Consumer attitude changes as online travel enivronment evolves
As a travel and lifestyle community with nine million members and five million unique visitors, Where Are You Now? (WAYN) has made rapid progress. As the
online travel environment evolves especially with
social networking inherently encouraging the sharing of information among the user community, so how are the expectations and the attitude of the consumer changing accordingly?
On the same,
Peter Ward, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, WAYN said consumers are becoming ever more demanding, particularly in recent years, what with the explosion of the internet and online web 2.0 applications.
“Consumers are not only able to obtain, in most cases, relevant information, at the right place and at the right time, but they are able to contribute and learn from the knowledge of other consumers. This is changing the face of how both the travel market and consumers’ general attitude when it comes to making an informed purchase or decision. We have found that through WAYN, millions of our members are sharing their travelling experiences, tips and recommendations on the things to do and the places to visit, and in some cases, are even meeting up with people on the ground to make the most of their travelling experiences. We see a continued shift in the way that consumer habits are formed, which was perhaps first identified by the folks at Tripadvisor.com, which has had a big impact on the purchasing decisions of hotel bookings once such consumers have taken the time to collect a variety of opinions from other consumers who had visited the same hotel in the past. We see things progressing, with our members looking to their friends for advise also, as well as new acquaintances, who have inspiring tales to tell,” he said.
Ward, one of the presenters during the
EyeforTravel’s Travel Distribution Executive Conference 2007 in Las Vegas, agreed that earlier, online customers were very forgiving. Today, they are demanding, value oriented and seek results.
“We believe this to be a true reflection of the way things are today and increasingly so going forward. This is particularly the case when running a social community as news can spread virally if users are not being treated with respect or they think they are being taken advantage of. It also means that we have to constantly come up with new and exciting features or benefits for our users to take advantage of, as otherwise, they will look elsewhere in the market to have their needs fulfilled. Here at WAYN we focus on the users’ needs before anything else, as growth in the number of visits, usage and interaction of our community is one of the keys to our success,” he added.
Peter Ward is also scheduled to speak during EyeforTravel’s Sales and Marketing Europe 2007 conference to be held in Berlin on 23 and 24 October. For more information please click
here
TravelDailyNews International is the Media Partner of Las Vegas and Berlin events.
Michael Verikios
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007