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Our travel industry dashboard series is back and today we’re taking a look at the Ancillary sector. Ancillaries provide services to travelers such as transport, tours, hotel or airline services. Just like destination marketing organizations, they have the need to not only prove, but optimize their efforts.
Join us today as we reveal how to build a dashboard with key ancillary KPIs and data visualizations to truly measure performance.
Ancillary metrics are more or less cut and dry. Their dashboards are typically heavily focused on the bottom line and digital marketing success. However, there is loads of data available and collected by ancillaries so it is vital to only focus on those indicators that help organizations reach their strategic business objectives.
Revenue per booking is a powerful KPI that paints a clear picture of revenue earned. Revenue will vary per booking across different periods due to peak or off-season timing and product offerings. KPI trend lines help ancillaries measure revenue performance with ease and gain insights into potential opportunities to get the best results possible all year round. Compare your revenue per booking to this time last year as opposed to last week to make sure you are accounting for seasonal fluctuations and truly able to measure the impact of your marketing initiatives.
Some common KPI terms in the ancillaries sector include ‘bums on seats’ or ‘heads in beds’. KPIs like these simply answer how much of a specific service is being utilized. There are a variety of services in this industry and each one will want to measure their goods in order to understand need and how service options compare.
Tying back into revenue, ancillary dashboards aren’t complete without a focus on campaigns, so bring it all together to measure Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This KPI is key for monitoring if our ads are successfully converting under our desired budget.
As we mentioned above, ancillary services are often affected by season, but the extent to which they will be affected goes hand-in-hand with their geographic position. If, for example, we have a hop-on hop-off tour bus service located in multiple countries, we should be sure to include a map to measure top destinations per season. This will help us identify our strongest markets, and utilize our off-season market locations to run special offers or campaigns.
Do you know your audience? The better we know them the more we’ll be able to modify our service to fit their needs. A hotel’s campaigns, for example, would vary greatly depending on whether their main customers are making business or social trips. A simple bar chart should do the trick, but measure often and you might notice a trend such as higher business-related guests visiting towards the end of each month, or maybe a spike in leisure travelers at certain periods.
Measure services over time to get insight into seasonal impact and high-demand offerings in order to be able to construct your message according to market demands. If you know that at specific time periods a certain service is in higher demand than another, make sure your message is geared towards attracting potential customers for that particular service. In doing so, you can plan offers to attract people to service options they may have overlooked otherwise.
As mentioned before, bookings will also vary by season, essentially affecting your bottom line. Monitor booking by week or month to be able to judge how a change in cost per booking will impact total revenue earned.
A well put together ancillary dashboard has the ability to quickly provide insight, by visually drawing the viewer’s eye to performance measures and allowing them to begin collaborating and making informed decisions for optimized results. Data-driven ancillary teams should build a culture around measuring prime performance-based indicators to help them improve their business practices, expand their audience reach, fine tune their offers, and target wisely. With so much competition in the travel industry, it is no wonder that those organizations who rely on data have already found an edge on their competition. Don’t get left behind – start measuring and making data-driven decisions today!
Sweetspot Marketing Director. Wakeboarder & travel enthusiast. Communication Studies graduate of Texas State University, San Marcos.
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