The digital revolution has democratised the way consumers shop for travel, transforming it from a seller’s to a buyer’s market, with 42 per cent of holidaymakers using review websites to plan holidays. This means travel businesses need to undergo their own transformation from a product-centric to a consumer-centric model.
Deloitte has put together its 2015
Travel Consumer report, after working with the British Travel Awards to survey more than 40,000 respondents about their travel activities.
An increasing number of tools allow consumers to search and compare thousands of flights and hotels in an instant, for example, Deloitte’s research shows that 59 per cent of holidaymakers say they compare prices online. The popularity of these sites and apps is expected to increase, with the comparison site market forecast to expand by a compound annual growth rate of more than 40 per cent between 2014 and 2017.
Review websites are used by 42 per cent of holidaymakers and these sites are becoming more important – with 59 per cent of consumers saying these sites have the most influence on their booking decisions.
Consumer power and influence continues to grow as they move from simply consuming content to creating it by writing reviews. Deloitte data shows that a third of consumers have posted a travel-related review on a review website and 16 per cent have posted or discussed holiday experiences on social media.
Deloitte's study also found that a third of holidaymakers used two or more devices when researching their most recent holiday, however only 17 per cent of vacationers who carried out research on their smartphone also used the device to book. This shows travel businesses need to adapt to the fragmentation of the digital channel.
Tracking consumer activity across devices and within mobile apps continues to be a challenge for businesses. A consumer that abandons an online basket in their tablet app and then books using their laptop can appear as two separate consumers and this has a negative impact on sales conversion rates.
Roughly 81 per cent of travel business shopping baskets are abandoned, according to Deloitte, compared to 68 per cent across other types of online retail.
This digital device fragmentation has also made it difficult for businesses to identify and learn about their consumers and as a result, businesses could be less able to understand and meet consumer expectations.
Deloitte suggests a number of adaptations that travel businesses need to undergo in order to keep pace with the digital revolution:
• Consider the consumer perspective in every business decision
• Offer a more personal user experience to differentiate and encourage consumers to look beyond metrics
• Create a recommendation culture. Word-of-mouth marketing is comparatively low cost and self-perpetuating.
• Introduce an integrated experience across channels and devices
• Offer incentives to encourage users to sign in on every platform to track consumer activity across devices and within apps. The act of signing in needs to offer benefits at every stage and not just at the point of transaction.
