Tapping into UK traveller sentiment
Many travel businesses will be conducting their own sentiment surveys at the moment but they are time consuming and need repeating regularly given the fast-changing situation with covid. VisitBritain/VisitEngland conduct a fortnightly survey of traveller sentiment which is well worth putting on your radar. It’s a very broad assessment of the market but the data is open source and can be analysed to suit your particular customer segment.
The latest research was released last week and a couple of things jump out.
28% of respondents still intend to take an overseas trip this year
Yes, it usefully includes overseas intentions. Given the survey period was 28 September to 2 October I was really surprised by how high this figure is. It does demonstrate some optimism. Or a determination to travel anyway and take the quarantining on the chin, given they can’t all be going to Sweden, Corfu or parts of Germany.
I’ve not delved deeper into the demographics of this, but presume it’s primarily from those without children and from age groups less susceptible to covid.
As a caveat, I’d add that the question was: Compared to normal, are you likely to take more, fewer or about the same number of overseas holidays/short breaks between now and the end of the year? So I assume that the 28% do under normal circumstances take an overseas trip, maybe not!
It’s very, very last minute
Unsurprisingly, at the end of September 41% of those planning to take a UK trip in October hadn’t yet planned it and 54% hadn’t booked it. What it doesn’t reveal is what this would be under normal circumstances, but you’d have to think much higher. It’s a logical jump to presume that the same 11th-hour would apply to international travel.
Given how truly last minute it is, I’d say there are a few takeaways from this - hold your nerve, make sure you’re set up to promote last minute travel and be ready to handle last minute bookings. I did a quick straw poll on booking.com and although many hotels are encouraging late bookings (and penalty-free cancellations), not all are by any means.
Aligning your own analysis
If you’re carrying out your own research, it’s worth aligning some of your questions with those in the survey. You can benchmark your own figures and if you find alignment in the results you won’t need to carry out your research as frequently.
Delve deeper
There’s plenty more in the survey and I’d encourage you to take a look. In later blogs, we’ll aim to tap into other sources of customer insight, including overseas tourist boards, and search data from Google. We’d be happy to help you delve deeper into this survey, finding the parts relevant to your market, and make recommendations. Likewise we can help you with your own tailored survey.
Jim Millward