We know, it sounds complicated. The truth is it doesn’t have to be that way though, and we are going to simplify travel analytics for you so that there is even less mystery around it.
You see, travel marketers can use analytics to identify areas for improvement in their advertising campaigns, marketing efforts, travel website, and tour offers. They can also use it to get to know their customers better and build stronger relationships.
All of this leads to a refined business offering with your customer in mind. As we see it, there are two areas where analytics can serve you, in customer service and for business insights.
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Let’s focus on social media first as it forms a large part of travel marketing today and really works across the booking funnel.
Advertising on the relative platforms that your existing clients, as well as your potential clients, are present on serves to extend your reach and raise awareness of your brand.
You are also able to nurture the relationship you have with your existing clients as they likely follow you on these platforms. Reconnecting with them here presents the opportunity to sell your tours.
Aside from the obvious data such as likes, followers, comments, or even impressions, there are more in-depth metrics that provide a better insight into how much impact your activity on the platform is having.
Ideally, travel analytics should indicate whether your posts or advertisements are driving traffic to your website or resulting in a sales conversion for your business. This will depend on your goals.
Each platform provides an analytics panel for a business account. Access insights on your profiles to analyze data which can be used to improve your business offering.
The sort of metrics you should be on the lookout for when advertising include:
Cost Per Impression (CPM) is the number of times an ad is seen divided by the cost of the campaign. While useful for brand awareness, an impression does not necessarily indicate that a traveler has engaged with your business. It simply indicates your online reach.
Cost Per Click (CPC) is the cost of the campaign divided by the number of times people click on the advert. When you receive a click on your advert, this can be an indication of interest. If the click does not result in a click through to your website, you can use the data collected here to retarget the potentially interested travelers with more customized adverts.
Click Through Rate (CTR) is the number of click-throughs to your website divided by the number of impressions your ad receives. If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, this is an important metric to analyze and watch closely.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is the final target metric to look at from a social media advertising campaign. This measures your total monetary investment in a campaign to land a paying customer.
Analyzing this sort of information will help you to get an idea of what is working in your marketing campaign, what areas need to be refined, and where you should focus your resources.
As you know, the travel industry is a competitive one, especially in the online space. Price and perceived value can cause a shift in business, even if your company is offering the same high standards that it always has.
Forging a relationship with your customers will work in your favor in this case, as travelers are looking for a personalized experience in a saturated digital space. Unfortunately, with the ability to access millions of people through social media platforms or your website, comes the loss of face to face interaction which provides a personal touch to the booking process.
By pre-empting your customer’s needs and personalizing offers to upsell and cross-sell within your business to them, you can surpass their expectations and secure a reservation.
How do you know what they need though? This is where travel analytics can assist you.
By gathering the right sort of information from your clients who have bought into a tour, you can identify any gaps that are missing in their booking path.
For example, if your booking form includes a request for information on their travel insurance policy or method of travel from the airport, you will be able to identify if they have already secured these services, and if not, your opportunity to step in with an offer has now been identified.
The key is to find out this information the moment they confirm a reservation and then highlight missing fields within the CRM. This way your travel agents will be able to identify the missing information and reach out to your clients with offers which will improve their travel experience and lessen the admin on the booking side.
Through your social media profiles, advertising channels, or great SEO skills, people are going to find your website.
Once they do, you want to know how they interact with it. How long do they spend browsing it, and which pages do they spend the most time on? What device are they using to browse it – mobile or desktop? How did they find your website in the first place – organic or social, perhaps referring channels or direct, and whereabouts in the world do they come from?
Your free Google Analytics profile will tell you all of this information. As you can see, this is all a lot of key data for your travel business. What do you do with all of this information though?
One thing is to analyze the data month to month and year to year.
Obviously, depending on your particular business, tourism is typically seasonal. Activity on your site will likely increase during your busy season, but it should also increase whenever you run a marketing campaign.
Again, this is dependent on your campaign goals but naturally, if it is to increase traffic to your website or sell a particular tour on a web page, then you can track this information in the travel analytics taken from your profile.
Also, you can experiment using AB testing on your website. Track the response you receive when implementing the different aspects of whatever it is that you are testing, whether it be visuals, format, user experience, etc. Through analyzing the traffic, interaction, and behavior of visitors on your site, you can determine which version works best at achieving your goals.
Overall, travel analytics data can help shape important decisions that you make for your travel business. Ultimately your goal is to sell more tours, so knowing what it is that is holding your business back, whether it be an undiscoverable website, inefficient marketing, or poor customer service, having something actionable to drive the way forward can help you to improve the aspects that need it most.