Understanding the traveler’s online path to purchase

Travelers today are influenced and inspired by the world around them, and it’s shaping how they plan and book trips. From a breathtaking destination featured in an ad to recommendations from social media influencers and tips and reviews on travel websites, the touchpoints for influencing and engaging with travelers continue to evolve. So, how can you show up in meaningful and effective ways throughout the booking path?    

Our recent custom research with Luth Research, The Path to Purchase: Uncovering How Travelers Plan and Book,* explores the online path to purchase and traveler behavior insights in seven geographic markets (Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Mexico, the U.K., and the U.S.) to uncover opportunities in the traveler path to purchase. We conducted research using digital tracking data from a panel of 70,000+ travelers and survey data from more than 5,700 respondents across the geographic markets. From how much content travelers browse to their go-to planning resources and booking preferences, read on for insights into how travelers are inspired, searching for, and booking travel to help you better engage and convert throughout the online travel purchase journey.

While the typical consumer spends hours online each day, it’s important to understand how travelers spend their time online leading up to a trip. Insights from the digital data panel reveal that, on average, travelers view 141 pages of travel content in the 45 days prior to booking a trip. These page views are spread across a variety of online resources, including airline websites, meta travel websites, online travel agency (OTA) websites, search engines, and more.

OTAs are a particularly popular resource, with 80% of travelers visiting an OTA at some point before making a travel purchase. This indicates that even if travelers ultimately book on another website, they likely visited an OTA for inspiration, research, or planning purposes.

Travelers also spend an extensive amount of time with travel content in the 45 days leading up to a trip, consuming, on average, just over five hours of content (303 minutes). This number is as high as 524 minutes, or 8 hours and 44 minutes, in the U.S., illustrating just how much competition there is to stay top of mind with travelers.

As travelers are consuming vast amounts of content during their path to purchase, it’s essential that you stand out in a cluttered and competitive landscape.

Inspiration — when travelers first start thinking about a trip — is a critical opportunity to influence traveler decisions. During this phase, travelers spend a lot of time looking for inspiration, ideas, and information, including destination options. Survey data revealed that nearly three in five travelers did not have a specific destination in mind or considered multiple destinations when they first decided to take a trip, indicating that there’s an opportunity to influence destination selection during the traveler’s path to purchase.

Travelers also turn to multiple resources for inspiration, creating an opportunity for you to connect with travelers across multiple touchpoints throughout the journey. Among travelers who use social media during their path to purchase, three-fourths (77%) use it during the inspiration phase.

Travelers turn to social media for destination inspiration, lodging recommendations and inspiration, trip deals, and more, making it an important channel for brand engagement. Across online travel resources, destination websites (45%) are the top resource used for inspiration, followed by meta travel websites (36%) and OTAs (35%), among those travelers who use these resources during the path to purchase.

The survey findings also illustrate how advertising impacts traveler decisions, particularly early in the purchase path. On average, 19% of travelers said advertising influenced their decision to book a trip, with the majority of these travelers influenced during the inspiration phase.

Social media and advertising are important influences during the inspiration phase and effective marketing strategies for connecting with travelers and influencing traveler decisions. Our advertising solutions and targeting capabilities can help you stand out from the crowd and effectively engage with travelers, wherever they are in their shopping journey.

During the research and planning phase, travelers are actively looking at various options, gathering information, and narrowing their choices. At this point in the shopping journey, their use of many different resources spikes as they compare options. As they move into the planning stage, travelers identify a few priority resources.

Top five resources used during the research phase, among those using the resources

1. Search engines: 72%
2. Meta travel websites: 69%
3. Social media: 69%
4. Destination websites: 68%
5. Online travel agencies: 59%

During the planning phase, the top resources, among travelers using the resource, are OTAs (44%) and meta travel websites (38%).

The digital data reinforces the role of OTAs throughout the path to purchase — beyond booking. When looking at travelers who made a purchase on a hotel website or app, 61% of those shoppers also visited an OTA during their journey. Similarly, 52% of travelers who booked on an airline website or app and 58% of car site purchasers visited an OTA in their shopping journey.

Travelers are using multiple resources throughout the path to purchase, especially during the research and planning phases, making it essential to have a brand presence beyond your owned channels, such as on OTAs. Strategic partnerships can help you extend your reach and presence as part of your multi-channel strategy, as many travelers use OTAs as a cross-shopping and comparison resource, in addition to booking.

Booking is the final step in the travel consumer journey when travelers make a purchase. Although a significant amount of time and effort goes into determining where travelers will go and what they will do on their trip, a number of considerations determine where and how travelers book their trip. When asked about their most recent trip, 51% of travelers booked on an OTA, 37% booked on an airline website or app, and 23% booked on a hotel website or app.

When it comes to where they choose to shop for and book their trip, nearly half (49%) of travelers said getting the best price is an important factor and 31% consider their positive previous experience with a travel brand. More than one-fourth (28%) look for travel brands that offer flexible cancellation policies or refundable rates. The most important factors differ slightly when looking at the type of purchase. A positive previous experience and travel ratings and reviews are more important to vacation rental bookers, while flight shoppers are more concerned with finding competitive prices.

Loyalty and membership incentives are also considerations for travelers, and key factors influencing where to book. Seventy-nine percent of travel rewards program members feel it’s important to book with a brand where they’re a loyalty member. Our loyalty program, One Key™, allows travelers to leverage our OneKeyCash™ while still booking with their favorite brands or with a new brand they may have discovered on our website or app. By leveraging One Key, you can increase demand from high-value travelers by giving travelers flexibility to earn and use rewards spanning various trip types across Expedia.com, Hotels.com, and Vrbo.

In an increasingly fragmented digital landscape and travel industry, staying up to date on where and how to show up for travelers is key. For more findings on what drives traveler decisions throughout the online purchase path, download the full Path to Purchase report, and check out the snapshots with insights by country and for hotels, airlines, and vacation rentals.