Selling Travel Experiences Online – How to Get 6% More via Daniel Bensley – Business Development Manager, Qubit
What motivates individuals to take certain economic decisions rather than another? This is a concept that has long been studied and analysed by companies, their marketing teams and individual marketing experts. When people decide to buy one product rather than another, there are many different factors that lead to that decision, some of which are logically based and many which are based on emotions. In fact, in many ways humans are highly illogical creatures, despite what many of us would like to believe. This is what has made marketing, up until very recently seem so inexact and often very hit or miss. Sometimes advertising campaigns that should work in theory, completely fail, and vice versa some of the strangest concepts create huge financial results.
This is certainly no different within the world of leisure travel which is a highly experience-based activity, carrying a complicated sales journey. Where and how people choose to enjoy their vacation is very much based on emotions, often much more so than any logical decisions. These choices will differ based on a variety of factors such as the individual’s age group, nationality, gender, economic circumstances, education level, leisure interest, past experiences and much more. While all of these factors can have an impact, where people decide to go on their next holiday is also a very individual choice.
It has long been a dilemma for many marketing organisations and leisure travel businesses, as to what actually motivates their customers and potential customers to book travel experiences online. Up until very recently, it has all seemed fairly difficult to predict.
Great to be at #RDO8 today! Here's our own @DanBensley onstage, sharing the true value of #personalization for #travel brands @rdoofficial pic.twitter.com/oUAHwXwb76
— Qubit. (@qubit) 11 September 2017
At the recent RDO8 event at the Don Carlos Leisure Resort & Spa, Daniel Bensley, Business Development Manager at Qubit, the leader in highly persuasive personalization at scale, spoke about the company’s latest groundbreaking research into the most effective personalisation and marketing techniques. These techniques have proven to drive a 6% uplift in digital bookings, therefore finally answering many of the questions surrounding what does and doesn’t work in eCommerce.
As online bookings continue to make up a bigger and bigger proportion of most travel brands’ total sales, it is absolutely vital to understand what drives people to make these bookings in order to effectively market to them and boost sales and profits. The Leisure travel market continues to grow massively year on year, but there is also increasing competition from the likes of disruptive brands such as AirBnB, so to fail to understand what factors are influencing people’s booking decisions could spell disaster for many brands that continue to keep their head in the sand.
By using the huge amount of data that now exists online through social media posts and profiles, online booking forms and surveys, blogs, forums, review sites and other data sources, leisure travel businesses and marketers can much better understand what influences an individual or family’s final decision as to where to take their holiday.
.@danbensley is on fire ? #RDO8 @rdoofficial "Selling Travel Experiences online" #Marbella @DonCarlosResort pic.twitter.com/nIyttMU9GW
— John Dale Beckley (@JohnBeckley) 11 September 2017
This would then allow them to much more effectively personalise their marketing strategies to increase their sales and profits. This is highly beneficial for larger brands, as what has become clearer in recent years, is that people are increasingly favouring more personalised, individualised and authentic travel experiences. This can be seen in the rise in popularity of individual holiday apartments and smaller more boutique based hotels, and destinations and vacations offering more exciting or interesting experiences than simply spending a week laying by the pool.
Daniel Bensley @qubit gave a great example of how a genuinely personal service can improve your guests' holiday experiences #RDO8 pic.twitter.com/JTEFmjrYyF
— RDO Official (@rdoofficial) 11 September 2017
Qubit’s mission is to “put an end to meaningless customer experiences” by truly utilising the power of personalisation. At RDO8, Daniel explained how he and Qubit work with many important travel brands such as TUI, Thomas Cook, Emirates and more by helping to assist them with providing customers with relevant, timely digital experiences through harnessing data effectively. What Daniel and the team he works with have found is that people are looking for authenticity when making a decision to book a holiday or travel experience, because it is this human authenticity that drives trust. By creating an online booking process that increases people’s trust in your brand, this will help lead to more sales.
Daniel Bensley from @qubit providing excellent insight into how technology is changing customer expectations. #RDO8 #travel pic.twitter.com/ire2Uopi48
— RDO Official (@rdoofficial) 11 September 2017
Rather than sticking to what has worked in the past, travel brands need to adapt to the changing world we now live in. Much of this change is being brought about through rapid advances in technology such as the massive rise in mobile eCommerce, social media usage including for customer services, digital media to help client discovery of destinations and experiences, super fast mobile internet and much more.
Rather than see all of these as problems though, company owners and their marketing teams should see the massive opportunities to stand out in the market through effectively analysing the huge amount of data that now exists. While in the past these kind of insights into customer behaviour weren’t available, technology has changed this and through utilising the services of Qubit it can be used to improve the customer experience.
Here at RDO we would like to once again thank Daniel for his highly informative and useful presentation at RDO8.
Find out more about Qubit via their website: http://www.qubit.com/ and connect with them via social media:
You can also connect with Daniel via LinkedIn and Twitter.
If you would like to discuss anything with RDO regarding this blog post or other relevant topics, then simply add the hashtag #RDO8 or #RDOdigital to your tweet. Alternatively search #RDO8 or #RDOdigital on Twitter to see what else we’ve been discussing and you can easily get involved in the conversation.
The RDO8 conference 2017 was sponsored by CLC World Resorts & Hotels, Diamond Resorts International, Interval International and RCI at the Platinum level, and Dial An Exchange, Light Enterprises and Shawbrook Bank at the Gold level. We thank them for their support.
