Online travel agency to strongly emerge

Tripi Online Travel Exchange at VITM International Travel Fair. Photo: Thao Linh

In such a context, online travel agencies (OTAs) have emerged, making significant contributions to the overall development of the tourism industry.

Online travel trend

The tourism industry has entered a new phase called connected travel. During this period, the travelers actively seek destinations, tours, hotels, and book flights and related services. At the same time, they are also the ones who actively post comments and reviews on hotels, tours, and service quality in their travel itinerary.

The said reviews are more trusted by the following customers than information as offered by professional travel survey and rating firms. The travelers have changed booking traditional agencies to OTAs.

The travel companies will sell various products and services to their customers on a website. These products may include hotel rooms, flights, travel packages, and car rental services. 

These travel agencies will provide hotels with an account on their commercial website. The hotels can publish important information, photos, directions; room availability updates such as room/accommodation types, fees/rates/prices, promotions, and other services onto the said website. Whereby, visitors can search, compare, select and book hotels to be matched with their needs, preferences, and budget. All purchase and payment transactions are done through the online form.

According to the Vietnam Electronic Commerce Association (VECOM), global OTAs such as Agoda.com, Booking.com, Traveloka.com, Expedia.com (including Trivago.com, Hotel.com) account for 80% of the Vietnam market share. There are only over 10 Vietnamese online travel companies such as Ivivu.com, Chudu24.com, Mytour.vn ...

According to a report by Google and Temasek, the scale of online tourism in Vietnam will reach 9 billion USD by 2025.

Selecting "touch-point"

At every step, the travelers will engage with travel brands for a range of services, and experience hundreds of touch-points, on a variety of devices. For example, Ivivu- based accommodation purchase journey has up to 45 touch-points alone, and that’s just looking for somewhere to stay.

OTAs can influence travelers’ experiences and become invaluable travel partners to customers at every step of the journey. This goes far beyond simply converting lookers to bookers- this is a chance to open up new revenue streams at multiple touch-points.

And the term “conversions” doesn’t just mean bookings; there are specific goals your OTA can achieve at each stage of the journey, for example: converting page views to trip searches, searches to bookings, bookings to ancillary attachments, and so on. By taking a full view of the traveller's journey and creating your own journey map, you will see immense potential to grow conversions at every step.

Mr. Tran Nguyen Trung Cong, CEO of Ivivu cum Deputy General Director of Thien Minh Group, said: “Although coronavirus pandemic has affected the tourism industry in general, OTAs also have their own advantages because they have technology system that caught up with market needs as well as government policies on disease prevention. There are policies of exchange and refund for hotel rooms and air tickets following the Government's instructions to ensure the interests of travelers”.

SOME CHANGES TO TRAVELER JOURNEY MAP

Inspiration Travelers are now naturally much more concerned with knowing what safety measures will be in place across all touch-points of their journey. This means that while Inspiration is still an important stage of their journey, we can expect assurance to be a deciding emotional factor as well.

Shopping: Travelers’ key concerns such as getting the best deal and making the most of their break, haven’t gone away. But there are new ones on the list? From “how safe will I be?”, to “can I get my money back if I have to cancel?”… This is an extremely influential factor in decision-making.

Booking: The travel environment remains highly volatile, with lockdowns, quarantines, and cancellations happening at a moment’s notice. As a result, customers are more concerned now about how insulated they are financial loss, putting a renewed focus on booking flexibility and insurance validity.

Pre-trip: As COVID-19 lockdowns fluctuate, travelers are closely monitoring the situation in destinations. This is creating more demand for pre-trip guidance and information on insurance. Customers will feel reassured at this stage by flexibility and generous cancellation/refund policies, while agencies are likely to experience a significant increase in itinerary adjustments than in the past.

In-trip: There is still a wealth of decisions to make in-trip, including taking tours, booking restaurants or experiences, shopping, onward travel, and more. What has changed is that there is more demand travelers for information while at their destination, i.e. on local regulations and restrictions.

Post-trip: With the pool of potential travelers smaller than it usually is, OTAs will need to use every tool at their disposal to develop a loyal brand following and increase purchase frequency. Valuable sources of information are customer feedback and reviews, so they can better understand their preferences and tailor future deals accordingly.