travel tech insights

7 Ways a Travel Company can Capture More Millennial Travelers

The travel industry is witnessing a cross-current of demographics: on one hand, the Baby Boomer generation is retiring and leaving the work force; on the other hand, the millennial generation is entering the workforce and beginning to climb the income ladder. To a large extent, the way a travel company handles this transformation over the next ten years will determine its success. It will have to adroitly adjust to the changing travel habits – and budgets – of the graying boomers and become aware of – and knowledgeable about - millennial lifestyles and travel preferences. In some ways the challenge of millennial travelers is unique; certainly the influence of technology is unprecedented. But in more ways, it’s no different from what the travel industry faced when the boomers arrived decades ago; a new, significant, market requiring insight and innovation.

Topics: Travel Industry travel technology travel website travel company travel agency millennial travelers

Increase Travel Website Conversion Rates with Common Sense

The Web can be a magical place: your company launches its website and over the course of weeks and months transactions begin to take place with people you’ve never heard of, from places you’ve never been. Soon you find yourself spending long hours exploring ways to build site traffic: SEO concepts and terms from Google analytics become a familiar part of your vocabulary. After months of steady effort momentum builds and a steady upward trend emerges. But not so for sales; revenue consistently lags behind projections. An inbound marketing firm is brought in and reports the conversion rate for website traffic is 1.5% - and calls it good news because it’s so close to the travel industry average of 1.6%. It sure doesn’t seem like good news, does it?

Topics: Travel Industry travel website responsive travel website Travel website abandonment travel website conversion Inbound Marketing

Travel Industry Start-ups – Lessons from GetYourGuide

GetYourGuide, a young travel company founded in 2009, made a splash in travel industry news last week with the announcement of a $50 million investment by KKR, a prominent NYC-based investment company.  For new travel company entrepreneurs – or those in any industry, for that matter – GetYourGuide has all the hallmarks of a Cinderella story: humble students working through the night, unaware they’re on the brink of creating a multi-million dollar company.  Not long ago this blog had a post that relates to the GetYourGuide story, “Top Start-up Tips for the Travel Industry”.  Accordingly, this announcement provides a great opportunity to see how well this Cinderella story validates our travel start-up guidance in the areas of: value; planning and attitude.  

Topics: Travel Industry travel technology travel company start-up tips new travel company Travel start-up travel trends

Top Start-up Tips for the Travel Industry

The travel industry has to be one of the best examples of everything old becoming new again. Imagine England in the year 1841: the telegraph was a less than ten years old; the telephone was still twenty five years away; railroads were transforming the countryside but steamships were nowhere in sight. Things were certainly very different back when Thomas Cook opened the doors to his travel company and began selling single day excursions from Leicester to Loughborough.  Since then, through steamships, airlines and the Internet, Thomas Cook Group – like many other travel companies during that passage of time – has thrived on change and transformed many times. Currently, creative people continue to reinvent the travel industry. For those planning to join them with an innovative travel company or travel technology provider of their own, here are top start-up tips to help them along the way.

Topics: Travel Industry travel technology travel company start-up tips new travel company Travel start-up

Travel ERP: Delivering Big Data & Analytics Value

In a recent blog we discussed how travel companies can derive benefits from Big Data, analytics and advanced reports in four operational areas:  

Topics: erp Travel Industry travel technology travel erp travel company Big Data

What Advanced Reporting Means to a Travel Agency

What is advanced reporting in today’s travel industry? In this article it's defined as leveraging Big Data and data analytics to make smarter and faster strategic, operational, marketing and sales decisions. Big Data? Imeans there’s a huge amount of travel data available to mine for insights on: strategy; service offerings; pricing; marketing and user personalization. While every travel agency owner or manager would agree better information can only help to improve performance, odds are they are also part of the 81% that have no business intelligence (BI) solution in their travel business. 

Topics: Travel Industry travel technology travel agency Big Data travel business travel analytics travel software

A Foolproof Recipe for a Disastrous Travel ERP Selection

As noted in an earlier post, there are compelling reasons for travel companies to invest in enterprise resource planning systems. These range from a desire to cut operational costs through automation; be able to exchange data with travel partners more quickly and easily; increase revenues with better visibility into sales activities; and improve customer experiences with more sales and transaction automation. However, achieving these benefits is only possible if a wise choice is made. Since good advice is often overlooked or quickly forgotten, this post aims to make a more lasting impact by focusing on steps guaranteed to produce what no one wants: a disastrous selection.

Topics: Travel Industry travel technology travel erp travel software

Responsive Travel Websites are Crucial for Success

The benefits of a responsive travel website are so compelling there’s no point in even trying to make the case companies in the travel industry can succeed without one. No doubt some are trying, but they’ve put themselves in roughly the same position as a brick-and-mortar store operating with inconvenient parking and accepting just one type of credit card. Perhaps some succeed in the short term, but those companies suffer an economic loss from missed profits. Since a website with responsive design is one that recognizes a visitor’s device and changes page configurations for best viewing, it stands to reason a nonresponsive site can never achieve the same user experience.

Topics: Travel Industry travel technology travel website responsive travel website