Sagittarius recently conducted a research piece in partnership with Sitecore and Travolution looking at the most crucial boardroom questions facing brands in the travel industry. Most importantly, we wanted to be able to answer these questions and help said decision makers understand the wider travel technology landscape and where digital sales opportunities may be found.
One of the most interesting topics explored was around digital transformation and the industry’s ‘shift to social’ where we asked brands their thoughts on how seriously their business was taking it and in which areas.
Interestingly, of the 150 that were invited to take part in the research, 19% of respondents said Facebook was the best route to market for ROI putting it at the top spot with Google creeping behind at 17%. This is even more interesting when you consider that brands tend to invest more in Search PPC over Social, maybe this will help brands acknowledge that a multi-channel digital strategy is required if they want to reach their target market. However, the idea that social is playing a heavier part in delivering the best performance for brands is further strengthened with 29% of brands citing it as the area where their company is most embracing digital transformation/ change.
It’s also very encouraging to also see that 78% of those surveyed believe their senior team have Digital Transformation on the board-level agenda. This data tells us there’s a huge appetite for Digital Transformation in the industry with the only setback being the percentage of IT budgets being spent on new projects; brands need to focus on driving buy-in for these projects from the c-suite if they want to deliver better customer experiences.
The travel industry has always been reliant on technology, with booking and reservation systems needing to seamlessly integrate with websites and payment gateways, usually at the forefront of the latest innovative techniques for delivering customer experience, however, the results also show us that this technology is a significant cost of running a successful travel business and budgets need to work hard to deliver ROI.
We are encouraged about the future of travel and transport in the digital space and would encourage brands to continue to embrace new technology and cost-effective, cloud-based software solutions if they want to stay ahead of the game and agile enough to adapt in an ever-changing landscape.
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This blog was originally posted via Sagittarius on 26th June 2019.