Volume I | Issue no. 1
Travel decisions are to a large extent driven by hedonistic and emotional issues. We know that if we can uncover a uniquely relevant and deliverable promise and communicate it using vivid mental imagery, we can successfully differentiate a destination from its competitors and convince more people to come. If the destination lives up to the consumer expectations our marketing creates, we have a great shot at getting them to tell others about their great experience, too.
So what do today’s travelers want from travel and destination marketers? Our recent research tells us it’s basically the same thing they’ve always been searching for — inspiration. Before Travelocity and Orbitz, they were inspired by the posters hanging on travel agency walls. They found inspiration in glossy brochures and on the pages of travel magazines, reading the New York Times travel section and watching high definition travel programming on cable television. Today, by contrast, a full two-thirds of people planning travel completely bypass these other media and consult only the internet.
And no wonder. There’s a multitude of online sources to look for travel information: email, search engines, destination, tourism and CVB sites, the sites of repackagers and discounters, consumer review sites, booking sites, Travel 2.0 sites like TravelMuse, blogs, social bookmarking and tagging sites, Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Webshots, Ebay, MySpace, FaceBook, you get the idea. If you want travel information, it's on the internet.
The only problem is, now that they have the internet, they’re searching for inspiration in pull-down menus, online forms, radio buttons, and tag clouds. Instead of inspirational imagery and engaging stories, their first impressions are more often lackluster thumbnail photos alongside a low-price offer. Instead of finding inspiration, for many consumers today, the entire process of researching and planning a trip starts with finding the cheapest flight, hotel room and rental car available. They haven’t even decided what to buy, and someone’s trying to make a deal.
I think the challenge becomes if these aggregates/distribution sites actually pull in hte $2,000 trips. It is much easier (as I am sure you know) to pull in partners with trips/offerings less than $1,200 as you will likely book these on-line, or more likely than a $2,000+ trip. Most of the 3000+ folks I've taken on trips over the years want to speak directly with the provider prior to booking in this price range.
Thanks for the great info on your site!
warmly,
Kathy Dragon
You are right about the let down in the TravelMuse experience. It clearly exposes today's limits of technology when it comes to providing solutions that start with the research and planning phases of the travel process. Sooner or later every site taking that correct approach ends up in the same dead end of having to provide a limited selection. I'm sure the TravelMuse folks and others like Tripbase are trying very hard to improve their technology to make the steps following the inspiration based search a better one.
Your example shows how much tougher it is to realize that than to sell a simple commodity airline seat as Southwest can do it based on being known as the lowest price provider by just about anyone in America. They can do that with relatively simple technology that has been around for decades. Same is true for JetBlue.
Component sales are easy by now, complex trips starting at the point of inspiration remain a very big challenge. Someone will come up with a solution, when it happens remains to be seen. I for one, welcome the efforts of the travel 2.0 trip planning sites. At least they make an effort to do more than just push the latest lowest price deal leading the industry to a dead end.
I'd sugget going back to the NY Times for inspiration stories and ads, on and off line
It's 'ad infinitum', not 'on infinitum'...
I couldn't agree more with the basic premise -- price is the refuge of the ignorant seller and buyer, so we're seeing a lot of ignorance displayed in the marketplace. It takes courage and strategic vision to stay away from the price conversation, and to tell a compelling story that inspires destination travel.
Thanks for the catch, Rich. In these days of social media, we try to avoid using the word "ad" wherever we can. Sometimes, we avoid it too much.