I’ve said it before and here I go again…we’ve become a world of independent travel researchers and planners. What used to be a phone call to a local travel agent is now a project consuming hours of research time – time that most of us don’t have BUT the flipside is it’s hard to trust anyone else to find the best travel options for us. In this article, I explore some little-known facts that offer insight into the current state of travel searches and also tips to overcome search frustrations.
Travel search woes:
The facts support it. We’re spending a lot of time and are also underwhelmed with travel search options.
According to Expedia Media Solutions, the average online travel search includes 38 site visits.
Amadeus Online Travel study reports we typically conduct 50 online travel searches in our quest to find the best travel options. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed agree that they check too many sources of travel information before making a decision.
In 2017, according to Phocuswright/Google, one-third of those surveyed say they are uncomfortable researching and booking travel on their phone – nearly unchanged from 2015. Two-thirds of hotel and flight loyalty members would choose a different airline or hotel for a better price.
In this 2018 Skift Research article, Google’s Rob Torres says, “travelers — especially in more developed markets — still say they are more comfortable planning their entire trip on a desktop.” And he continues, “Over 90 percent of travelers say they’ve tried to complete their planning on a smartphone, but experienced a poor and slow mobile site and/or app. They are willing to hop from app to app, site to site, and even app to site to find the best and most relevant piece of information.”
Source: Amadeus Online Travel 2020
How can we make travel searching easier?
So what’s the answer for improving the travel search experience?
Better travel tools!
Comprehensive travel tools help travel searchers make decisions. After price, the ability to compare all options in one place is one of the most important elements when shopping for the best travel deal.
A new breed of travel tool
OppteeTM Travel Search is a new breed of app that minimizes the time you spend searching for that perfect travel deal. It eases the pain points that mobile and online travel searchers encounter. Here’s a list of popular travel search frustrations and how Opptee addresses those frustrations:
- One-third of online searchers are still uncomfortable booking travel by phone
With Opptee, you have the option of researching and booking on a variety of device mediums: mobile phone, tablet/iPad, and Windows computer.
- Two-thirds of hotel and flight loyalty members would choose a different airline or hotel for a better price.
Opptee accesses the largest number of the most popular travel sites from one place. Using Opptee, it’s easy to search many sites and the more sites you search the better deals you find.
As well, for loyalty members, Opptee links to existing travel accounts (like Expedia, United Air, Hilton) and enables you to complete bookings that add to your reward points.
- Comprehensive tools help searchers make decisions
Opptee offers wide-ranging choices for searching the most popular sites for flights, hotels, cruises, car rentals and vacation packages. Figure 1 shows Opptee’s extensive flight search options.
- Searchers want the ability to compare all travel options in one place
That’s one of the main advantages of using Opptee; you search and shortlist several travel options, then return to your results to compare choices on any number of search providers. Using a tablet or mobile phone, the comparison is as easy as a left or right swipe. Using a Windows computer or a tablet, multiple results can be viewed using the dual screens feature making comparisons accessible in side-by-side mode.
- It takes too much time to search all the travel apps and sites I’d like to
Opptee Travel Search helps you do what you already do but faster. It is the fastest app for comparing travel prices. It speeds-up searches by automatically inserting your trip dates and destination into the search providers you choose for hotels, flights, cruises, car rentals, and vacations. Just enter your information once, then quickly search the sites you care about and compare prices. It’s fast and easy.
- Downloading multiple travel search apps to my mobile is time-consuming and gobbles up space I’d rather use for other apps, music and pictures
With Opptee, there is no need to download multiple travel apps. The Opptee all-in-one app, includes all your favorite travel searches – from Expedia to Priceline to Delta to Trivago to Hilton, and more. Within the Opptee app, just select a variety of them to search, then shortlist your results and compare your choices all from the one app.
And another bonus, Opptee continues to add the newest and best travel search sites introducing you to options you may not have tried or thought of. It also acts as a reminder list of the sites you want to search.
Even with online issues, it’s likely that mobile, tablet and desktop travel searches will continue to improve and grow. With the newest travel search tools like Opptee, current issues are overcome. It’s just a matter of knowing where to turn for the right tools.
Opptee Travel Search: One Place. All Travel.
