“You have one chance to make an impression online”
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Travel companies only have one shot to make an impression when customers are searching for holidays, and it appears some are just not creative enough.
This was the feeling I got from listening to speakers at the ITB Summit yesterday, where marketers and technology companies spread fear of the internet once again.
Using its own data, GFK Group CEO Matthias Hartmann said companies risk losing bookings if they do not make the right impression at once, especially as customers make various touch points with different brands during the search process.
His comments were echoed by Ralph Poser, managing director strategy at Kolle Rebbe, who added that customers have so much information that standing out becomes even more important.
“There are huge problems as there are lots of contract opportunities for customers and it means that it is harder to grab their attention,” Poser explained. “The industry needs to get out of howling at customers and instead need to differentiate through brand promise and a strong creative idea.”
Hartmann said travel agencies and brochures still play an important role in searching for holidays but in the search process it is important to be ‘discoverable’ amongst various platforms.
He identified two target groups of online searchers, 49% of which fall into the ‘fast bookers’ and the other 51% as ‘intensive researchers’.
Fast bookers are more likely to be female and book hotels and package travel more often than others. They are more likely to be aged under 30 and live in households of more than two people.
In comparison the intensive researchers are typically slightly older and male and will book flights more often.
Interestingly the groups also appeared to book different destinations, suggesting roles and behaviour when searching and booking different types of holidays.
The female fast bookers tended to book more domestic or short-haul breaks, while the male intensive researchers went outside of Europe.
Online travel agencies and aggregators are said to dominate the holiday search arena, taking the most traffic during the search phase.
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