Amid COVID-19, travel brands must ask: How will people get there?

As the travel industry prepares for a slow and cautious recovery, there is one question that remains critical to defending the core of your travel business. No matter which sector of the travel industry you are in, whether it is airlines, hotels or tours, you should be asking yourself how people will get to you.

Early trends suggest that the obvious answers to that question - trains, taxis and public transport - may not be so obvious anymore.

The story the data tells us 

Recent data from around the world reveals an interesting story: Private driving has become more popular than ever, while recovery rates for other transit modes are languishing.

Apple’s Mobility Trends Data (below) shows that private driving in the United States, as an example, has rebounded quickly back above the pre-COVID baseline. And OAG shows air traffic down 67%, while private driving is up 27%.

Travelers have always demanded confidence in their travel plans, but today that confidence includes health security. Looking at Jayride’s travelers, we can clearly see this behavior in our data.

Since the onset of COVID-19, shared vehicle bookings have declined and private vehicle bookings have increased as a percentage of total bookings. Travelers are opting out of rail and short-haul airfare connections to prefer long-distance rides, with a noticeable 27%-plus increase in median trip distance today compared to March.

Even more impressive, the chart below shows, ride-service companies that have listed their rides as “COVID-19 prepared” on our platform are enjoying a substantial increase in the share of total bookings received since March. These ride-service companies now receive 66 out of every 100 bookings, whereas those same companies received only 43 out of every 100 bookings prior to COVID-19. That’s a whopping 53% boost to their market share based on their “COVID-prepared” offering.

Our travelers support these findings: We survey every traveler’s booking and travel experience with every ride service company. Travelers clearly enjoy increased confidence when pre-booking rides as part of their travel itinerary. Keywords like “clean,” “safe” and even “virus” and “sanitized/sanitizer” are appearing in ever more positive reviews. Transport companies who provide these as central to their service are seeing record high review scores (4.7/5.0 average) and record-high NPS after-travel scores.

Confidence is the new commodity

Businesses that survived the initial impact of COVID-19 and have the runway to outlast it are now reimagining the travel industry and figuring out where they fit inside this new landscape. 

When analyzing the “new travelers” and their needs, I propose the following framework: Travelers will make their purchase decisions based on a new matrix of considerations - cost, convenience and security. 

In today’s world, security isn’t just about traditional dangers, it is a broader concept where the threat is an unseen virus for which the cure is not yet available. And, given the level of disruption we have seen over the last six months, security now also extends to guarding against the risk of losing money on cancellation of airfare or hotel stay, should a lockdown or a travel restriction be imposed without warning.

The traveling public’s need for security is amplified in the current environment. Accordingly, they will be more likely to compromise on cost and convenience for a more secure travel option.

This means that certain travelers will happily pay a premium for a service that exceeds their baseline security requirements. They would even sacrifice convenience, including more intrusive health checks, handling their own bags, slower times-to-destination and reduced ease of access, to achieve the health and financial security they seek.

This new behavioral matrix demonstrates that confidence in security is a key factor businesses have to consider. With that in mind, it is possible to bring to the market traveler-focused solutions that work for these new security needs and to sell them at premium price points that make good economic sense even in the current reduced travel environment.

Door-to-destination unlocks the whole package

As COVID-19 is likely to be around for some time, expect that whenever travelers can control part of their travel plan to increase security and reduce risks, they will do so. By optimizing their safety, they will feel confident in their entire travel plan, and their transit choices form a key part of that feeling of confidence. 

You can offer the most health-secure flight - as AirAsia is trying to do with its new COVID-19 PPE uniforms - but travelers will still have to get to the airport somehow. You can run the best activity in town, but travelers still have to find a way to get to you. 

This means that during and beyond this pandemic, solving traveler’s ground transport is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s no longer ancillary or secondary to the rest of the package. Your risk is to lose your customers entirely if they are not confident in the transit that brings them to your door. 

Your opportunity then is to look at the entire door-to-door experience of their travel and provide them with the complete package, a secure door-to-destination solution to defend your core business. If sufficient confidence can be provided in transit, then people will travel with you once again.

These new expectations from travelers become even more crucial when it comes to corporate travel as the duty of care requirements play an additional role as risk and liability issues arise. From our conversations with large travel management companies, they even indicate that corporate travelers may require their ride service as part of the package or else stay working at home with Zoom. 

As Flight Centre boss Graham Turner is cited saying in the Sydney Morning Herald, “Travel agents … need to work overtime to convince holidaymakers and corporate clients it is safe to travel, by providing detailed information about the airlines they will fly with, their hotels and how they will be transported on the ground.” 

The silver lining 

Although the bundling of door-to-destination ride service is a new concept for most travel brands, it’s also an opportunity to accelerate your COVID-19 rebound. It can help you increase the confidence, conversion rates and the frequency of travel of your hesitant travelers, along with the lifetime value of every new customer you acquire – quite beside the opportunity to add new ancillary revenue at premium commissionable rates.

Whether it is convenient or not, security is here to stay as a traveler’s new primary concern. For these cautious travelers, their security in transit (in general) and ground transportation (most specifically) has become the most significant place to add value.

So the next time you are looking for ways to build a traveler’s confidence and add value to their experience, don’t forget to think of this question: “How will people get to you?”