Unlocking the purchasing power of group travelers

13.07.2024 - 07:11 / traveldailynews.com

Group travel is surging, with nearly half of group travelers valuing multigenerational trips. Companies like Airbnb are responding by adding features that facilitate group planning, reflecting the trend’s significance for customer satisfaction and business growth.

Group travel is as popular as ever, with friends and families looking for new ways to connect, opting to spend memorable time together on holidays. A recent report revealed that nearly half of surveyed travelers believe it’s important to go on a multigenerational family trip, including both immediate and extended family members. What’s more, 54% of families who travel are planning a family vacation this year.

Catering to the needs of group travelers is therefore paramount and industry household names such as hotels.com, Expedia, and most recently Airbnb have all responded by introducing group travel planning features. But travel companies of all sizes can’t afford to ignore this trend and miss out on opportunities for increased customer satisfaction and business growth.

As evidenced by World Travel Market data, it’s friends and family who have the biggest influence on our travel decisions. However, most travel websites are designed with an individual in mind, overlooking the importance of incorporating recommendations and opinions from others into the booking process.

What’s more, when a user visits a travel site, eight out of ten times they represent a group of people that will be traveling together. And even if people end up going on a solo trip, the decision process is a group process as it typically involves seeking recommendations and/or validation from those whose opinions we value most, our friends and family.

In the physical world, customers effortlessly access this insight when shopping together with their loved ones. The travel booking journey is more nuanced, however, particularly when more than 148 million travel bookings are made online annually. While people can still seek advice and discuss plans through social media platforms and instant messaging apps like WhatsApp, this process is lengthy and troublesome. Importantly, when these conversations are happening away from the travel website itself, it also means that vendors lose all the valuable insights into customer behavior, group dynamics, and buying intent. This is precisely why travel sites need to facilitate real-time social interactions for users, allowing group members to organize trips exclusively on the site, together and with ease.

Many forward-thinking travel vendors are achieving this by deploying software solutions such as Joyned, providing a cross-website, secure space on the site for groups to discuss and book trips together. At the same time, this enables