In the news: Travel reviews’ influence on the booking process, Beijing Tourism’s partnership agreement with Travelport, 2014 a good year for APAC airlines
Study reveals the influence of travel reviews on consumers’ booking process
Leisure travellers read six to seven reviews before booking. (Image credit: Dangubic/iStock)
The majority of travellers read travel reviews before making a booking, and they prefer concise content to full text ones.
These findings were revealed in a study conducted by Donna Quadri-Felitti, academic chair and clinical associate professor at NYU Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism, in conjunction with TrustYou.
It examined the preference of consumers when using reviews to make travel purchases, evaluating their time investment, confidence/trust, and mobile experience. Specifically, the study compared user experiences with review summaries versus traditional full text reviews.
Key takeaways from the report:
Traveller’s review habits
- 95% of respondents report reading travel reviews prior to booking.
- Leisure travellers reported reading an average of six to seven reviews prior to booking and business travellers reported reading an average of five.
- Leisure travellers spend an average of 30 minutes reading reviews prior to booking a hotel, and 10% of travellers spend more than one hour reading reviews.
How to present travel reviews
- 52% of respondents said summarised review content is the most user friendly way to read reviews.
- 80% said summarised reviews are time efficient, while only 59% said the same for full text reviews.
- 72% said summarised review content is mobile friendly, and 61% said they would prefer to see only summarized review content when booking on a mobile device.
Quadri-Felitti said: “Travellers want a quick way to make their booking decisions, while still getting all of the information that they need from review content. The findings from this research give both hotels and travel intermediaries clear direction in how to structure their websites so that travellers can make such decisions.”
Added Margaret Ady, vice president of marketing at TrustYou: “This research shows that summarised review content increases consumer trust while substantially decreasing the amount of time travellers need to read and digest review content. This trend is even stronger on mobile where time and space is even more limited. Travellers have clearly articulated how they want review content to be delivered in the future,”
The full report is available for free download here.
• The study was conducted using an online survey panel of 510 travellers who travelled during the last 12 months for leisure, business, or both. Respondents were evaluated two different presentations of reviews and described their user experience with each, rating their confidence level in making a booking decision.
Travelport helps Beijing Tourism promote free transit visa
The free transit visa boosts arrivals to Beijing. (Image credit: Beijing Hutongs-Rolf_52/iStock)
Beijing Municipal Commission of Tourism Development (Beijing Tourism) has appointed Travelport to promote its 72-hour free transit visa to drive traffic and bookings to China’s capital city.
Beijing Tourism is a key division of Beijing’s Municipal Government and is responsible for planning, promoting and accelerating the growth of tourism into the city.
The new marketing partnership between the two companies is to promote Beijing as a stopover destination in Asia, highlight Beijing’s 72-hour free transit visa, and boost traffic and bookings to the city.
The partnership utilises a number of Travelport’s Digital Media Solutions, which enable Beijing Tourism to effectively communicate its offering to Travelport’s 67,000 travel agencies globally, targeting specific audiences at exactly the right time.
Travelport’s Digital Media Solutions is one of the core elements of Travelport’s Beyond Air initiatives, consisting of payments, hospitality and advertising.
Healthy growth for APAC airlines in 2014 despite challenges
Passenger demand for APAC airlines remains positive this year. (Image credit: Naphat_Jorjee/iStock)
A total of 256.1 million international passengers flew on Asia Pacific (APAC) carriers in 2014, representing an annual increase of 4.8% from the previous year according to preliminary figures for international air passenger demand for the year released by the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA).
The combined 4.7% increase in international passenger traffic and in revenue passenger kilometre (RPK) terms was outpaced by a 6% expansion in available seat capacity. This led to a 1% t decline in the average international passenger load factor to 77% for the year.
Andrew Herdman, AAPA director general, said that despite challenges passenger demand for APAC airlines for the whole of last year was healthy, underpinned by increasing numbers of middle income earners and further expansion in airline networks, which have all helped boost air travel within the region and beyond.
“However, passenger yields remained under pressure throughout the year, reflecting the intensely competitive market environment and some signs of overcapacity.”
Herdman added that despite the “dramatic fall” in oil prices since the end of the year, the benefit of improved profitability for airlines would vary depending on individual airline hedging policies and their degree of exposure to external debt in view of the weaker Asian currencies.
He described the outlook for 2015 as “broadly positive” as sustained growth in the global economy would continue to drive air travel demand, while the lower oil prices would make air travel affordable.”
“However, airlines will need to closely monitor market movements, and align future capacity increases with the actual increase in demand, whilst seeking further operating efficiencies to restore margins to more sustainable levels.”
