During the second part of this series, I will focus more the behaviours of prospective vacation goers. Google’s presentation provides excellent insight into what the important factors are when planning leisure travel and what is nudging them to press the “confirm booking” button this year.
Where are Consumers getting their information from?
Not surprisingly the Internet has become the top go-to place for information for prospective holiday maker. Google drills this stat down further and then asks which genre of sites will you use for summer travel planning?
As we can see the “Internet” here though goes far beyond search with hotel websites being the top resource to use for summer travel planning. Looking at the range of resources which consumers use, we can deduce that it is critical for any travel industry business to successfully engage in the full spectrum of the online product mix so as to target prospective consumers no matter where they look on the internet. This graph however does give a good indication as to where travel businesses should put the majority of their focus.
The Importance of Search
More customers are turning to search for a variety of travel related information.
As Google notes, consumers expect to use search more this summer than last year across all points of the travel consideration process therefore no matter what your business is, if you’re in the travel industry, you need to maximize your SEO. Indeed, in Google’s research they discovered that 4.8% of all search referrals to travel retail websites resulted in an immediate booking so attention must be paid to effective conversion.
Inside the Consumer Mindset
When asking what the main considerations are for consumers when planning leisure travel this summer naturally, price remains King.
What I find surprising is how unimportant consumers found “Reviews by people like me”. Sites like Trip Advisor are built on a variety of customer reviews and we’re seeing more consumer evaluations in travel sites such as Expedia and Lastminute.com. Still, this lack of importance supports the findings in graph 2 which found that only 18% of consumers surveyed would use independent travel review sites. Just looking at this list, travel businesses should focus on maximizing the areas which they can affect. Clearly, there’s nothing you can do about the weather of a destination, or its social and economic climate. But you sure can offer competitive prices, complimentary extras, consumer friendly cancellation policies and attractive promotions to wet the appetites of your prospective holiday makers. And speaking of promotions…
It seems holiday consumers are happy to plan their vacations in advance and for their prompt planning they would enjoy a discount towards their holiday more so than anything else. Via online marketing we suggest utilizing the valuable results from this graph and promote the deals which your customers want. Offer discounts for advance purchase via Facebook and Twitter, that way you know you’ll have the bookings to see you through the tougher seasons. Send extras deals via targeted email campaigns and offer free nights via your hotel websites – this clearly is what your customers want!
No doubt the web is becoming an increasingly important area to promote travel related industries. These surveys should provide insight into what areas your online marketing campaign should be targeting and what offers are attracting your customers. Our advice, go and make use of these results and be prepared to reap the benefits!
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