Getting Deep Insights into Your Targeted Travelers

As you know, your target travel customer has unique wants in their travel experience. Which means, they intend to buy the trip, accommodations and tours that fit the travel adventure they visualize in their minds.

Knowing what the customer intends to do, is the subject of predictive analytics, where AI systems predict what they will do based on their search history, content viewed, and purchase history. Your data might not paint the full picture however, you and your dedicated content strategist have to work together to discover more and really sharpen their profile.

And this is far beyond the basic traveler types and the 4 types of intents. We need to go much deeper and we might need the intent analytics software discussed below as well.

You could create a pop up form or email form asking them what they want or dream about. A typical answer might be: “I want to get away for 16 days to Italy, to enjoy the views, soak in the ambience, take strolls and boat cruises, while sampling some of their authentic cuisine and some cultural activities. It’s the kind of experience that gives me a break from my hard working life for a couple of weeks.”

From that quote, we know that escape from the stress of their life is important and that being busy in Italy and enjoying some pleasant touristy activities is the intended elixir. You could describe your various Italy tours and trips in terms of relaxation, scenic walks, epic views and leisurely socializing at Italian restaurants. This person sounds more interested in a coastal area such as Venice or the Amalfi Coast, but likely not Rome or Milan. What they intend to buy is a complicated mix of many of the elements you’ll read about below.

Is freedom, food, beaches, views, or social opportunities is what they intend to capture?

Your descriptive content could portray all the destinations as suitable. Your travel content gives you that power. And it allows you to design it strategically to capture more traffic, convince and convert more of them via a well-constructed conversion funnel.

Travelers aren’t usually articulate about all the reasons they want their vacation. For them, it’s a general vision or emotion and they don’t break it down like we would. We need to know more so we can present content/products more effectively. It’s our job to create content for them to immerse in, engage via comments, provide trip feedback, respond to customized offers, etc. This way we’re creating more insight to understand specifically what they want or intend to buy.

When I do my target customer research, I create a flow chart where I map out all the potential reasons the customer might want the product. From that, I get my topic and keyword ideas, and begin creating a strategy that fulfills the clients various objectives.

But let’s return to the topic of customer intent. Intent covers a lot of ground from when they intend to book the trip and then travel, to the specific activities and experiences they expect, to prices and accommodations, to the specific emotions they see themselves having during that trip.

Let’s dig in a little regarding the many intents in the mix of your next travel customer.

10 Intents to Monitor in your Travel Audience

1. Epic Views and Scenic Experiences: their obsession to experience breathtaking landscapes, whether it’s a mountain vista, a sunset over the ocean, or stunning architecture. This relates to the feelings they see themselves experiencing such as awe, freedom, relaxation, exhilaration, happiness, friendship, novelty and spontaneity.

2. Personal Transformation and Growth: Their quest for self-discovery and personal growth via destinations and activities that challenge their comfort zones, whether through adventure, cultural immersion, or reflection.

3. Relaxation and Mental Rejuvenation:  Their search for destinations that offer tranquility, wellness retreats, or opportunities to disconnect from stress. 

4. Cultural Immersion and Authenticity: Their insistence on authentic local experiences, (eg., participating in traditional festivals, trying local cuisines, or learning about history through local stories.   

5. Social Connection and Shared Experiences: experiencing meaningful memories with others—whether family, friends, or new acquaintances made during the trip. Group trips, communal dining, and shared experiences (like tours) play into this.

6. Adventure and Thrill-Seeking: The compulsion to feel the exhilaration of pushing physical boundaries and seeking physical sensations and intense emotions via adrenaline in hiking, diving, or extreme sports.

7. Escapism and Freedom:  the need to escape the overly familiar routine, worries and responsibilities to experience freedom to give the mind its treat of novelty, change, and adaptive mechanisms in new destinations near or far. 

8. Learning and Enrichment: fulfilling the need to learn and broaden their horizons, whether through historical tours, museum visits, or educational travel programs, to grow confidence, self-esteem, and intelligence.

9. Health and Wellness: The intention to improve their physical and mental well-being during trips via yoga retreats, spa treatments, and other healthy, rejuvenating environments. 

10. Luxury and Exclusivity: the want for luxury, exclusivity, and pampering that helps them crystalize their personal identity, via high-end accommodations, private tours, and premium experiences. that aren’t available for most travelers.

These special intent factors shape what content travelers crave and pursue.  They want your excellent content but it must fulfill their special mix of special personal drivers.  We have to understand them better.

Customizing your blogs, tour and package listings, and emails helps you hit the high emotional notes with them, where they get the feeling you are the right travel agency for them. It’s in the presentation of all those intent details that makes impact, draws them in to see your products, and view your agency as comfortable and the most significant for them.

Great Analytics Drives Great Performance

Having the best data and the best analytics software can make a huge difference to the profitability of your travel company. Your solution won’t be a canned one, but one that you deliberately develop and nurture.

There are plenty of research sources including major studies which you purchase online if you have the budget.  Yet, even large-scale studies may not generate the quality of insight you need in your travel market niche. The fact is, you might have developed your research yourself using your own data. Sounds like some work, however, it could be a fountain of business value.

From great insights, you can improve travel packages, improve content impact and engagement, and waste less time on content and products/services that your customers aren’t interested in. And you can build a brand that makes your customers believe you’re the “only travel agency for them.”  And that brand obsession happens when your insights help you deliver the right messages, for the right experience, to move them fluidly through your conversion path.

In fact, this conversion funnel optimization process is enabled by other types of software which may want to use briefly or permanently.

General Market Knowledge is a Starter

A 2024 study by Global Hotel Alliance showed 53% of travelers want new travel destinations. That means they’ll be searching for content related to new destinations. 32% considering old/new destinations. This means overall, they want new destinations.

They report travelers want to see and experience new things (71%), try local cuisine (56%), and to explore (49%). They’re likely to travel with their spouse/partner. 26% use online sources while their family and friends highly affect their choices (37%).

Another study by Global Rescue, confirmed that the key to the joy of travel to them, and that joy is experienced uniquely for each.  That survey found that many do want to visit places with breathtaking landscapes.  Experiencing epic views brings deep emotional benefits for most travelers. 37% of female travelers prefer stunning landscapes, hinting that travel for them is about relaxing, being comfortable, and enjoying time peacefully. Men on the other hand (37%) seemed to prefer adventure activities from scuba diving and skiing to hiking which are much more physically active where surprise, novelty and self-growth is desired.

And the older 60+ group of travelers that is such a big opportunity today, have their own set of wants and priorities.

What research tells us isn’t just preferences. It’s really about intent. It’s difficult to develop convincing travel content if we are uncertain of what traveler’s intent is. Google for instance, weighs intent strongly when ranking web pages. They know about their specific intent based on their search query and visit history. They then provide websites that align with their specific purpose. The goal of analytics software then should be to learn about traveler’s intent.

Ideally, we need to access the most relevant research for our target and build a deep profile to help you make great branding and marketing decisions. The more targeted your content, the more successful you’ll be.

Hotel study from Global Hotel Alliance.

Learn All You Can Because this is what Drives Success

It’s critically important to spend more time discovering all you can about your customers and their travel choices. Their online behavior is insightful if you have the analytics system and content for them to engage with. That’s why having lots of relevant content on your website is helpful. It’s a medium to allow you to engage with them, test them, and discover the nuances of their preferences.

Most companies don’t develop their content to gain these insights. Instead, their content simply tries to entertain with a call to action. You won’t learn much that way. Building a system to learn is wise.

However, back to published travel research, there are sources online that discuss general travel consumer demand and some specific studies on destinations, types of travelers, and travelers wants. These are good to know. Might be boring reading, but it’s something a dedicated professional marketer is going to insist on learning.

And learning is the top goal of a travel business owner. How about if your website was a learning machine?

In this way, we can see the value of developing a travel content strategy to engage with visitors/customers and learn what they’re really interested in. There’s one simple way of doing this. Create the strategy, build the content assets, then do some PPC campaigns to reach the best audience possible. Then your analytics can provide insights.

Developing the insights is a project too, where you may want to acquire the best eCommerce analytics consultant to set your analytics up property to gain the most incisive insights. General analytics likely won’t give you the depth needed to make your business decisions.

Potential Web Analytics Software for Your Travel Website

1. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Overview: Google Analytics-4 is an inexpensive web analytics platform, which you likely already use. Its current format is not very good, and requires professional setup to deliver the kinds of insights you need, from user behavior trends, preferred engaging content to conversion tracking.

GA4 is the standard with its interoperability with other marketing and advertising apps, however, it may not deliver the key insights you need. Google protects some key user information which is essential for your business decisions.

GA4 Key Features:

1. User-Centric Data: GA4 emphasizes event-based tracking, offering a holistic view of the customer journey across devices and platforms.
2. Enhanced eCommerce Tracking: Ideal for understanding how visitors engage with product pages, bookings, and payment funnels.
3. Machine Learning: can help predicts user behavior and purchase probability, helping you tailor travel offers to likely buyers.
4. Custom Reports: Your analytics pro can create tailored reports to analyze travel-specific KPIs, such as time spent on destination pages, or popular booking options.

Why GA4 May Work for Travel companies: It’s tied to organic search traffic to measure visitor actions at multiple stages of the travel booking process, from research, to return visits to final purchase and upselling activity. It may only work if it’s setup by a professional analytics programmer.

2. Hotjar

Overview: Hotjar focuses on visualizing user interactions through heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback tools, offering deep insights into how users engage with your travel site. It can be used for short research periods to collect user behavior info.

Key Features:

• Heatmaps: Show exactly where visitors are clicking, scrolling, or hovering on your website, helping you understand which content, headings, images, topics, destinations, offers, or calls-to-action draw the most interest.
• Session Recordings: Watch recordings of actual individual visitor sessions to identify obstacles in the booking funnel or navigation issues.
• Feedback Polls: Gather real-time feedback from visitors about their experience on key pages, such as travel package listings.
• Form Analysis: Understand how visitors interact with contact or booking forms, and where drop-offs occur.

Why It Works for Travel Websites: Hotjar’s visual data allows you to optimize the user experience and ensures that your top travel offers are easy to find and engage with.

3. Mixpanel

Overview: Mixpanel is a powerful tool for analyzing user behavior, tracking customer journeys, and optimizing conversion rates with a focus on event-based tracking.

Key Features:

• User Segmentation: Provides detailed insights into different user segments, such as first-time visitors, repeat customers, or those who abandoned bookings, enabling targeted marketing.
• Funnel Analysis: Helps you track and optimize key actions like destination searches, package views, and booking completions.
• A/B Testing: Enables testing different layouts, images, or booking flows to see what drives the highest engagement.
  Cohort Analysis: Allows you to track user behavior over time, which is ideal for identifying repeat travelers or loyal customers.

Why It Works for Travel Websites: Mixpanel helps analyze behavior at a granular level, providing insights into which marketing campaigns, offers, or travel destinations drive the most conversions.

Travel Business-Specific Analytics Solutions

Let’s explore some analytics solutions that may offer capabilities offered in travel management software and travel marketing software. These solutions may integrate Google Analytics code to provide additional insights into your prospective visitors and customer’s behavior.

1. ADARA Travel Intent Marketing Platform

Overview: ADARA provides specialized analytics for the travel industry, focusing on traveler intent, behavior, and competitive insights. It’s software/service may be on the pricey side, but for a mid-size agency, it might be a great investment.

Key Features:

• Traveler Trends: Tracks real-time travel demand, preferences, and destination trends based on customer searches, bookings, and other behaviors across a global network of travel companies.
• Audience Segmentation: Helps segment travelers based on booking behaviors, demographics, and trip preferences, allowing for targeted marketing efforts.
• Cortex Cross-Platform Tracking: ADARA integrates data from airlines, hotels, and online travel agencies (OTAs) to create a unified view of a traveler’s journey, from search to booking.
• Predictive Data Insights: ADARA’s platform uses machine learning to predict future travel behaviors and trends, enabling more effective marketing strategies.

Why It Works for Travel Websites: The focus on traveler behavior and competitive benchmarking gives travel agencies actionable insights to improve conversions and optimize marketing campaigns based on real-time travel demand.

2. Sojern

Overview: Sojern is an analytics and marketing platform built specifically for travel companies. It focuses on helping travel businesses target travelers through data-driven insights. This is one software to look into closely.

Key Features:

• Travel Path Analysis: Tracks the complete travel journey, including search behavior, booking windows, destination preferences, and cross-channel touchpoints.
• Targeted Campaigns: Sojern helps travel agencies create data-backed, targeted advertising campaigns aimed at high-intent travelers across the web, mobile, and social channels.
• Travel-Specific Data: Sojern’s data partnerships with airlines, hotels, and car rental companies allow it to provide a comprehensive view of global travel trends and individual traveler profiles.
• Dynamic Audience Segmentation: Automatically segments audiences based on real-time travel behaviors, helping agencies create highly targeted offers for specific traveler groups.

Why It Works for Travel Websites: Sojern’s ability to optimize campaigns based on traveler intent and behavior is highly effective in attracting high-value customers at the right time.

3. GoodData Travel Analytics Solution

Here are the key benefits of GoodData for travel companies, especially for predictive analytics:

• Predictive Analytics for Traveler Behavior: offers advanced machine learning tools to predict customer behaviors, such as booking trends, travel preferences, and likelihood of conversion. It helps travel companies understand what drives purchases and adapt marketing strategies accordingly.  Your travel company can better anticipate travel customer actions to tailor your offers to them.
• Unified Data Integration: fuses multiple data sources, such as booking engines, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, and social media providing a holistic view of customer interactions across many online platforms.
• Customizable Dashboards and Reports:  Focus on KPIs with tailored dashboards and reports specific to travelers needs, including customer segmentation, booking trends, and website behavior.

Why Gooddata might for your Travel WebSite: It has quality tools that leverage its data integrated across various platforms might us, to create unified views of your customers, and to predict their content and buying behavior.

Informing all Your Marketing Decisions

Having deep insights is essential for high-performance travel content marketing and advertising conversions. The more we know about your target traveler, their interests and intent, the higher the conversion rates you’ll enjoy. And you’ll be able to upsell more effectively too.

I hope we can utilize such tools when I work with your travel company. Because it will make your content very powerful. You’ll enjoy the benefits of deep insights and find the ROI very palatable!

Contact Gord at 416 998 6246.

Title illustration courtesy of Wannapik.