In today’s digital-first era, there’s a myriad of influential resources that inspire travellers to seek out certain destinations.
NB: This is an article from Expedia Group
From viral content on social media and posts from friends and family to destination sites and travel blogs, where people decide to travel can be a click away. Given that travelers are inundated with these outside influences and factors, how do people decide where to go?
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Insights from Expedia Group and Luth Research’s study, The Path to Purchase: Uncovering How Travelers Plan and Book, explores the complex online path behind the travel customer journey and provides actionable insights to help destination marketers — large and small and around the globe — reach the right travelers at the right time during their shopping journeys. Let’s look at how you can use these key findings to build and execute impactful destination marketing campaigns.
How travellers find destinations
Early in the path to purchase, most travellers are undecided on where to travel. Before selecting where to go on their trip, more than half (59%) of travellers did not have a specific destination in mind or considered multiple destinations, which shows that people are open to destination inspiration in the beginning stages of the travel research process.
Travellers from Mexico and the U.K. seem to be more open to destination inspiration: More than 80% and 62% of travellers, respectively, said they were undecided on where to go. The research also showed that 63% of vacation rental bookers did not have a specific destination in mind when they first decided to take a trip. This highlights the opportunity for destinations and vacation rentals to connect with travellers early in their shopping journey.
When it comes to travellers who consider multiple destinations, 13% said they considered three different destinations, on average. And of those considering multiple destinations, when asked about destination consideration similarities, the top influencers were weather or seasonality (53%), trip type such as beach, active, city, cruise (48%), travel costs (47%), how to get to the destination (46%), and length of time to arrive at a destination (45%). Interestingly, only 20% of travellers said the destinations they were considering were in similar regions, further indicating that travellers are open to destination inspiration and may not be tied to specific regions or countries when they start planning their trip.
