Travel and Tourism Technology

In June 2017, the EU removed data roaming charges to EU destinations. For countries further afield, most telecommunication companies opted for a daily charge to use your own calls, messages and data. The change has proven to increase the usage of mobile in-destination.

Greenberg analyzed over a thousand travellers’ online behavior and found that searches for activities are happening across devices in the three months prior to a trip, but shift significantly to 54% mobile when travellers are in-destination. (Google 2019)

So, where will today's travellers find you?

On your own website

When going on vacation, most of us prefer to travel light and leave the laptop behind. That does, however, not stop travellers from going online.

According to findings from our Travel Statistics Report 2019-2020, travel-related mobile searches for “tonight” and “today” have grown over 150% only within a 2-year period. In order to stay locally competitive and visible to nearby holidaymakers, having a mobile optimised website is key.

You can increase your chances of receiving web traffic through optimising your website accordingly. What keywords are relevant to your activities and local region? Are your images the appropriate size to load quickly on mobile? A few tweaks can go a long way! 

Long-gone are the foldable paper maps. With search fields, street views and route suggestions, it is not surprising that that 90% of travellers have used navigation apps on their phone whilst travelling. (Skift, 2018)

With Google Maps being one of the top navigation apps, having a Google Business listing is a great way to appear on the traveller’s radar (quite literally!) along with other locally listed businesses. 

Make the most of your listing through the use of an attractive description of your business along and links to your website. 

In this blogpost we have listed5 tips for optimising your Google Business listing for lead generation.

"TrekkPay has been a lifesaver. We now process all our transactions internally and stopped using a third party since 2017. Our records are more accurate. They can easily be compiled and printed at the end of each month which saves us on accounting time. The card readers are the only ones that work in our region as well so that’s a super plus!"
- Dario from Exuma Escapes

Social Media

As part of a business’ online presence, being active on social platforms has become expected.

Discovery

There are 3.484 billion social media users in the world today - a 9.1% year-on-year increase. (Smart Insights, 2019)

When compiling our Travel Statistics Report 2018-2019 we found that 60% of people in 2018 intended to post daily on social media whilst travelling.  

Naturally, social media has become an excellent consumer-perspective research platform for holidaymakers wanting authentic insight into their destination - whether it be scrolling through geo and hashtagged Instagram snapshots or skimming reviews and ratings on Facebook. Since the banning of EU roaming fees, we expect this to be a growing consumer behaviour. 

Read more
Facebook Advertising Checklist
Instagram Advertising Checklist

Agents and resellers

Teaming up with - and gaining advocacy from - established players is vital for market presence and a steady revenue stream.

The early bird catches the worm. Reaching travellers at breakfast - or even at the point of their accommodation arrival - is a great way to attract those with open agendas.

Thanks to their prime locations and excellent exposure to target groups, representatives at hotel concierge are a popular channel for promotion of local experiences. 

“Connecting our channels together was key to strengthening our sales efforts. With TrekkSoft, tourist offices, hotels and travel agencies can easily and quickly take bookings.”
- Michael Trummer, Basel City Tours

Distributing your tours through local hotels requires dedicated time to build a strong relationship and understanding of your business USPs. How could the hotel benefit from distributing your tours and activities?

A win-win scenario could be offering discounted tickets for hotels to sell at their own price, seat upgrades, a free meal or a souvenir item. Choose a tour offering that benefits or matches the partnering hotel’s profile and values for a successful long term collaboration.

Read more - Could partering with hotels increase your tour bookings?

How about a bike tour with local guiding at the finish line? Or a day cruise with some samples of local wine? 

Local tour operators can really benefit from promoting each other's tours and activities - both for perfect pairings and crazy combos.

A partner network can open up opportunities to reach wider - yet like-minded - audiences. By operating as a team, tour companies can also benefit from more powerful marketing efforts and a bigger budget. 

We love this collaboration between VisitDenmark and Icelandair. 

Travel technology has grown immensely

Needless to say, travel technology, especially in the tour and activity sector, has grown immensely in the past decade. Suppliers in the industry have gone beyond merely owning a website to now demanding better management tools, reporting tools, and improved connectivity with agents, business partners and marketplaces.

The boundaries to travel tech will continue to be pushed as we continue to keep up with increasingly sophisticated consumers and as we seek enhance the traveller's experience online and offline.

Check out our latest blog posts on travel tech