Challenges in Capturing Growth in Experience Travel

18.09.2024 - 20:55 / skift.com / Taylor Swift

The desire to travel for experiences is expected to keep growing, but it’s not without challenges. Leaders in providing travel experiences spoke at the Skift Global Forum in New York Wednesday: Ruzwana Bashir, founder and CEO of Peek; Jules Seeley, senior partner at McKinsey & Company; and Nishank Gopalkrishnan, chief commercial officer of TUI Musement. 

Consumers are looking at the things that feel unique or special — the social media moments — and that is an opportunity for entrepreneurs, hotels, airlines to tap into, Bashir said.

“With experiences and people traveling, I think we have seen in the last decade a big change in how people are looking for experiences,” Bashir said. “Social media has a big role today… there’s a drive towards having some of these memorable moments that people care about. The spend is up.”

Experiences currently generate over $1 billion in revenue for the travel industry. And they’re becoming more and more important when customers make decisions about travel.  

That has also meant an overwhelming amount of information to dig through. The number of Eiffel Tower tours has gone from 250 in 2019 to 750 currently, Gopalkrishnan said. “How do you navigate through that?” 

TUI offers retail advisors who help customers make their travel decisions. “Over the last five years, we’ve seen a big shift in terms of people coming into these stores and saying, hey, I want to go to a particular destination because I want to do something there,” Gopalkrishnan said.

Taylor Swift has undoubtedly moved economies with her Eras tour. That kind of thematic travel — for big concerts or sporting events — is adding to sales, with the average person traveling for a major sporting event or concert spending over $1,000 on hotels, dining, and airlines. 

But “it’s quite difficult to live off of that,” Gopalkrishnan said. The events aren’t necessarily duplicated and they have a limited life span. Case in point: the Eras tour ends in December. They are also different from regular travel in that usually you’ll book the concert or sporting event first, then airline and hotel later. 

With non-thematic experiences, those are often booked within the last seven days before travel or even on-site with the hotel playing a key role. 

Still, it’s an opportunity for airlines and hotels to offer experiences while customers are in the booking process, but they don’t necessarily have the information they need to do so. 

“It’s maybe not only a value piece, it’s that they want to be part of that customer experience,” Gopalkrishnan said. “The main reason they want to be part of the experiences conversation is because those are the memories you take back as travelers.” 

In fact, an analysis of Nordic holiday packages found