In today’s connected world, reputation is everything and even more so when customers are travelling or booking some well-deserved time-out. According to a recent study, people are turning to review sites, such as TripAdvisor, prior to booking a holiday much more frequently.
The customer is king is a cliche which we hear often, however, this phrase is even truer within the travel industry. Travellers today are used to having all the information and services which they need at the click of a button; the modern traveller does not go out searching for services, these must in fact be readily available from the off-set.
With sales in travel continuing to rise and 87% of Britons taking a holiday within the UK or abroad in 2017(1), one might expect airlines and hoteliers to be falling over themselves to gain their share of customer’s wallets. Yet despite what the travel industry has to offer, many companies within the travel and hospitality sectors are failing to provide their customers with a way of getting in touch.
When Yonder Digital Group surveyed 2,000 UK consumers on the performance of a wide range of consumer-facing sectors, asking whether companies were easy to get in touch with and efficient at getting queries resolved rapidly and effectively, the answer was generally no.
When individual sectors were broken down and analysed, it was apparent that hoteliers fared significantly better than airlines on being contactable and resolving issues swiftly – only 10 % of consumers voted the ease of contact with airlines as ‘excellent’ whereas this was more than doubled when the same question was asked about hotels. Interestingly, hotels were the type of business least likely to be scored as ‘poor’. Scores for hotels were polarised around ‘good’ at 37%, while for airlines polarisation was around ‘basic’ at 40%.
This level of disparity between airlines and hotels is probably because hotels are typically smaller and offer more streamlined operations with 24hr service, whereas airlines are managing a larger number of queries and operate like big corporations. In addition to this airlines tend to operate only during office hours, thereby limiting the hours they typically interact with customers.
In today’s connected world, reputation is everything and even more so when customers are travelling or booking some well-deserved time-out. According to a recent study, people are turning to review sites, such as TripAdvisor, prior to booking a holiday much more frequently. More than 80% of those surveyed said that the sites reviews help them feel more confident in their travel decisions(2). Further to this, 77% of people will always use TripAdvisor before selecting a hotel meaning that it is paramount that any single hotel or hotel chain prioritises getting in touch with customers and resolving their queries before the customer publicises their complaints on social media(3).
Airlines on the other hand, have a good deal of potential issues to deal with including unexpected strikes and natural events that may drive up consumer queries and complaints completely unpredictably. And yet, the vast majority of airlines clearly haven’t got the basics of contactability and rapid customer query resolution sussed.
Research tell us that consumers are becoming extremely reliant on, and in fact expect, swift query response across any of the channels which are available to them. As consumers are posting on social media and relying on customer review sites, businesses within the travel sector need to ensure that they are easy to contact, and that they answer queries and solve issues quickly and effectively, or risk losing customers.
(1) Holiday Habits Report, 2017, ABTA
2 Hotel Marketing, Hotel guests read 6-12 reviews before booking, says new TripAdvisor survey, 2014
3 Hotel Marketing, Hotel guests read 6-12 reviews before booking, says new TripAdvisor survey, 2014
Chris Robinson has been established in the customer communications scene for over 20 years. His unique approach to working has made him a pioneer in the contact centre space. Chris prides himself on delivering exceptional experiences, not only for his clients and customers; but for his employees too. Now the owner of the UK’s largest independent SME contact centre group, Chris is driving the Yonder Digital Group to become recognised as the go-to solution for UK contact centres
