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It goes without saying at this point of the Coronavirus crisis that tourism industry is suffering huge impact but we can’t forget this is a temporary situation and live will eventually come back to normality. When the awaited moment comes, companies can expect an scenario way different than the one expected just few months ago and those with fastest capacity to adapt will definitely have a chance to make a big hit in the market. 

At this moment nothing can be 100% assured but we would like to share with the Travel Industry community our list of 14 trends that markets may experience in the next months and how TravelC clients can respond to them after reading hundreds of editorials, reports, etc. and taking the Chinese market as reference which is expecting to recover domestic travel in two months according to the CEO of Trip.com the biggest chinese OTA https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/chinese-domestic-travel-set-to-recover-within-months-tripcom-ceo.html 

1. People want to travel

It’s not all bad news, after weeks of quarantine, people need to escape from such monotonous routine as well as breathing fresh air. Even those who were not planning to travel will probably consider leaving home for a while after the long confinement period.

What TravelC clients can do about?

Thanks to its super-powerful dynamic packaging technology, TravelC gives their clients the ability to create as many trip ideas (or digital brochures) as they need and share them in the digital world to easily inspire people at their homes and, of course, finalize in bookings. 

2. Last minute 

Actually, it was a trend already before the crisis but since uncertainty has become in part of daily live lately the period from booking date and travel date is getting extremely shortened.

What TravelC clients can do about?

The system is ready to easily adapt the release days of each booking engine, for instance, zero release days in only hotel booking engine but three release days in flight+hotel booking engine. This can be re-configured as many times as needed.

In addition, managing bookings and operational tasks is very easy with TravelC due to a very comprehensive bookings management panel in the backoffice and a very low ratio of errors that we keep working on reducing every day.

3. Domestic tourism

People will prefer to travel inside their own countries due to unpredictable border closings and to boost their countries’ economies, not to mention inevitable restrictions to enter in some countries.

What TravelC clients can do about?

Take advantage of the no limitation in number of users and give supplier access to as many region product providers as they can reach.

Order a dedicated microsite copy for this kind of trips and adapt all booking engines to the domestic market.

4. Travel by car

We can expect first trends of internal travel demand will probably involve self-driven itineraries in order to avoid shared transportations so it’s time to start designing attractive regional excursion making the best of each area and showing the hidden pearls of the region.

What TravelC clients can do about?

In few weeks, TravelCompositor will give all their clients for free a brand new booking engine never seen in the market before in order to help them to start selling domestic trips as soon as possible. This booking engine will offer 4 kinds of trips involving car driving: fly&drive, renting cars with or without choffeur/guide AKA "private tailor made tours" and driving with the traveler’s own car. 

This new booking engine’s flow will include a “routing” feature with specific functions to design the route and itineraries on the road, number of Kilometers and ability to show where to stop throughout the route as well as the ability to book all necessary services in one single session like the rest of TravelC booking engines. Once again TravelC is focusing all efforts in their client’s success who will be able to respond to the latest demands of the market thanks to this exclusive world patent.

5. Security and guarantees

Any aspect that gives sense of security to the consumer will be well received.

What TravelC clients can do about?

From the backoffice it’s possible to load any type of travel insurance as well as new types of insurances that may come in the near future covering today’s needs.

TravelC has recently included an easy to find only refundable rates filter in the hotel product results.

In additon, it's very easy to insert a chatbox in your microsites to speak directly with clients and assist them during the booking process.

6. More FIT and less groups

Passengers will prefer to travel at their own pace rather than traveling with organized trips for big groups so they are free to adapt to unforeseen events while traveling.

Inside the FIT sector, we can expect an emerging market: big family trips, since many family members have been forced to maintain distance after confinement may consider travel together. This means an opportunity to offer your tours to private groups.

What TravelC clients can do about?

It’s a fact that TravelC is a great tool to sell FIT trips thanks to the wide range of services that you can package in one single booking: flights, trains, buses, ferries, hotels, houses, apartments, activities, tickets, transfers, rent a car and insurances.

In order to respond to the emerging market of private groups they can load as many local closed tours as they can get to contract with local DMCs that normally will be found with immediate confirmation and make them available in their Packages booking engine.

7. Staying away from big crowds

Fear to fall again in a second outbreak will force the traveler to keep an eye on less crowded touristic services such as:

• Rural tourism
• Family-owned hotels, Boutique Hotels and Bed&Breakfast rather than big all inclusive resorts
• Apartments, houses and villas
• Private transfers rather than shared ones
• Renting cars and even driving your own car rather than public transports 

What TravelC clients can do about?

TravelC is working on connecting more providers of these type of products to offer non-start-rated allotments also known as non-hotel allotments in the accommodations search results.

If you think selling this kind of products can become your new core business you can also order the specific booking engine for houses, villas and apartments to highlight this products or including this type of products in the hotels booking engine in case you haven’t contacted yet.

8. Digital nomads

Currently, all of us have been forced to become digital nomads. Those companies that will wait to come back to the office will generate a big number of workers who will be able to do their jobs anywhere and after quarantine many of us will consider a good idea to keep working remotely while visiting new places to escape the tough routine of the previous weeks.

What TravelC clients can do about?

Since escalating in TravelC is very fast and low cost, they may consider create a new microsite specific for the emerging market to encourage and inspire people to travel while working remotely.

9. “Bleisure”

The fusion of Business and Leisure has been becoming more popular lately as companies encourage their employees in taking advantage of their business trips to spend weekend or few days off on destination. For those who won’t go on holiday cause it’s time to work hard this kind of trips may be a way to reduce stress.

What TravelC clients can do about?

Thanks to its super flexible system a trip can be easily modified in seconds by adding more nights to stay or changing the returning transport as many times as needed before booking so companies can allow employees to modify the trip idea according to their personal preferences.

10. Promotion of loyalty

Accommodations have an opportunity to promote loyalty among their clients by bringing confidence with clean installations and security measures as passengers may prefer to repeat accommodations they know are safe rather than booking for services they don’t know.

What TravelC clients can do about?

They have at their disposal amazing tools to promote loyalty among their clients like the Promo Codes that can be given to a client to discount in the next purchase or the Rewards module that will provide with the power to develop a full loyalty program like the biggest players in the market.

11. Destination representatives will be ready to talk and even finance new projects

Tourist boards will need to take action and promote connections of Tour Operators and OTAs with DMCs and local suppliers in a harder way than before. We can expect governments will give to this kind of organizations the ability to inject funds for projects that help promotion of the destinations.

What TravelC clients can do about?

Whether it's a Tour Operator, a DMC, Travel Network or OTA our clients have at their disposal the tools to adapt fast to the new scenarios as TravelC is 100% scalable: you can order special microsite copies for regions or countries in collaboration with tourism boards.

12. Unconventional destinations

After quarantine it wouldn’t be surprising that people look for something totally different and away from crowds so nature destinations may get to be more demanded than cities. 

The health quality of a country will be also key. We can expect destinations with poor health infrastructure will suffer decrease of demand towards those with better health programs.

What TravelC clients can do about?

In the Backoffice there's access to the Trip Quote Report panel that provides with insights of how trends are developed so they can respond to the demands.

13. Unconventional seasons

Destinations will do their best to reduce the impact of the outbreak, including waving the seasonal periods. For instance, Ibiza which is the biggest nightclub destination from May to September is running the campaign #moveyourspring encouraging travelers to visit the island until end of the year: https://mixmag.net/read/ibiza-move-your-spring-november-season-campaign-news

What TravelC clients can do about?

In addition to the Trip Quote Report panel microsites can be connected to Google Analytics, Google E-commerce and Google Tag Manager to allow track of traffic and behavior of users.

14.Theme-oriented holidays

Destination may be no longer the most important factor when planning a holiday, instead, the purpose of the trip itself as from now people priorities will probably change. Some themes we find reasonable that could experience a growth of demand are "Family", "Sports", "Eco-friendly"...

What TravelC clients can do about?

Use the themes and categories function to associate trip ideas to different themes and categories and display them in the same landing page.

In addition, as many ribbon categories as needed can be created to tag trip ideas and organize them at their convenience.

We hope this list of trends and things that TravelC clients can do inspires you and helps you drive your business to the right directions fast in order to reduce the impact of this situation to the maximum and, who knows, maybe these short term changes may become the best thing you could do for your company’s future.

Want to know more about TravelC? Check our presentation.

Or contact us at sales@travelcompositor.com | +34 971 557 243