Technology has revolutionized the way people research, plan, and book their travel experiences. Today’s customers use the internet on almost every stage of their travel journey, from deciding where they want to go to sharing photos from their vacation on social media once their home. To help you understand this process, Google has broken the travel customer journey up into three crucial stages: dreaming, planning, and booking. We think about the travel customer journey when helping our customers build their websites and develop a strong marketing plan. In this post, we’ve outlined the three essential stages of the customer travel journey and highlighted some key marketing activities for each stage.
When viewing this list, we recommend working from the bottom to the top. Check as many of the boxes as you can for the “Let’s Book It” stage before you bother worrying about “Time to Make a Plan” stage, and master that stage before you spend any time on “I Want to Get Away.”
Note: Before you do anything, make sure your website is mobile-friendly. 40% of travel research is done on mobile devices, so if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, you will be missing out on a large chunk of potential guests.
Dreaming: “I Want to Get Away”
The Dream stage happens after the travel bug has bitten but before any concrete decisions have been made. It is that feeling of “I want to get away” or “I’m ready to take that big trip I’ve always dreamt about.” The customer might not know where they want to go or what they want to do once they are there. They just know they want to go.
This stage is heavy on the fantasizing and light on the practicalities. Travelers are open in this stage, looking anywhere and everywhere for that one thing that will inspire them to plan a trip. They are likely doing lots of Googling, conducting countless image or map searches, looking at travel websites like Travel & Leisure or TripAdvisor, and browsing on social media. Customers will be searching for things like “best places to go in the Spring” or “the Best Cities to Visit in 2018” or “the cheapest beach towns in Mexico.” They aren’t yet interested in logistics like flights, transportations, or hotels.
To ensure that you are attracting potential customers during the dream phase:
