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.”