If you were to ever take a journey back to the year 2000, you would recall a stream of advertisements on radio, television related mediums of editorial and advertising press amplifying catchy and well known slogans, brand logos, songs and perhaps even melodramas that ensconced themselves amidst the Australian generation. The world wide web was still in its infancy in comparison to the plethora of aggregators and technological gizmos that we see today. Families would often take days off work, collate their children and travel to their trusted Flight Centre, Harvey World Travel or local independent travel agent with the hope of being influenced by a kaleidoscope of holiday options across the world. Fundamentally, this was the nexus of the wholesale holiday packaging customer search and journey process! There was no Skyscanner to help you find and attribute the cheapest fares, NO Trivago to aggregate the gamut of suppliers to book via and definitely NO straight through automated booking engines to drive a cohesive and agile booking process. In fact, it was most likely that the quote you obtained on that day off with your three kids back then would have found its way as the focal point of discussion on the dinner table at the evening; followed by a cheque, bank visit or dig into the piggy bank the next day and a short trip back to the friendly travel agent you got your quote from. The concept, notion and transgression as we call it today of price matching (whilst it is important in competition and consumer choice) – was comparatively and significantly absent!
However, as web and mobile technologies continued to coalesce into platforms and architectures of participation together with the emergence of heavy weight OTA’s booking.com, EXPEDIA – booking travel as we know it underwent a tipping point. For those not familiar with the vernacular, a tipping point is where a system is perturbed and undergoes rapid, evolutionary, groundbreaking and accelerating change (and yes, I read Malcolm’s Gladwell book titled the very same). These can simply manifest, in reference to the former trends, as a disruptive and cataclysmic influences on how every day consumers and businesses started aggregating, assimilating, augmenting and attributing their holiday packages. Things suddenly changed from visiting a flight centre store to potentially browsing through booking.com and trying to figure out which rate band to book under (do I pay now and save or pay a higher rate and not commit any of my money until I check in, but then, what if the price changes between now and then, can I then get my wife to re-book it and cancel mine?). Then, you would scan the abyss of TripAdvisor reviews to facilitate your intent and validate the choice of resort thru the anecdotal experience of fellow travellers.
Suddenly, the consumer was given the ascendancy of choice whilst being concurrently bombarded and interrupted with conversion rate optimised slogans such as ‘Last Booked 1 Hour Ago’ or ‘Best Rate For Your Dates’ and ‘Only A Few Left’. So, from setting aside time with the family to go visit your travel agent as an option, now, you are now exposed to not only a plethora of prices, but also a stream of content snippets outlining the ‘ten best restaurants’ at your destination. To add more icing on our cake here, you are also prompted if you would like to book a car hire option to take a self-guided tour around the country’s ‘most scenic roads’ (off-course, with link to a page that talks exactly about that!) The virtual one stop shop for travel did find its way to the mainstream here, didn’t it! Tours, local guides, car hires, shared apartments, time share, resorts, meal plans – you name it; consumers were now able to purchase completely augmented products and services with ease!
Don’t you think this now takes the essential concept of consumer sovereignty to a whole new level? I mean, the world is almost your oyster, right? Wrong! You have simply been tricked, biased and challenged into thinking that by adopting and being guided by these self-perpetuating, almost wizardry like tapestry of popups, articles, discounted prices and advertising that – whilst servicing the purpose of giving you ‘information’ – in fact paradoxically pushes you into information overload. Concurrently, it’s also serving the brilliant purpose of maximising marginal revenue back to the big fish in the industry. At the end of the date, for them, bookings, bookings and more bookings is all that matters! Now doing get me wrong, there will always be demand for such online sites, aggregators and information sources so as long as human kind does not achieve the singularity (as by then, will we really need to book travel and that too foray logistically on an A380? PROBABLY NOT) We therefore have a true FOUR OF A KIND HERE!
By trying to augment product offerings, the online travel agencies are in fact basically stating that yes you can book these, however, because we know you are there for some time, we are also going to try to play with the pricing and see if we can get a bit more out from you! Indeed, we all know this is the fundamental core purpose of any commercial entity. They just want your money and fast!
Now isn’t that a stark contrast in attitude and sincerity when comparing your local travel agent from Flight Centre back in year 2000? She would actually work hard to find you the best possible price, without showing you these so called trump cars that are simply not working in the consumers best interest.
The big players are obviously profiting from this type of activity as evidently, there will always be a market for last minute, urgent travel and people willing to pay a premium. The tricks of the trade, known as Conversion Rate Optimisation in the digital marketing world assists in bring consumers ‘down the funnel’ but at what cost? Remember, your first intent was to find a holiday package – which is the dreaming state. You perhaps had something in mind by means of referral, anecdotal recommendation, self-pursuit or maybe, simply, saw that ad when you were reading ‘Top Ten Places To Go Before You Are 40’. Then, you immerse your faculties in various search permutations in google, tripadvisor, trivago, kayak and the other myriad tools that exist. This is the phase that is notorious for driving what I will term as the travel information paradox!
With that said, it would be interesting to see how the likes of multinational companies, booking aggregators and information banks deliver value thru to their loyal segments. A truly new generation of subscription model is on the rise.
In the next series, we explore how these subscription models can deliver better lifetime customer value through a process of user engagement, content curation, timely & contextual advertising and customer co-creation!
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