Last month the travel industry gathered in Cairns for Travel Weekly’s Travel DAZE Exec/ Cannes in Cairns conference. We caught up with Tripadvisor‘s senior director of media, destinations, hotels, and growth Justin Reid who had flown in all the way from London.
What are the top three global marketing trends shaping the travel industry right now?
1. A shift towards passion travel
“Before the pandemic, people were just happy to be away from their desks – they just wanted the old ‘fly and flop’ travel experience. Now it is no longer enough to be just away from the desk, people want to experience something close to their passion points. We’re seeing a lot of interest in things like astronomy travel, niche travel, and things that tap into people’s passion points.”
A return to international travel
“If we look at Tripadvisor’s numbers we generally had a 60/40 split for people looking at international travel vs domestic travel. During Covid that went to 90/10 towards domestic travel. Now international travel is coming back. This year, international travel has been stronger than pre-pandemic levels for the first time since the pandemic.”
People willing to pay for sustainable travel
“The third one is something that we’ve been talking about probably for five or six years now: sustainability. We run a survey every month with our user base asking people things like ‘are you interested in sustainability?’ Going back three years ago, everybody was like ‘yes’. Then the follow up question was ‘are you willing to pay more for it?’ and 80 per cent of people were like ‘yes I want to do it but I’m not willing to pay more’. Last month more than 50 per cent of the people surveyed said they were willing to pay more for a sustainable destination or sustainable hotel.”
