Booking anxiety is reshaping the way consumers search, book and assess travel and events. This anxiety is firmly grounded in reality: More than half of Asia Pacific (APAC) travelers and at least 45% of travelers in Europe and the U.S. have experienced travel or event
disruption in the past 12 months.
A new report, Global Booking Anxiety, conducted by Phocuswright and WiT on behalf of Protect Group, delves into how anxious consumers from APAC, Europe and the U.S. feel toward traveling and attending events—and the impact it has on their decisions.
To counter anxiety, consumers opt to buy travel insurance, spend more time researching before making a booking, choose refundable options, avoid destinations or events and book closer to the travel or event date.
Checkout is the peak anxiety crunch, an opportunity for travel and event platforms to showcase their change and refund policies as conversion levers, not just customer-service features.
While knowing that they could get a full refund if they could not
go was the top confidence booster across all markets, preferences for the mechanism vary. In APAC, many travelers preferred lower-priced options with optional refund protection added on at a low cost, while U.S. and European travelers preferred a
higher price point with free cancellation.
Strikingly, platforms offering travel refund protection were seen to positively impact the likelihood of using the same platform again in the U.S. (57%), the U.K. (49%) and China (39%), demonstrating that refund protection has a meaningful commercial
upside, both meeting the need to mitigate the consumer’s anxiety to make the sale and to drive long-term customer loyalty.
Complete the form below to download the reports for APAC and for the U.S. and Europe.