Win Customers By Offering The Right Destination Choices

Travelers are more in control than ever before and know where they want to travel to. In today’s 24/7 connected world, your customers have online access to all the information they need to plan a trip and choose a destination. It also makes it easy to shop around to find deals on the destination desired at the best price to suit their individual requirements.

As a travel company, it is imperative that you offer your customers the destinations that they are looking for with competitive offers. Staying on top of the latest trends influencing traveler choices is important to this, you also need to ensure your business is equipped to adapt quickly to changes.

What are the key travel trends currently influencing traveler destination choices?

Improved Economic Outlook

Consumer spending on travel fell dramatically following the 2008 financial crisis and has never reached pre-recession levels. However, according to the Travel Weekly Insight Annual Report 2015, in summer of 2015 overseas holiday departure levels finally came to within 3-4% of pre-2008 levels.

This suggests that confidence is returning to the market with economically better off travelers once again becoming more comfortable in spending on travel. This will likely also influence travelers to become more adventurous in choosing where to travel to.

Seeking ‘Safe’ Destinations

While travelers may be becoming better off economically, confidence in choosing destinations has been impacted over recent months by continued geopolitical uncertainties, terrorist attacks and migrant crises.

Travelers are increasingly looking for ‘safer’ destinations and are avoiding once popular resorts such as Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia which were previously popular with UK tourists in particular. Meanwhile, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and the US have all increased in popularity amongst travellers. ABTA has warned travelers to book early with summer bookings for 2016 to many of these destinations as bookings have substantially increased when compared to summer 2015.

Travel companies must act fast and have the agility as a business to adjust their offering to focus on providing customers with access to the destinations that they feel comfortable visiting.

Seeking Adventure Further Afield

Amidst the desire for ‘safe’ destinations, a trend towards long-haul travel is also emerging. The ITB World Travel Trends Report for 2015/2016 showed that worldwide long-haul travel accounted for 17% of the total world travel market in 2014 and 29% of spend. The UK and Germany are among the top source markets for long-haul travel. The trend is also reflected in business travel with increased call for flights to emerging markets in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

Travel companies need to fulfill customer demands for more exotic destinations further afield.

Adapting To Changing Destination Choices

The travel market is changing rapidly and travelers are in control. If you want to continue to win customers you need to make sure that your business is offering the right choice of destinations.

In today’s world where travelers are acutely concerned with safety, you need to have the agility to change the destinations that you offer at a moment’s notice to react to world events.

Choosing the right supplier payment strategy can help you to manage this giving the flexibility to quickly pay suppliers in any currency without contracting or acceptance issues and avoiding high costs for international payments. The right strategy should also allow you to streamline accounts payable processes and to free up resources so you can stay on top of the latest trends.

Download our mini-whitepaper ‘Win Customers By Offering The Right Destinations’ for detailed insight into the key trends influencing destination choices and for tips on choosing a supplier payment strategy that caters to changing tastes.

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
• Commoditization of travel services
• Popularity of early booking and low deposit offers
• Competition between metasearch, intermediaries and suppliers
• 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. Download the whitepaper now.