It’s no great surprise that innovation and digital transformation in the travel industry is moving at a rapid rate. The growth of consumers demanding a more seamless booking process, from both aggregators and brands direct has led to a distinct grouping of companies.
• Those that are still playing catch-up
• Those that have embraced change and are adopting new policies
• Those that have gone beyond the embrace and are innovating
The journey and the experience
Many travel companies, both large and small, are realising that the journey of a thousand miles, starts with the first step. The days of sitting with an experienced advisor face to face may still be an option for many and one where many purchasers still see massive value.
Those taking a more independent approach to researching and booking their travel arrangements – mainly online, require an equally engaging experience before parting with their hard earned cash.
We communicate differently but want the same thing
Here are 4 different approaches:
• I’ve made the decision, this is where we are going this summer.
• I have fabulous ideas of where we could go; let me tell and show you all the different places we could visit.
• Where does everyone fancy going this year? Let’s discuss what everyone wants to do.
• I need to research all the different holiday options. Once I’ve done that I’ll take you through the options so that we can make the best decision about where to go this year.
Last year Google identified micro-moments. These are the touch-points consumers take to research, engage and buy. The graph below shows 4 of these micro-moments.
Customers will approach their booking differently and use various offline and online channels that will eventually take them to their booking.
How can those running travel business or marketing those companies better understand this journey and deploy important messaging for each touchpoint in the journey?
Analytics – If you can measure it, you can manage it
The travel industry is awash with some very specific analytics tools. Some of these tools are excellent in understanding and segmenting various data sets into understandable information.
An easy win for many travel companies is the use of Google Analytics. A good start point for looking at how to measure those micro-moments more accurately and more importantly, understand to how best to deliver the right content, at the right time.
One of the best ways of achieving this is to take a step back and audit your current analytics set-up. Most analytics integrations have not been checked in years and they can hide a whole multitude of sins.
• Is your tracking code in the correct place in source code?
• Is your Mobile site being tracked?
• Is tracking code duplicated on any page?
• Are you tracking 404 pages?
• Is internal traffic skewing your numbers?
• Are you tracking self-referrals?
• Is cross domain tracking set up correctly?
• Are you using attribution modelling?
• Are your advanced segments set up to help analyse device data trends?
• Have your goal settings changed alongside any website changes?
• Etc.
In short, if you want to grow your business, first understand the consumer. By analysing behaviour, trends and touchpoints, this can help you send the right messaging across the purchase path.