The Travel Industry Wishlist

We have come a long way and achieved a lot in travel and yet we have a lot left to accomplish. The travel industry is always criticized for being slow in growth compared to other industries and there are many reasons for that, from monopoly to lack of standards to closed source technologies and frameworks. Despite these drawbacks, the travel industry has picked momentum and is on an uphill climb.

Let’s see what the current travel industry wishlist is and what efforts are being taken to fulfill it.

What are companies investing most in?
According to EyeForTravel, about 38.7% of the investments travel companies make go directly in marketing, about 11.8% in innovation, 9.2% in CIO/CTO/CMO, 9% in revenue, 6.7% in sales, 4.2% in Infrastructure/IT, 2.5% in data management and about 17.6% in other areas.

Which areas of digital marketing are companies investing most in?

• About 79% of all the companies are investing in mobile.
• Roughly 58.8% companies are investing in content and digital marketing (that comprises of content marketing, SEO, SEM, Social advertising and Email marketing).
• About 35.3% are investing in social media.
• About 23.5% in application development.
• About 23.5% in text based engagement and communication.
• About 21% in artificial intelligence.
• About 16.8% in virtual reality.
• About 9.2% in biometric technology.
• About 5% in robotics.
• About 10.9% in other areas.

Which channels do companies prioritize?

Travel companies still prefer telephone/call centre channel the most followed by traditional or in-person interaction. Mobile apps and websites surprisingly make it to the bottom of the travel industry wishlist.

What actions do companies take or are planning to take on priority?
About 79.8% companies prioritize increasing loyalty of customers and personally interacting with them to engage them and roughly the same percentage of companies focus on understanding the needs of their customers. 46% worry about losing their customers to competitors. About 39% focus on increasing ancillary sales and out of those, about 14% fear losing out on ancillary sales.

How do companies expect their mobile/digital budget to change in the next couple of years?
About 40% of companies said they would increase their mobile/digital budget by 20% in the next couple of years while 30% of companies would increase it by 50%. Roughly and only 16% companies said they would increase budgets more than 50% and about 13% said they would not change the budget.

Are companies investing in IoT (Internet of Things)?
About 42% of companies are investing in technology while roughly 29% and 23% companies are investing in partnerships and APIs respectively. About 6% of companies are investing in Mergers & Acquisitions while, surprisingly, 37% companies are not investing in IoT.

What are the biggest hurdles faced by travel companies today?

• Big data
• Competition
• Change management
• Chat platforms
• Mobile conversion
• OTAs
• Customer engagement
• Behaviour change
• Robotics
• Digital budgets
• Lack of investment
• Slow pace
• Robotics
• Slow tech

All the above data is extracted from Tnooz.