarwal: Yeah. So we’ve already discussed how Booking and Expedia — they’re spending billions of performance marketing dollars on Google. And you can call that a tax that they’re paying to Google in order to get bookings. But ideally these OTAs … they don’t want to be reliant on Google, right? They don’t want to be reliant on any site for referrals to their website.

They want direct bookings. Everyone wants direct bookings. That’s really the holy grail in online travel. But but those direct bookings, they’re hard to get. And I think more than anything, the OTAs want to stop spending money on Google. And they won’t admit that very often. But there’s actually a quote from Peter Kern, the then CEO of Expedia, who does admit that.

And I think we have a little clip from our global forum in 2021, where he does admit that they don’t want to be reliant on Google anymore.

Borko: Yeah, let’s listen to it.

Peter Kern : I think the days of trying to let us compete against ourselves and paying Google too much to compete with ourselves are over, I hope. And yeah, we’re going to the brands are going to work together for a common goal.

Dennis Schaal: You mean you prefer to spend money on a loyalty program than spend it with Google?

Kern : I prefer to spend money on almost anything with Google.

Schaal : I gotta ask you something about–

Kern : But yes, I’d rather give the money to the customer than to Google for sure.

Schaal: Yeah.

Google’s Organic Auction

Kopit: Wow. I would say they’re very prescient words with everything that Google has done — just even recently with their changes to their algorithm. I think all of us in the information space would like to stop relying so much on Google, but here we are.

So Pranavi, Google has introduced an organic auction. First, I want you to tell me what exactly that is and why Google’s doing it. What are their intentions with this organic auction?

Agarwal: OK. So yeah, a little bit of context. In 2021, in addition to Google-sponsored results, Google introduced these organic results, which means that anyone could list for free as long as you have a tech partner in order to do that. And really, at the time, the head of Google Travel — he was quoted as saying that they were doing this in order to “drive more traffic for the ecosystem as a whole”.

And I think that in itself shows that perhaps egotistical side of Google a little bit. Clearly Google thinks of itself as this higher power that’s really trying to improve its product offering for all of humanity that’s using the Google site. We already touched on that a little bit. But look, I think it’s not altogether that altruistic.

Because let’s not forget, that like any other profit-making company, Google has a bottom line to maintain. It has shareholders to satisfy. So it really begs the question: why is Google doing this? Why have they introduced free listings? They’re not making any money off it. And I think it ultimately comes down to Google’s role within travel.

It’s not an OTA. It’s not trying to be an OTA. You can’t book hotel rooms on Google. It’s not trying to compete with Booking, Expedia. Google is a metasearch engine at the end of the day — and what is a value of a metasearch engine? I think it really comes from there being a very fragmented distribution environment …

So by allowing anyone to list for free through this organic search, Google is really facilitating this re-fragmentation of the distribution landscape. And actually by capping the sponsored results to only four results per hotel, I think that’s a very important and clever move because it really forces OTAs like Booking and Expedia to keep paying on those sponsored results in order to stand out.

So the whole strategy of the organic search results … it’s very clever, it’s very smart and yeah, hats off to Google for it. I think it’s a great move from them.

Kopit: Yeah. There is no altruism in capitalism. There we go.

Borko: Yeah. So I was going to ask this question about is a free search the end of the Google tax. But I think you’ve answered that quite well, which is that it’s really a ploy to get more traffic, to bring more people into the ecosystem and therefore make the sponsored results not called a ploy, but a strategy.

And it’s working. But these free results, you can still click on them. So people must be getting results from them. You can always just not click on the sponsored listing. And if there’s a brand I dislike, I sometimes click on the sponsored listing, and skip over and click on the free one.

So what is opening this up to the world for free sponsors, what has that done? You’ve written the report — you call it democratizing online travel. What do you mean by that?

Agarwal: Yeah. So what the web scraping analysis showed is that unlike the sponsored results, which as we’ve already discussed, they’re dominated by Booking and Expedia. And that’s natural. They have the money to to do that, to spend all those billions of dollars on sponsored results. But if you look at the organic results, which remember, they’re free to list. I said it’s much more democratized because it’s free to list.

So a lot more companies and a lot more OTAs are listing. And the sponsored results are capped by four results. But the organic search is not capped. I’ve seen some hotels that have 40, 45 different sites — all hoping to get a booking through that organic search. So what it means is that it’s really allowed the smaller OTAs and the direct sites more prominence on the Google site.

Agarwal: And that in itself is what you could call more democratic. It’s more of an accurate picture of this kind of tapestry of different distributors who are all bidding for bookings in the online travel space.

Borko: Let’s talk about that direct site a little bit, because so far, this whole conversation has really focused on the distributors, on the online travel agencies, in those third-party intermediaries. But with the direct site, hotels can list directly on Google. Historically, the selling point for Booking.com was that if you run a small hotel in Greece, it’s very hard for you to get eyeballs in Wisconsin for someone who wants to take a summer vacation there.

How are you going to do it without talking to Booking.com? But now that hotel in Greece can just go and buy a listing on Google. What’s going on with this? How does direct site play into this ecosystem?

Agarwal: I guess when I first published this report, some of the feedback I had was … OK, it’s more democratized. But no one’s going to book on these smaller OTA sites. I think brand recognition is a very important thing — particularly post-Covid, where consumers want to book on sites that they can trust. So the smaller sites might not get those increased bookings.

But what will [get more bookings] is the direct site. And really one of the key conclusions from this web scraping work is that Google is actively prioritizing the direct site and pushing it to the top of the organic search list — even when it’s not the cheapest site.

Kopit: I was just going to say, during the pandemic, I won’t name names, but I booked a trip to Prague that I couldn’t go on. It wasn’t even that I had to cancel it. The world canceled it for me. I never got reimbursed for that.

Agarwal: So we really saw during Covid this kind of shift to direct bookings. People wanted to book directly because you can get perks like free cancellation, free Wi-Fi and free upgrades. And knowing that if things get canceled, you have a stress-free experience to get your money back. And that was really important. I think we can talk a little bit about why Google is doing this.

Why is Google on the side of the direct side? And I think the answer really lies if you look at what Google has said about it, if you look at the kind of blog posts they’ve posted on this and they say that … if you look at how they rank their results on the sponsored results, it’s ranked by however much money people are willing to pay.

And that’s how that defines that ranking. But if you look at the organic results, it’s ranked by quote, “their utility to users”. And that is a very clear quote which shows that Google believes and understands that the direct site is the better site to book your hotel on. And I think it’s pretty telling.

Borko: Well, I think that’s also interesting because we like to blame. Not blame — I don’t want to use strong words. We sometimes find it easy to blame Google and say, “Oh my God, look what Google is doing to Expedia. Are they killing the online travel agencies?” But I think we’re kind of circling on this idea that sometimes the online travel agencies are not such a great user experience and you’re using them because you have to.

And what the folks at Google would probably argue as well, “We’ve democratized it. We’ve made it easier to book direct. And when they book direct, if people have the option to book direct, if they choose to book direct, that’s not Google’s fault that Expedia needs to pay more to be the sponsor.”

Listen, that’s Expedia’s fault is what they might what they might retort there.

Noticeable Findings From Scraping 20,000 Hotels

Kopit: I think that’s fair. Personally, I think that’s totally fair. So speaking of Prague, Seth and I are in New York. Pranavi, you are in London. I’m curious how Google works differently in markets like Europe and Asia. Did you find anything interesting out about how those regions kind of work differently for Google in your research?

Agarwal: Yeah, so we didn’t just scrape across the U.S. We scraped across Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific. So in total, 20,000 hotels and there are a few differences if you look at just the underlying hotel market in each region. And those differences do explain the kind of variations we’re seeing in the web scraping results. So just kind of firstly, the further East you go, you will find that the hotel supply is less branded.

So that means there are more independent hotels, it’s more fragmented. And generally the higher the share of hotel supply that is held by independent hotels, the greater the reliance on OTAs for bookings. And that’s because the independent hotels are more likely to source their distribution from the OTAs than to get direct. If you compare that to the branded hotels, they have the loyalty programs, the tech budgets, the marketing in order to get those direct bookings.

So you’ll find that the market in Asia, it’s much more reliant on the OTAs than in the U.S. And that’s because the U.S. is much more branded than Asia. So what that means is that the direct site will actually feature a lot less often on Google’s organic search results in the East than in the West. And you’ll see that in the U.S., the direct site was featuring 80% results on the organic search results.

But in the Middle East and Africa, it was only 35% of the time. And just kind of bringing it back to Google prioritizing the direct site, what you’ll see is that even though the direct site might feature less often in the East than in the West, every time the direct site does feature, Google will push it to the top of the organic list nearly 100% of the time.

So really, the underlying region doesn’t even matter. Google will still prioritize the direct site. Another thing that we saw, which I think is quite interesting, is that the further East you go, you’ll find that the online distribution landscape is also more fragmented in the East compared to the West. And you’ll see other OTAs outside of booking Expedia featuring, and that might be local OTAs like Trip.com.

And you’ll see that they have more prominence in the East — this kind of longer tail of smaller OTAs bidding for bookings in Asia and the Middle East. So those areas of the world are really more competitive. And these are the areas where Booking and Expedia aren’t so dominant. They don’t have that stronghold. And that’s really the areas which we look at with interest.

Borko: So let’s kind of sum this up then. It’s such a fascinating look into this ecosystem that we don’t often get a lot of insights into. And we’ve got this interesting data set that lets us kind of examine in ways we couldn’t. What do you think that all of these changes and the rise of this Google ecosystem means? Like what does it mean for Google?

What does it mean for the suppliers in the hotels themselves? What do you see as kind of end game here?

Agarwal: Yeah, I think the relationship between Google and the OTAs — it’s a symbiotic one. It’s a complex one. You could even say it’s a little bit abusive because Google knows that Booking, Expedia can’t stop spending ad dollars on Google. They dare not bite the hand that feeds them. But at the same time, Google is really playing devil’s advocate a little bit.

It’s introducing more fragmentation into the industry, which for Google as a metasearch engine, it’s great because, metasearch thrives on this fragmented industry. But for the big legacy OTAs, Booking and Expedia, this fragmentation is bad because it means more competition. And Booking, Expedia would rather have a more consolidated space, which they lead as a duopoly, rather than seeing all this re-fragmentation in the industry.

So what you’re seeing is that I believe Google’s actions are hurting Booking, Expedia because they’ve introduced more competition. They’re aiding that shift back to direct bookings. But at the same time, Google are still reaping the rewards from the billions of ad dollars still coming in from Booking, Expedia.

So Google is really winning here whilst Booking and Expedia, I think, are kind of losing out on the direct side. The direct side is also winning.

The Verdict Is

Borko: So to answer the question from the jump, is Google killing the OTAs? Your answer is …

Agarwal: I’d say so. We’re pretty bearish on the outlook for Booking, Expedia into the next decade. They saw this kind of golden era in the past decade. But those kind of tailwinds which really drove market share gains — those are really slowing into the next decade.

And I’d really encourage you to read the report, the Past, Present and Future of Online Travel if you’d like to read a little bit more on our view on Booking, Expedia.

Have a confidential tip for Skift? Get in touch

Tags: dwell , google , online travel newsletter , skift podcast , the prompt , the skift travel podcast

Photo credit: Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit and Head of Research Seth Borko are the hosts of the Skift Travel Podcast. Skift

Explore the world, sustainably

We travel to satisfy our curiosity. To discover something new and make connections. Our travel experiences are essential to who we are.

TRAVEL IMPACTS OUR CLIMATE

It’s time to think about how our travel impacts the world around us

Greenhouse gas emissions, sometimes called carbon emissions or CO2e (carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas equivalents), include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and others.

From Nature

From Nature and IEA

CLIMATE-FRIENDLY CHOICES

The way we plan our travel has the power to make a change

COLLECTIVE ACTION

50% of travelers are making more climate-friendly travel choices

From Booking.com

Our travel choices, together with changes in the industry, help build a climate-friendly future

Flying for two hours instead of six saves about 65% emissions per passenger

Emissions are calculated per passenger. So the more passengers a flight has, the smaller each passenger’s share of the flight’s emissions.

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Explore what’s around you. Visit a local museum or park you’ve never been to.

Nearby trips

When planning your next trip, consider traveling shorter distances. Explore a neighboring city, state, or country.

Further away

When visiting somewhere further away, travel direct or go less often to reduce your travel time

Choose how to get there

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Alternatives to flying

When burning fuel, planes produce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas equivalents (CO2e). Flying less, or not at all, means you avoid these emissions. This reduces the impact that your travel has on the environment.

Catch a train or bus

Short-haul flights are especially inefficient. Consider replacing shorter flights with a train or bus ride. Over a similar distance, trains and buses produce less emissions than planes because they burn less fuel. Electric trains or buses that use carbon-free energy sources are especially climate-friendly because they don’t burn fossil fuels.

Take a road trip

Compared to taking a bus, driving causes more emissions per person because a car carries fewer passengers. Even so, driving with passengers is a more climate-friendly travel choice than flying.

4 kg CO2e 4 kg CO 2 e CO2e stands for “carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas equivalents”. CO2e is a unit of measurement for emissions. It bundles together the impact of all applicable greenhouse gases and non-CO2 effects. × Per passenger traveling 100 km

19 kg CO2e 19 kg CO 2 e Per passenger traveling 100 km

25 kg CO2e 25 kg CO 2 e Per passenger traveling 100 km

From Our World in Data

The less fuel a transport mode burns and the more passengers it carries, the lower its environmental impact per passenger

Compare flight options

When traveling further away, it’s not always possible to avoid flying. but, consider which flights you take – some flights pollute less than others..

Choose Economy

Consider fuel efficiency

Contribute to the climate

Compare emissions for flights

Distance flying shorter distances typically burns less fuel, reducing the flight’s emissions ×, stops making fewer stops typically burns less fuel, reducing the flight’s emissions ×, cabin class the less space your seat takes up, the lower “your share” of the flight’s emissions ×.

Emissions are measured in CO2. CO2 stands for carbon dioxide. Emissions values are representative and do not reflect exact itineraries. Learn more about how emissions are estimated

Tree and electricity conversions from: EPA .

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Aircraft features that affect emissions

Aircraft efficiency

Modern planes are more fuel-efficient than older models. Improved fuel-efficiency reduces a flight’s emissions.

Seating density

Seating density varies by plane type and airline. The more seats a plane has, the lower each passenger’s share of the flight’s emissions.

A CLIMATE-FRIENDLY FUTURE

In addition to the choices we make, many travel companies are committing to climate-friendly practices

As train providers invest in new rail infrastructure, expand their routes, or commit to using carbon-free energy, climate-friendly travel becomes easier.

Airlines continue to invest in fuel-efficient aircraft or efficient seating configurations to lower their environmental impact. Some donate to projects that remove carbon dioxide from the air, while others invest in sustainable aviation fuel research.

Travel providers

More and more accommodations and online travel agencies are committing to climate-friendly practices. You can usually find their pledges online.

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CLIMATE-FRIENDLY PLACES TO STAY

SUSTAINABILITY PRACTICES

Sustainability practices & eco certifications

Accommodations identify these practices as opportunities to reduce their environmental impact, energy efficiency.

Water conservation

Waste reduction.

Sustainable sourcing

Recognized eco certifications.

Accommodations can also gain eco certifications. To be recognized as eco-certified on Google, certifications must be verified by independent organizations.

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Google just debuted impressive new travel features. Here’s how they can make you a smarter planner.

The people who brought you the world’s biggest search engine are also working to make your travel planning more efficient. On Wednesday, Google rolled out new travel features that can help you find the best timing for your trips, determine where you should stay and figure out how much it’s really going to cost.

The features are some of many tweaks Google has been making to its travel services for years. In 2011, Google purchased travel-industry software and launched Google Flights. It created the app Google Trips in 2016 but closed the service in August 2019, opting instead to merge travel services with its other products (such as Google Maps) under the Google Travel umbrella .

The new tweaks are even better for avid Google users who already rely on Gmail or Google Maps, because the advice that the site provides improves as the system learns about your search history and preferences. Google now shows users information about upcoming trips (with a focus on things to do when you get there), potential trips (based on flights you’ve been searching), popular destinations in general and your past trips.

“I’d be hard-pressed to point to any [travel] aspect of Google that I wish they did better,” says Scott Keyes, founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights, who has been using the tech giant’s travel services since launching his company in 2015. “Google continues to be the gold standard in any arena that they enter in — flights, hotels, travel included.”

These were the 10 most-Googled travel destinations of 2019

These are the additions, and how they can help you get organized.

Plan the best trip time

You know you want to go to Rome , but you’re not sure when to go to Rome. Google now has a feature for people with flexible dates who want to time their vacation just right. The site now features tabs such as “When to visit” (under Explore) and “What you’ll pay” (under Hotels) to consult. Fill in your desired dates and see the weather forecast, what crowds will be like and how prices vary. The site shows whether prices seem high or typical.

You may be flying to your destination. Keyes thinks that one of the site’s best features is its powerful flight search engine that depicts options from up to seven origins and seven destinations. The tool is great for people who live in between major airports and want to compare different routes. Instead of doing repeat searches, or searching among a sea of tabs, users input their preferences upfront and receive all the information in one place.

“It’ll tell you instantly what is the cheapest fare on any of those 49 routes,” Keyes says. “Not only is it really powerful being able to scroll through a ton of different information at once, but it does so really, really quickly.”

Stay in the right neighborhood, for you

Where you stay can be a game-changer for your experience. Google’s new features treat choosing a hotel in the right location thoughtfully, showing users summaries of a city’s most appealing neighborhoods, including what the area is known for and the average cost of its hotels. Select a location, and Google will narrow down your options to a highlighted neighborhood.

Google will also show you hotels similar to places you’ve stayed before. If you loved a boutique hotel in San Francisco, Google will remember that and show you something similar. It’ll also keep in mind your search history in a given destination.

“For example, if you’ve been researching Tokyo Tower, we’ll highlight how far it is from hotels nearby,” Google explains .

Keyes appreciates the holistic nature of Google integrating all of your profiles to provide new information for travelers.

“They do such a good job of integrating so many different aspects of the things that you’re looking for in travel,” he says. Say you’ve "been poring through Google Maps and see some place and save it. And then next time I want to go to Hawaii, I’ll look and say, ‘Oh, there are these six places that I wanted to go to all around Waimea. So, I should maybe be looking at getting a hotel around there.’”

A local’s guide to Honolulu

People who think the personalized results are too invasive: They can be disabled in account settings.

Know the real cost

One of the most frustrating parts of booking hotels online is seeing one price at the beginning of your research, and ending up with a higher one by the end. Google wants to combat that issue by giving users the opportunity to see the total cost of their whole stay, including taxes and fees, so there are no surprises.

The battle against resort fees is on. Who will win the war, hotels or guests?

You can now toggle between seeing the hotel’s nightly price without the taxes and fees, the nightly total that includes all of the costs, and the stay total that will tally up everything.

Stay one step ahead with trending destinations

As a bonus, Google’s debut of its new travel features also predicted trending destinations for 2020, based on the company’s search data from December 2019. Apparently, travelers are most interested in visiting Danang, Vietnam; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Seoul ; Tokyo; Tel Aviv ; Marseille, France ; Vienna ; Bangkok ; Dubai ; and Perth, Australia.

Follow By The Way on Instagram for city highlights, travel tips and more

JetBlue plans to go completely carbon neutral on all U.S. flights

Map out your visits to national parks around their free-entry days

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Trump Has Been Convicted. Here’s What Happens Next.

Donald J. Trump has promised to appeal, but he may face limits on his ability to travel and to vote as he campaigns for the White House.

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By Jesse McKinley and Maggie Astor

• May 30, 2024

The conviction of former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday is just the latest step in his legal odyssey in New York’s court system. The judge, Juan M. Merchan, set Mr. Trump’s sentencing for July 11, at which point he could be sentenced to as much as four years behind bars, or to probation.

It won’t stop him from running for president, though: There is no legal prohibition on felons doing that . No constitutional provision would stop him even from serving as president from a prison cell, though in practice that would trigger a crisis that courts would almost certainly have to resolve.

His ability to vote — for himself, presumably — depends on whether he is sentenced to prison. Florida, where he is registered, requires felons convicted there to complete their full sentence, including parole or probation, before regaining voting rights. But when Floridians are convicted in another state, Florida defers to the laws of that state, and New York disenfranchises felons only while they are in prison.

The Trump Manhattan Criminal Verdict, Count By Count

Former President Donald J. Trump faced 34 felony charges of falsifying business records, related to the reimbursement of hush money paid to the porn star Stormy Daniels in order to cover up a sex scandal around the 2016 presidential election.

“Because Florida recognizes voting rights restoration in the state of conviction, and because New York’s law states that those with a felony conviction do not lose their right to vote unless they are incarcerated during the election, then Trump will not lose his right to vote in this case unless he is in prison on Election Day,” said Blair Bowie, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit watchdog group.

Mr. Trump will almost certainly appeal his conviction, after months of criticizing the case and attacking the Manhattan district attorney, who brought it, and Justice Merchan, who presided over his trial.

Long before that appeal is heard, however, Mr. Trump will be enmeshed in the gears of the criminal justice system.

A pre-sentencing report makes recommendations based on the defendant’s criminal record — Mr. Trump had none before this case — as well as his personal history and the crime itself. The former president was found guilty of falsifying business records in relation to a $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who says she had a brief sexual tryst with Mr. Trump in 2006, in order to buy her silence.

At the pre-sentence interview, a psychologist or social worker working for the probation department may also talk to Mr. Trump, during which time the defendant can “try to make a good impression and explain why he or she deserves a lighter punishment,” according to the New York State Unified Court System.

The pre-sentencing report can also include submissions from the defense, and may describe whether “the defendant is in a counseling program or has a steady job.”

In Mr. Trump’s case, of course, he is applying — as it were — for a steady job as president of the United States, a campaign that may be complicated by his new status as a felon. Mr. Trump will likely be required to regularly report to a probation officer, and rules on travel could be imposed.

Mr. Trump was convicted of 34 Class E felonies, New York’s lowest level , each of which carry a potential penalty of up to four years in prison. Probation or home confinement are other possibilities that Justice Merchan can consider.

That said, Justice Merchan has indicated in the past that he takes white-collar crime seriously . If he did impose prison time, he would likely impose the punishment concurrently, meaning that Mr. Trump would serve time on each of the counts he was convicted of simultaneously.

If Mr. Trump were instead sentenced to probation, he could still be jailed if he were later found to have committed additional crimes. Mr. Trump, 77, currently faces three other criminal cases: two federal, dealing with his handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election , and a state case in Georgia that concerns election interference.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers can file a notice of appeal after sentencing, scheduled for July 11 at 10 a.m. And the judge could stay any punishment during an appeal, something that could delay punishment beyond Election Day.

The proceedings will continue even if he wins: Because it’s a state case, not federal, Mr. Trump would have no power as president to pardon himself .

Jesse McKinley is a Times reporter covering upstate New York, courts and politics. More about Jesse McKinley

Maggie Astor covers politics for The New York Times, focusing on breaking news, policies, campaigns and how underrepresented or marginalized groups are affected by political systems. More about Maggie Astor

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

Guilty Verdict : Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 counts  of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his bid for the White House in 2016, making him the first American president to be declared a felon .

What Happens Next: Trump’s sentencing hearing on July 11 will trigger a long and winding appeals process , though he has few ways to overturn the decision .

Reactions: Trump’s conviction reverberated quickly across the country  and around the world . Here’s what voters , New Yorkers , Republicans , Trump supporters  and President Biden  had to say.

The Presidential Race : The political fallout of Trump’s conviction is far from certain , but the verdict will test America’s traditions, legal institutions and ability to hold an election under historic partisan tension .

Making the Case: Over six weeks and the testimony of 20 witnesses, the Manhattan district attorney’s office wove a sprawling story  of election interference and falsified business records.

Legal Luck Runs Out: The four criminal cases that threatened Trump’s freedom had been stumbling along, pleasing his advisers. Then his good fortune expired .

Watch CBS News

Trump guilty in "hush money" trial as jury hands down verdict on felony charges

• https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-trial-verdict-jury/ link copied

By Graham Kates , Katrina Kaufman , Olivia Rinaldi

Updated on: May 31, 2024 / 9:26 AM EDT / CBS News

Former President Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies by the jury in his "hush money" trial in New York on Thursday, making him the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime.

The jury, composed of 12 Manhattan residents, found that Trump illegally falsified business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. They found him guilty on all counts on their second day of deliberations .

The presumptive Republican nominee for president is now also a convicted felon, a label that will reverberate across the electorate in the months between now and Election Day in November.

Trump spoke  about the verdict at Trump Tower in New York on Friday, calling the trial "very unfair," a "scam" and "rigged."

The verdict was handed down in the same Manhattan courtroom where Trump has been on trial for the past six weeks. Trump stared at each juror as they confirmed their vote to convict and angrily denounced the decision in the hallway outside the courtroom, vowing to fight the conviction.

Jurors sided with prosecutors who said that Trump authorized the plan to falsify checks and related records in an effort to prevent voters from learning of an alleged sexual encounter with Daniels. Prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office said the conspiracy spanned his 2016 campaign and continued well into his first year in the White House. Trump denied having sex with Daniels and pleaded not guilty.

Justice Juan Merchan set a sentencing date of July 11, just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention, where Trump will be formally nominated as the party's standard-bearer. He  could face up to four years in prison and a $5,000 fine for each count, but Merchan has broad discretion when imposing a sentence, and could limit the punishment to a fine, probation, home confinement or other options.

The jury asked to review several portions of testimony and the judge's instructions Thursday morning before they deliberated behind closed doors for several hours. Here's how the historic day at the courthouse unfolded, from the time the jurors alerted the court that they had reached a verdict:

What is Trump charged with?

Trump is charged with 34 counts of falsification of business records in the first degree, which is a felony in New York state.

Each charge corresponds to a document that was created to pay Michael Cohen $35,000 a month in 2017: the checks themselves, the invoices Cohen sent to get reimbursed and the vouchers the Trump Organization used to record the payment. 

Prosecutors say those checks were meant to reimburse Cohen for the $130,000 "hush money" payment that he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 in exchange for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter she said she had with Trump years earlier. Trump's defense said the payments to Cohen were to pay for his legal services. 

Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts and denied all wrongdoing.

• https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-trial-verdict-jury/#post-update-c52bac7c link copied

Jurors tell judge they have reached a verdict

In a note to the judge at 4:20 p.m., the jurors said they had reached a verdict, and asked for 30 minutes to fill out the verdict form.

• https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/trump-trial-verdict-jury/#post-update-9d18c044 link copied

Verdict came as judge was prepared to send jurors home

Just before 4:15 p.m., Merchan, the judge, said in court that he was prepared to dismiss the jurors for the day at 4:30, and have them reconvene for a third day of deliberations on Friday. Then, minutes later, he said jurors had sent a note, saying they had reached a verdict.

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What happens if Trump is convicted?

When the judge found on May 6 that Trump had violated his gag order for a 10th time, he told him that "the last thing I want to do is to put you in jail."

"You are the former president of the United States and possibly the next president , as well," said Justice Juan Merchan, reflecting on the momentous weight of such a decision.

Whether to jail the Republican Party's presumptive nominee for president is a choice that Merchan may soon face again, if jurors in Trump's "hush money" case have voted to convict him . 

What exactly would happen if the jury finds Trump guilty is difficult to predict. Trump is being tried in New York state court, where judges have broad authority to determine when sentences are handed down after convictions and what exactly they will be, according to former Manhattan prosecutor Duncan Levin. That differs from federal court, where there's typically a waiting period between a conviction and sentencing. 

"It's much more informally done in state court. I've had cases where the jury comes back and says, 'guilty,' and the judge thanks the jury, and excuses them, and says, 'Let's sentence the defendant right now," said Levin. "Obviously, everything's a little different about this case than the typical case."

Read the full story here .

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Jury enters courtroom to read verdict

Merchan is sitting with his hand over his mouth, leaning with one arm on the judges table and looking straight ahead into the courtroom. He asked court officers to bring in the jury.

"Are we ready to bring out the jury?" he asked.

No jurors appeared to look at Trump as they entered.

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"Guilty, guilty, guilty": Trump convicted on all counts

In a process that took just minutes, the foreperson of the jury said the jurors had reached consensus on a verdict. 

One by one, the foreperson read through the verdict for each count, prompted by the court clerk: "Guilty. Guilty. Guilty." 

Each juror was asked individually if they agreed with the verdict. Trump stared directly at each one as they confirmed their decision.

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Judge thanks jurors for their service in "very stressful" case

After the jury was read in court, Merchan thanked the jurors for their service, noting that the court started the jury selection process on April 15.

"That's a long time to be away from your jobs, your families, your responsibilities, but not only that — you were engaged in a very stressful … task," he said. "I admire how involved you were, how engaged you were throughout this task."

He told them they're free to speak about their service, but aren't required to.

"No one can make you do anything that you don't want to do. The choice is yours," he said.

Merchan asked to meet with them in the jury room to thank them personally. He said he is not allowed to discuss the case or facts, but would also like feedback about what was done right and wrong. 

"At this time, I thank you for your service, you're excused," he said.

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Trump slams jury's decision as a "disgrace," vows to fight verdict

Trump spoke to reporters in the hallway outside the courtroom, reacting angrily to the jury's unanimous verdict and railing against the judge. 

"This was a disgrace. This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt," Trump said, reiterating the criticism he has leveled at the court since the trial began.

The presumptive GOP nominee said the case is "far from over."

"The real verdict is going to be Nov. 5 by the people, and they know what happened here and everybody knows what happened here," Trump said. "We'll fight to the end."

Read more here .

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Judge sets Trump sentencing for July 11

Before adjourning the court, Trump's lead attorney Todd Blanche said the defense would prefer a sentencing date of mid to late July.

Merchan set the sentencing date for July 11 at 10 a.m. He asked the defense to submit any motions no later than June 13, and said prosecutors must respond by June 27. 

Merchan then said the parties were excused. Trump grabbed his son Eric's hand as he exited the courtroom. 

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Can Trump still become president after his felony conviction?

Trump's conviction does not disqualify him from becoming president again if he wins at the ballot box in November.

The Constitution imposes very few prerequisites for the presidency — a candidate must be at least 35 years of age, natural-born citizens and a U.S. resident for a minimum of 14 years. It says nothing about the impact of a felony conviction on a president's ability to serve. 

"The short answer is yes, that there's no constitutional bar," said Corey Brettschneider, a lawyer and professor of political science at Brown University and author of "The Presidents and the People." "The Constitution lays out some specific requirements of what's required … but there's nothing explicitly in the Constitution about being convicted of a crime as a disqualification." 

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How Trump's conviction could impact the 2024 presidential race

Trump's conviction adds another layer of uncertainty to an already unprecedented presidential campaign.

As a convicted felon, Trump is not prevented from continuing to campaign for president , since the Constitution does not prohibit candidates from running for president even if they are convicted of a crime. In fact, there is precedent for a candidate running from behind bars: In 1920, Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs ran for president from a federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

Trump is the first former U.S. president to be found guilty of felonies, and the first major party candidate to run for office after being found guilty of a crime. The conviction could affect how Trump campaigns from now until November, depending on the appeals process and what kind of sentence he receives. Politically, the public's view of the trial largely split along party lines in recent polling, but the guilty verdict gives the Biden campaign a potentially potent new weapon in their arsenal.

Read more here about how the conviction could change the race for the White House.

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Can a president pardon himself?

The first-ever felony conviction of a former president — and one who is again running for the office — has raised legal questions about whether a president may pardon himself. (The hypothetical doesn't apply in this case, since the charges are on the state level. But Trump also faces two outstanding federal cases.)

"The big unanswered question is whether the president might be able to pardon himself," Jeffrey Crouch, an assistant professor of American politics at American University and an expert on executive clemency. "No president has ever tried it, so we don't know what the result would be if it was attempted."

The Constitution gives the president broad power to pardon federal crimes, except in cases involving impeachment. The president also can't pardon state offenses, like the charges in New York. Apart from that, in explicit terms, the Constitution is quiet. And history and precedent don't offer significant insight, says Harvard constitutional scholar Mark Tushnet. 

"The arguments about whether a president can pardon himself are not only unsettled in the sense that they haven't come up before, but they're also unsettled in the sense that reasonable lawyers could look at the materials and say either result is legally defensible," Tushnet said. 

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White House spokesman issues brief statement: "We respect the rule of law"

Ian Sams, a spokesperson in the White House Counsel's Office, issued a brief statement in response to the verdict: "We respect the rule of law, and have no additional comment."

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Court releases verdict sheet showing decision on all charges

The court published the sheet that the foreperson of the jury filled out detailing the verdict. Each page includes the signature of prosecutor Joshua Steinglass and defense attorney Emil Bove:

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Congressional Republicans stick by Trump, call his conviction a "travesty of justice"

Republicans derided the verdict in Trump's New York "hush money" criminal trial, sticking by their presumptive nominee for president and claiming bias by the judge — and the jury — against the former president as he was found guilty on all 34 felony counts.

"Today is a shameful day in American history," Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement. "This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one."

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Bragg won't say whether he'll seek prison sentence for Trump

Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg said at a news conference Thursday evening that the only voice that mattered in this case was that of the jury, which he praised as "careful and attentive" in its consideration of the case against the former president. 

Bragg declined to say whether he'd recommend a sentence for Trump. Sentencing is July 11, he noted, saying the D.A.'s office would speak in court and through its court filings.

"While this defendant may be unlike any other in American history, we arrived at this trial and ultimately today at this verdict in the same manner as every other case that comes through the courtroom doors," Bragg said.

Responding to criticism from Trump's supporters, Bragg said the "only voice that matters is the voice of the jury, and the jury has spoken." 

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Biden campaign warns Trump can still become president, "convicted felon or not"

The Biden campaign warned that former Trump's conviction doesn't prevent him from winning another term in the White House from a legal standpoint . 

"There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president," the campaign's communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement.

Tyler said the verdict shows "no one is above the law," but it also "does not change the fact that the American people face a simple reality." 

"The threat Trump poses to our democracy has never been greater. He is running an increasingly unhinged campaign of revenge and retribution, pledging to be a dictator 'on day one' and calling for our Constitution to be 'terminated' so he can regain and keep power," the statement said. "A second Trump term means chaos, ripping away Americans' freedoms and fomenting political violence — and the American people will reject it this November."

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Trump campaign says fundraising site was overwhelmed by response after conviction

Trump was quick to seize on his conviction for fundraising purposes, sending a text that read, "I was just convicted in a rigged trial! I am a political prisoner!" But soon afterward, the link to donate was no longer working. Trump campaign senior adviser Brian Hughes confirmed that the campaign's fundraising system had been almost immediately overwhelmed by the response.

"From just minutes after the verdict, the digital fundraising system has been hit with record numbers of supporters," Hughes said in a statement. "The traffic is so large that it is causing intermittent delays." 

He added that the campaign was "grateful for this massive outpouring of support because it shows that Americans have seen this sham trial as the political election interference that Biden and Democrats have always intended."

The former president was convicted in New York in a state case without federal involvement. 

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Graham Kates is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice, privacy issues and information security for CBS News Digital. Contact Graham at [email protected] or [email protected]