Win Customers by Offering the Best Booking Experience

For most consumers, shopping around online for the best offer and price when booking travel has become the norm. With customers so focused on offering, and with attention spans increasingly short, it’s important that as a travel company you have both a competitive offering and a seamless booking experience.

In order to offer the best user experience and win online bookings, you need to keep abreast of current and future trends in booking preferences and habits.

What trends are currently impacting travel bookings?

Commoditization of Travel Services

Building and maintaining a loyal customer base can be very difficult for travel companies selling in an online environment. Consumers have quick and easy access to search around for the best deals leaving them easily swayed to using other providers. This is putting immense pressure on travel companies to squeeze margins in order to compete on price.

Phocuswright recently reported in their European Online Travel Review Eleventh Edition that the percentage of travel industry revenue generated from online is growing for Europe and that by 2017 it’s predicted online sales will generate over 50% of travel industry revenue in the region.

This is likely to mean travel companies face increasing commoditization of their services and must build out their online offering to ensure they can compete both on price and booking experience in order to keep winning customers.

Growing Popularity of Early Bookings

Travelers are no longer waiting until the last minute to bag a bargain vacation and are increasingly seeking to lock-in plans by booking in advance. Travel Weekly highlighted this trend in their Insight Annual Report 2015 where they observed that while Summer 2015 bookings were up, the Summer 2014 bookings were higher earlier in the year and then dropped compared to 2014 in later months.

Travel companies often now offer deals in January and February to attract early bookers. As this trend evolves, travel companies must assess the way that their business operates to make sure business models are maximised to cater for this trend without impacting cash flow.

Competition from Direct Bookings with Suppliers

There’s long been a ‘war’ between suppliers and intermediaries to secure bookings and at the moment it appears that the traveller is coming out on top.

Hotels are continuously launching campaigns to encourage direct bookings from travelers, presenting them with benefits for booking directly such as lower prices, choice of rooms, free wifi and loyalty perks.

Travel companies must up their offering in order to build customer loyalty and prove that they offer the traveller added value that booking directly with a hotel or other supplier cannot provide.

Metasearch No Longer Just an Ally

Traditionally metasearch websites have been purely a search and price comparison tool to drive orders for travel companies and suppliers who typically compensate the metasearch website on per click or per order generated basis. However there are signs that some metasearch website are now looking to evolve so that travelers can book directly with them.

Where the travel company is still the merchant of record and responsible for looking after any queries etc this leaves an area of confusion for the traveler as it is not always clear that the booking is not with the metasearch company. In some cases metasearch websites are forming relationships with the suppliers and taking bookings directly, therefore competing with former travel company partners.

Travel companies must revisit their websites and ensure that they employ the technologies necessary to win travellers when faced with this increased competition, as well as ensuring supplier relationships are maintained in order to secure competitive offerings against metasearch website.

Building a Winning Booking Experience

The travel market is a highly competitive environment to operate in and travelers are in control and often after the best deal. If you want to continue to win customer bookings in a marketplace where services are increasingly seen as commodities you must be in a position to win bookings.

Choosing the right supplier payment strategy can help you to manage this by supporting competitive price and service models, as well as helping you optimise cash flow to meet both the booking patterns of customers and supplier payment terms.

Download our mini-whitepaper ‘Win Customers By Offering The Best Booking Experience’ for detailed insight into the key trends influencing traveler booking choices and for tips on choosing a supplier payment strategy that helps you concentrate on winning bookings.

More Ways to Win Customers by Enhancing Supplier Payments

As a leading supplier of payment solutions to the travel industry, our experts have put together a whitepaper that summarizes the key trends shaping the industry today—and details how you can capitalize on these trends to evolve and win customers.

With a focus on the European marketplace, topics covered include:

• Factors influencing destination choices
• Popularity of low deposit offers
• Continued success and growth of low cost carriers
• DIY trip planning vs concierge-style agency services
• Changing accommodation preferences

Our the whitepaper 4 Ways To Win Customers By Enhancing Supplier Payments explores these key trends shaping the travel industry today and gives easy to follow tips for enhancing supplier payments to win and keep customers.