Consumers’ desire to travel has caused travel bookings to spike with 80% of UK airlines and hotels saying direct bookings have increased over the last 12 months.
That’s according to a new travel benchmark report series of airlines and hotels from Quantum Metric, the Continuous Product Design platform for customer-driven digital experiences, that combined anonymised platform data and executive survey responses to uncover this year’s travel booking trends.
Despite economic uncertainty, traffic rates for travel sites are the highest seen since before COVID, with volumes for Q1 2023 37% higher than what was seen in Q1 2022.
“And the trend has the capacity to continue, with 54% of hotel and airline leaders expecting to see an increase in booking rates throughout the rest of the year. Additionally, almost every travel leader surveyed (97%) anticipates consumers will be willing to pay higher prices for travel this year.
One potential driver is Britons planning leisure trips with time for work, ‘lisness’, tapping the ability to work more flexibly, from anywhere. In fact, 71% of UK hotel leaders are offering business services/upgrades to attract business travellers and remote workers. Business reservations reflect this with the majority of travel brands (79%) seeing a 25% increase in the last twelve months.
“Travel experiences are emotionally driven and with today’s climbing demand comes even higher expectations for what the booking and travel management journey should look like,” said Danielle Harvey, VP, Travel & Hospitality Strategy, Quantum Metric.
“For airlines and hotels, it’s important that the digital experience not only be effortless but personalised to their customers’ needs. Those brands that can deliver a differentiated experience by truly understanding and empathising with their customers have a better chance at earning their lifetime loyalty.”
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