As con­sumers solid­i­fy their end-of-the-year trav­el plans, brands need to take extra care to ensure their web­sites and apps don’t go down and also to offer incen­tives where pos­si­ble. That’s accord­ing to the results of a new hol­i­day trav­el sur­vey.

Forty-one per­cent of Amer­i­cans are plan­ning to book hol­i­day trav­el this year and will use web­sites and apps “for every­thing from pur­chas­ing air­line tick­ets to upgrad­ing seats.” That’s accord­ing to a hol­i­day trav­el behav­ior study from cloud and mobile test­ing com­pa­ny SOASTA. The study looked at the habits and pref­er­ences of Amer­i­cans plan­ning hol­i­day trips.

Addi­tion­al­ly, 57 per­cent of respon­dents said a poor­ly per­form­ing web­site or app “would be more frus­trat­ing than deal­ing with the TSA.” Fur­ther, the biggest frus­tra­tion they list­ed was app fail­ure when check­ing flight sta­tus.

Accord­ing to SOASTA, 34 per­cent of respon­dents will be book­ing hol­i­day trav­el through a web­site and 13 per­cent will opt for a mobile app. In addi­tion, 31 per­cent say they are wor­ried about expe­ri­enc­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems when book­ing trav­el, includ­ing: slow load­ing, unre­spon­sive­ness, crash­ing, and bad inter­face.

“One of the things we tried to under­stand through the sur­vey was how do peo­ple plan and buy trips and how much of it is online and also rein­force the fact that not only do [brands] need good design around how dig­i­tal prop­er­ties are devel­oped and dis­played to the con­sumer, but they also need to make sure [the sites and apps] work in a fash­ion that meets [con­sumers’] expec­ta­tions,” said Peter Galvin, vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing at SOASTA. “There are things peo­ple told us and we’ve seen in oth­er sur­veys — if the app doesn’t load quick­ly or is unre­spon­sive or crash­es, not only will con­sumers go to a dif­fer­ent app, but when they are look­ing at some oth­er activ­i­ty, they will bypass the app they had a bad user expe­ri­ence on.”

That means brands need to con­sid­er per­for­mance in the designs of their sites and apps and how their con­sumers are inter­act­ing with them, he said.

Con­sumers are also using web­sites and apps to upgrade their flights. Forty-five per­cent of hol­i­day trav­el­ers said they would be moti­vat­ed to upgrade their air trav­el, list­ing fac­tors like:

• Sat­is­fy­ing a need to unwind fol­low­ing a stress­ful hol­i­day.
• Avoid­ing shar­ing a flight with ram­bunc­tious or loud chil­dren.
• Cheer­ing them­selves up before see­ing their rel­a­tives.

The study, which was con­duct­ed online by Har­ris Poll among about 2,000 U.S. adults, also found three out of four Amer­i­cans would con­sid­er delay­ing their flight arrival dur­ing the hol­i­days by 24 hours or more for an incen­tive, like a free flight. In addi­tion, 41 per­cent of respon­dents said the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a first-class upgrade could be enough incen­tive to delay their flight by 24 hours or more.

And, per SOASTA, oth­er “pop­u­lar” incen­tives for delay­ing flight arrival by 24 hours include a free hotel stay near the air­port (38 per­cent), dis­count­ed future trav­el (30 per­cent), extra reward points (20 per­cent) and, believe it or not, a chance to sit next to Renee Zell­weger (6 per­cent).

A SOASTA rep said the Zell­weger response was one of 10 options “with Renee being top­i­cal” in light of plas­tic surgery rumors ear­li­er this year.

“I think…why you’re see­ing so many loy­al­ty pro­grams is that it’s about con­tin­u­ing to have a dia­log with cus­tomers and so one of the crit­i­cal ways to do that is hav­ing a loy­al­ty pro­gram that, for exam­ple, gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have more inter­ac­tion with con­sumers so they feel close to the brand and they feel spe­cial as an indi­vid­ual inter­act­ing with that brand across again all of the dif­fer­ent chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion you have with a con­sumer,” Galvin said. “Just being able to con­tin­ue to have a dia­log and have con­sumers engage with you will cause them to be much more respon­sive to future offers and incen­tives.”