Travel DAZE speaker Dan Krigstein: ‘We’re journeying inwards’

As director of the Growth Distillery (part of News Australia), Dan Krigstein is an industry expert in the trends shaping consumer buying behaviour. 

At this year’s Travel DAZE in Cairns, Krigstein will be delivering a groundbreaking keynote on the technological trends shaping how we shop. To see him live, you can now buy your earlybird tickets here. 

Here is a snippet into some of Krigstein’s views on consumer trends: 

What are the biggest consumer buying trends right now?

Beyond the current economic backdrop, the two biggest forces shaping how, where, and what we buy are an increasingly crippling explosion of choice, re-writing the books on what influences our decisions as well as how we litigate our choices, and fundamentally new ‘mental models’ of health, wealth and scarcity. You know what isn’t scarce? Stuff. Time has become our most precious resource. Consumers are increasingly prioritising joy, connection, and experience over the accumulation of material possessions. and this is influencing almost every aspect of what (and where) we choose to spend our money. As an industry, travel has been a huge beneficiary of this intrinsic reappraisal of ‘what matters most’.

How is tech influencing how we buy travel?
Technology shapes much more of our buying behaviour than we think. In truth, it’s increasingly a better predictor of how we’ll seek, what we’ll choose, and importantly… where we’ll shop. There are few sectors where the impact of technology on buying journeys is greater than in travel. We’re not too far away from end to end curation, detailed itinerary design, and booking all occurring within the confines of a voice prompt on our smartphones… and I’m not being dramatic.

The opportunity to leverage these disruptive forces cannot be underestimated – and this is exactly what we’ll be speaking about at TravelDaze. Where we introduce one of the most important (and increasing the sharpest) arrows in the travel marketers’ quiver. A way of seeing your travel customers which captures greater value across the full breadth of your marketing funnel.

What is influencing when or where people are buying?
Almost every aspect of our buying behaviour is being recalibrated. Household economic pressure is forcing an audit of what we buy, what we see as discretionary, and what we deem to be ‘essential’. Often the outcome is to ‘switch’ rather than to ‘stop’. Presenting an immense opportunity for brands to capture value from traditionally hard-to-reach customers. The emerging challenge though, is as we re-enter categories; trading up, down, or otherwise, we’re coming up against an overwhelming breadth and depth of choice. New features, new brands, new models, and even new modes, are forcing us to increasingly seek input from trusted voices to navigate what’s increasingly seen as a ‘sea of sameness’ by our customers.

Where has travel currently got it wrong?
Well, there’s just too much noise out there, isn’t there? We presume our customers think in terms of our products, or services. They don’t. We’re often not speaking in a way that truly taps in to their motivations. If we were to ask our customers “Where are you really travelling?” The deeper answer is ‘to connect’, ‘to escape’ or ‘to wander’. It isn’t ‘to the Maldives’. We’re journeying inwards.

We’re also way behind the 8-ball in terms of our understanding of how (and where) technology helps, or more importantly hinders, our travel consumers. We remain wedded to outdated, often ineffective, demographic views of travel customers in designing experiences that delight. The most significant impact of this gap in our understanding, is that all too often our consumer opt not to make a choice at all.

We’ll be talking about the antidote to this up in Cairns…

Where is the biggest opportunity to increase sales?
By far your most potent lever for growth: Unapologetic customer-centricity.
Sounds obvious. Sounds easy. It’s not… and very few are doing it.

Meet your customers where they are, on their terms.
Speak in their language, through the prism of their ambitions.
Get closer to your customers than ever before; but don’t presume you know who you’re now speaking to as a brand.

Aussies have unshackled themselves from historical travel stigmas (Caravaning anyone?), we should too. You’ve never had a better opportunity to introduce yourself to new customers.

Feature image: Dan Krigstein