Listen in: How to be present, useful and inspire better conversations at every point within the traveler journey

As marketers, it’s easy to oversimplify the traveler journey, assuming a fairly straightforward process from inspiration to booking. In reality, it’s less of a paved nature trail, and more of an offroad adventure, sans map. It’s chaotic and noisy—full of unmarked paths, decisions, and forks in the road.

In fact, a study between Bain & Company and Google [“Today’s Traveler: Infinite Paths to Purchase”] found that an average planner will conduct around 33 searches across 12 travel sites. The most studious planners will perform over 500 searches and visit up to 50 travel sites before booking.  

The statistics tell the story of an epic fact-finding mission; effortful and unpredictable. It’s different for everyone, and anything but a straightforward, linear journey.  

At HSMAI’s recent Commercial Strategy Week in Toronto, Andy Nguyen, Head of Insights (Travel and Telecom) for Google, spoke to that point.

Slide 14, from Andy Nguyen's Non-Linear Traveler journey presentation at HSMAI 2023.

He noted consumers research heavily throughout the journey. It happens at every phase, after which, travelers circle back for even more research—sometimes even after booking.

This could mean travel planning for a few minutes between bites of a desk lunch, 20 minutes on the couch with laptop and phone in hand, or late-night, after-everyone-else-is-in-bed scroll-fests.

Since most bookings don’t happen in a single session, this circuitous path could include several visits to a site or booking engine from different devices over time.

While somewhat disorganized, this is a necessary part of the decision-making journey; not necessarily abandonment. The takeaway—the chaotic journey isn’t a bad thing.

In fact, by better understanding it, travel marketers can capitalize on opportunities to inspire the journey in the most useful way—getting into conversation with the traveler.

When you help a traveler enrich their time, they’ll be willing to give you more of it. That’s the concept of selling time. Central to enriching a traveler’s time is sparking conversations to understand the traveler’s needs early on—especially, their intent and their time horizon for booking.

To continue the conversation, travelers should be engaged with content relevant to their travel aspirations, especially around experiences. Since travelers tend to travel for a deeper reason like immersing in a culture, exploring a new place, or attending an event.

This gives properties an opportunity to be the connector to the community—a consummate host full of local knowledge and insight. It also keeps them top of mind.

As Andy said, “Travelers spend 3x more time dreaming, planning and booking than they do on the trip itself.” That’s why it’s so important to understand what travelers are looking for the moment they land on a property’s site.

It’s not a race to the fewest clicks, so planners book in a single session. It’s about building an experience that truly creates less friction for travelers.

Understanding the journey and providing relevant, helpful information will inspire the decision-making of those considering travel, and keeps the property top-of-mind throughout. That leads to a better traveler experience, and ultimately more revenue for the property.

AUTHOR

Zach Stovall earned his storytelling street cred as a photographer traveling the world's tropical islands on salary. He has written about and filmed his adventures for travel outlets globally.