NB: This is a guest article by Mary Song, founder of Yuupon.
Are we in the middle of a distribution, marketing and research revolution in the travel industry? Some might say we are. Here is why.
Anybody who loves to travel, or just loves to dream about travel, knows the feeling of being transported by the majestic images and tantalizing descriptions of vacation destinations near and far found in glossy magazines, colorful newspaper sections and fabulous friends' Facebook photos, most of the time filing them away with a sigh in their mental "maybe someday" file.
Those same people then log onto their transactional travel site of choice (Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, etc) to book their real-world trip to visit Aunt Helen in Boca Raton or to find the best deal on hotels in Vegas for yet another friend’s bachelorette party.
Boca and Vegas are admittedly exciting and beautiful destinations, but why is it that the person who regularly dreams far outside of the travel box to places like Bora Bora and Egypt more often than not ends up booking vacations inside of it and not where they first read about the trip?
This divide between inspiration and transaction has plagued the industry for years and theories and diagrams such as the Bow-Tie have been examined and analyzed in an attempt to figure out how to bridge the gap with varying degrees of success, but what the real problem is remains unanswered.
1 Is the problem financial?
It’s true that most average travelers cannot afford, or imagine how to even book, many of the exotic accommodations or pricey airfares to the far-flung destinations profiled in their favorite glossy magazines.
So, do they then abandon the mere thought of pricing out something with a similar flavor on a transactional site?
2 Is it a lack of vision?
While the transactional sites do a great job of displaying options if one knows where she want to go, they only do a mediocre job of enticing the undecided with relatively mundane Special Deals to well-traversed locations.
So, do these travel dreamers even know where to begin researching more exotic and exciting, yet bookable, vacations?
Enter the flash deal and daily deal sites that offer the best solution to this problem by eliminating that gap between non-bookable, inspirational research and immediately-bookable, yet not contextualized, stand-alone vacation packages and hotels.
Because these flash and daily deals are designed to attract new and more reluctant customers that read glossy magazines, they are packaged and priced in a way that reflects the best of both mediums:
The descriptions of flash and daily deal vacations are created to reflect those found in glossy travel magazines with a focus on the experience the traveler will have, while simultaneously providing the ability to book that trip immediately, like a transactional site.
The traveler who has read and dreamed about booking a 4-star hotel stay in Paris for a long weekend, but never really considered doing it, is now presented with an affordable, accessible and immediately available opportunity to do so.
Same for the person who books their annual Disney vacation with the kids while dreaming of a romantic African safari for two.
The regularity and diversity of offers from flash travel sites is making the impossible dream vacation a bookable reality and more and more travelers are jumping on the bandwagon.
So is the flash and daily deal space really the elusive sweet spot between the inspirational and transactional?
By the growing number of companies jumping in, hotel rooms being filled and subscribers signing on and taking off for new destinations, it certainly is beginning to look that way!
NB: This is a guest article by Mary Song, founder of Yuupon.
NB2: TLabs Showcase - Yuupon.