Compete and Google recently released a joint study on the consumer outlook and trends for summer online travel bookings. Despite the recession, things are still looking up for online travel. While we’re no longer seeing the 30+% growth rates of 2008, bookings recovered significantly after a bad Q4, with a 17% year-over-year growth in March. In fact, March achieved more online travel bookings than any other month in history. This trend is expected to continue throughout the summer booking season, with only 14% of consumers stating that they plan to cut back on travel this year.
A few of the other highlights from this study:
- Not surprisingly, the amount of money spent on travel is the area where consumers expect the economy to have the biggest effect. Runner-ups are the number of trips taken, duration of trips, and the amount of time spent shopping for deals or promos.
- Consumers are frequently traveling to destinations closer to home (27%) and destinations that they’ve previously been to, either in the past year (45%) or more than a year ago (50%). Unfortunately the study did not provide a year-over-year comparison for this data, so we can’t determine how the answers may have changed during the recession.
- Like virtually every other online travel study has found, the Internet continues to be a key component for travel research and booking. 46% of respondents rely on the Internet for travel more than in the past.
- One of the most common recession beliefs of online marketers is that consumers are taking more time to research their purchases than in the past. Interestingly, the Compete study didn’t show much of a difference. In 2009 will spend 2.6 weeks researching prior to booking summer travel (compared to 2.5 weeks in 2008), and the time between booking date and travel date has decreased from 15.8 weeks to 15.5 weeks. This isn’t nearly as great as an effect as I would have expected.
- The most appealing deals are discounts for advance purchase, free “extras” or “add ons,” and free nights for multi-night trips. The least appealing are credits toward future purchases, discounts for bundle packages, and gift cards to partners or affiliates.
While nothing in this study is truly groundbreaking, it does provide some interesting insights regarding the effects of the recession on summer travel. The key takeaways are that consumers are still booking vacations but are more price-conscious, and promotions are crucial. Consumers especially respond to special rates that reward them for booking early, as well as promotions that add value to their travel for the same cost, such as free breakfast or tickets to attractions. Now more than ever it is imperative that travel marketers be creative in the value that they are providing to consumers.
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