Travel industry is moving from a transaction fulfilment model to platforms, systems, content and technology that cover the whole spectrum of the travel. This is to incorporate recommendation and discovery into the consumer experience as much as transactions. Consumer questions have changed from closed end ones- “How much for a ticket?” to open ones “Where should I travel next?” Customer travel search patterns are becoming more volatile and it is becoming increasingly important looking out for that potential buyer long before he or she is ready to demonstrate commitment through purchase.
This also means that consumers are now open to ideas, recommendations and hence may not always begin with response in the head ‘where to go’, An ‘open research’ platforms would be more relevant – to start the online travel process from a search box based around something other than selecting a date and destination (the traditional online travel agent starting point). A lot of airlines and other travel suppliers plus intermediaries are spending serious time and money trying to make their websites more appealing to the undecided holiday maker. Also, trying to carve out a meaningful role for them by being the destination site to influence the ‘undecideds’ – those leisure travellers to yet to commit to a destination. These companies are offering innovative tools and solutions such as:
- Drag, click, build and recommend from as many sites as you like: apps to build up a trip idea, notion, inspiration and plan without actually having an engine at all. By just dragging ideas from a site to a planning product.
- Multi-click criteria selection: Instead of clicking on a destination these sites are getting consumers to start the inspiration to travel from different starting points such as date, experience ranking, price, images etc.
- Organisation and history first: Sites start with the bookings already made by travellers providing travellers a service for collating and storing all the bookings made on various sites e.g. Tripit tool.
- No search – just a push: Just a limited list of deals targeted at a select user group.
International Travel portals have already started leveraging it and there are two interesting different routes being adopted for example below:
Conclusion
‘Inspiration’ in connection with travel may be suitably leveraged by Domestic Online travel agencies for improving their proposition, product experience and retaining customers.