With technology now more important than ever for travel agents to help create a winning sales combo, we recently checked into Traveltech 2015 in Sydney to download the latest update.
This years theme was ‘Disruptive Influences’, a term that’s rapidly become many marketers new buzz word or something you’ll hear the IT crowd trying to impress you about at the water cooler.
So what are they on about?
In a nutshell, a ‘disruptor’ is generally any product, service or business (usually technology based) that uses innovation to take market share off traditional businesses by challenging the status quo.
Businesses such as Airbnb, online booking or Meta search engines (eg. Skyscanner or Expedia) Netflix, Uber and Apple are all good examples of disruption in recent times. Historically they’ve also been businesses many agents often regard as the ones taking business from them. Hence the ‘disruptive’ element.
The beauty of technology of course is that it isn’t really about the technology at all. That’s the less so exciting bit unless you’re a techie. It’s what it does and how it enables us all to live easier lives through solving everyday problems.
So what went down at TravelTech this year? A whole day of speaker updates and debates hosted by the legend that is Martin Kelly that we’ve filtered for you down to 8 byte sized chunks you need to know.
1. The biggest disruptor of all is… your mobile
Did someone say something?
Surprised? Nah. Think for a moment about the apps you have loaded on your phone and how much you use them in your every day life. What do you think your customers are doing on their phones?
Many are using their mobile for the entire life cycle of travel. From researching for inspiration and information, to reading reviews, scanning fares and hotel prices and often booking their travel with apps.
They’re taking more photos than ever, watching and shooting videos and checking in and tagging friends on social media as they experience and share the journey along the way. They’re paying for trip elements and travel accessories and storing their trip documents there. Sometimes they even call people.
The point is that the smartphone is now the single most most enabling tool we all own in our lives for getting things done. We travel, with our passports and our phone as ultimately all we really need. Thankfully customers can still also use their phone to contact you.
2. Airbnb is hosting a sleepover and inviting the world
https://youtu.be/PnFWfJmAWyY
Airbnb is now 7 years old, yet somehow it still feels as though they’ve only just joined the party.
Today Airbnb is in 191 countries and has hosted over 60 million guests reporting that 30% of those guests say they wouldn’t have travelled if it weren’t for airbnb. Ok then.
They describe their biggest enemy as ‘strangers’ with their purpose being to ensure travellers can connect in a destination via the locals and the actual people’s houses they will stay in. More a community than a booking site their mantra is all about ‘belonging’ and is what drove their quirky #onelessstranger campaign featured above.
You may be also surprised to hear that their main users are 30 something professional males and females with Aussies using airbnb to stay locally as the fastest growing segment over international stays. Randomly too perhaps is the fact that Airbnb is now the biggest travel provider in Cuba with 3000 listings.
Airbnb isn’t for everyone though and the much publicised legislation and regulation debate still lingers on with plenty of ongoing discussion.
3. Who’s the top websites in Australia right now?
Any guesses?
Still disrupting 12.8% of Australian travellers time online is the mother of all review sites Tripadvisor who still lead the way in showing that reviews are very relevant for your customers when it comes to the travel booking cycle and considering their own choices before they contact you.
Booking.com comes in second at 7.5% with Qantas at 7.3%, Webjet at 5.9%, Jetstar at 5% and Virgin Australia at 4%.
That site Airbnb again is indeed the fastest growing one right now in Australia with 100% growth from the last year whilst sites like Wotif.com and Stayz.com.au have both gone backwards in the last year, highlighting the disruptor’s acceleration.
4. Ubers vision is to take traffic jams away
It’s on for young and old
The 3-year-old champion disrupter now sits smugly in the drivers seat at 1m downloads of the App in Australia with 15k drivers using the app for a living. Amazingly their goal is to end up with 1m drivers for Uber in Australia.
Whilst Uber wasn’t started (originally in San Francisco) with any vision of disrupting transport it’s grown into the companies mantra by essentially being a ‘Private driver service’ with the goal to take more cars off the road. Their vision is ‘Transport is the weakest link in the customer journey. Uber is the solution’. It’s slightly puzzling to get your ahead around given they are still driving cars, the thought being they’ll just create less people driving their own cars.
Uber’s success has been built on disrupting the famously incumbent and lazy taxi service with a killer GPS based app, two-way reviews, no money changing hands so no hassle and a growing stream of drivers in smart, well maintained cars to service the market.
Some of Ubers other ideas include; ‘Uber rush’ as a courier service, Uber food that delivers to you (currently a trial), Uber boats for water taxis in Sydney which has been hailed a success and more random ideas such as delivering Messina ice cream and even kittens to cuddle.
5.Meta Search sites are booming
The Trivago guy. Travels answer to George Clooney, or Julian Assange.
What is Meta search anyway? To bring you up to search speed, a metasearch engine (or aggregator) is a search tool that uses another search engine’s data to consolidate produce their own results from the Internet. A search within a search if you like.
It’s about finding you a lot of specific data very quickly. Like a load of airfares for example which lead the way massively in traveller searches at 60% followed by cruise at 11% and Accommodation at 7%.
In Australia Trivago (Expedia owned) is the fastest growing metasearch site with 67% growth of share of visits, which has tripled in one year. Skyscanner is sitting at 20% of the market.
6. Helloworld.com.au now pays online commission to its agents
Say hello to the app that pays commission to agents
Remarkably, two years on since the delete button was infamously hit on bestflights.com.au and helloworld.com.au bounded joyfully into the market to replace it, the retail
brand has created some sizeable online waves and now pays helloworld agents commission on all sales from the helloworld site and mobile app bookings.
Their industry leading (Expedia powered) model offers customers the option to book online or in-store, aggressively targeting the online travel agencies (OTA’s) by competing on price and delivery of product.
It’s also a great enquiry generator for customers walking into helloworld stores to potentially spend more on travel and return again. Customers they may not have had previously including 18-34 year olds – a market once deemed harder to reach via high street bricks and mortar travel agencies.
7. The new Creative Holidays trade site is going off
James Gaskell, MD of Creative Holidays shared his story of the journey the Travel Corporation wholesaler has undertaken to embrace their digital offering and how they’ve re-built the agent portal from scratch to become a consumer styled ‘travel marketplace’ rather than a more traditional and generally poor online wholesaler experience.
Since launching a few months ago the site has re-gained plenty of traction in the market and firmly re-planted Creative Holidays and its product offering back in the selling mind of agents Australia wide though a great user experience, robust pricing and quality service.
Clearly it’s paid off so far too with an impressive rise in sales activity from 300k to 3 million since the sites launch and a budget bursting conversion rate increase from 18% to 30% in just three months.
8. And no tech event could be complete without Expedia
Expedia’s scratchpad helps customers plan
20 years on since they launched in Australia, Expedia are on the up brand by brand with their TAAP (Travel Agent Associate Program) doing the business with agents, a newly rebranded Wotif.com entering the market and also soon to be rebranded lastminute.com.au about to experience a resurgence.
Expedia says work and social is now blurred in an always-on world with 20% of Aussies checking their email every 10 minutes on a device and 15% having actually answered the phone while having sex. Quite possibly one of the saddest indictments on society to date. Is nothing sacred?
Expedia are also starting to see longer-term vs last minute bookings coming through their mobile app with customers visiting 10 sites on average before they purchase on multi devices. Innovative new products like scratchpad are helping boost the sites stickiness and returning customers.
In conclusion
Getting your clients on their way is a combo of tech and service
Clearly mobile and the plethora of channel choices for customers when it comes to travel are now well and truly the norm and are much needed to compliment what agents do.
But what remains is the fact that a large percentage of customers are still needing agents to piece it all together and cut through the confusion the many channels and travel offerings now represent.
Service as always, will always hold true as key driver for everyone. Want to disrupt your competitors? Harness the great technology out there and use your amazing service to create a winning combo.
