As per a recent report on the travel booking process, almost $3 trillion in travel bookings will be abandoned in 2018 while using online booking portals.
The challenge is to minimise booking abandonment rates by providing the best possible customer experience and reduce as many abandoned bookings as they can.
Below are some of the common issues.
Lengthy and complex booking process
While gathering information from visitors about traveller details, passport numbers, selection of seating and so on, the booking process makes them frustrated and they leave the process.
Long research process
Usually many of the travel purchases are pricey for the booker which also requires lots of thought.
As stated by TripAdvisor, 80% of travel research takes more than four weeks to complete. In other words people visit multiple sites, sometimes start a booking and abandon them before making a final decision.
The challenge of mobile
According to a study, mobile now accounts for more than 41% of all traffic to travel sites, but just over 18% of bookings.
This hints that, while people are browsing and does research on mobile, fewer want to complete the transaction there. Now a day’s most of the travel sites are optimised for mobile.
Below are some suggestions offered
Help travellers to research holidays and prices
Travel sites should help customers by providing transparency over pricing which helps to make an informed decision and avoid adding ‘extras’ which bump up the final price.
Reviews can play a key part of the decision-making process. Reminder mail about booking details can be sent to users with a saved booking data which can prompt customers to complete a booking.
Provide a choice of payment methods
Multiple payment options like debit and credit card or other popular online payments can help travel sites to appeal to a broader range of customers.
Courtesy: Tnooz
Author: Manoj .S
Manoj works as Team Lead in Teknokraaft and looks into the Flights vertical primarily.