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This summer we’ve been exploring top travel industry KPIs and charts to include in destination marketing and ancillary dashboards. Today we’d like to conclude this series with a look at the intermediary sector. This sector generates large amounts of data, but the true value in this data can only be leveraged when marketers are able to use it to find top performance insights.
While performance measurements will vary by organization to fit their own unique objectives, we’ve identified a number of valuable KPIs and visualizations that intermediaries may opt to include when building their most comprehensive dashboard:
Intermediaries greatly depend on commission and booking fees to make a living, so it comes as no surprise that their performance measurements are largely based around revenue. By measuring revenue, intermediary professionals have visibility into their financial standings and can focus on their objectives of optimizing their marketing efforts and driving sales. Additionally, intermediaries can measure the average booking value to ensure they are receiving accurate performance stats and correctly deducing how profitable their business is throughout different seasons.
No intermediary dashboard is complete without the look-to-book KPI. What is it? Look-to-book is the ratio of the number of requests to your booking engine (looks), compared to the number of reservations made (books). Look-to-book is an effective KPI for all organizations across the entire intermediary sector. From flight, to hotel reservation, and even full vacation package providers. This KPI allows these companies analyze customer search behavior in order to determine what influences them to make a purchase and what turns them away.
Thanks to the ease of sharing opinions online, many customers do their research before making a purchase. Therefore it is important to keep a close eye on satisfaction ratings. For example, hotels will be much more desirable if they receive optimal ratings from past visitors, in turn making them prime choices for potential travelers.
To further aid analysts and marketers alike in their mission to understand the customer journey, a funnel chart would allow them to see exactly where their customers are falling out. Funnels can therefore aid marketers in planning their remarketing campaigns, as well as providing an exceptional customer experience by refining pages with the highest losses.
Mobile usage has been on the rise for some time now, and even more so for travelers. According to Expedia, a whooping 65% of travelers booking hotels less than 24 hours in advance of their stay are doing so via a mobile device. If marketers can identify patterns in customer behavior, they can fine tune their marketing. Take Expedia for example: they found that the majority of these last minute travelers book 2 and 3 star rated hotels. They can then take these insights and market the right type of accommodation to their target audience to hopefully provide a carefree and satisfying experience to their customers.
Rather than spending your marketing bucks on promoting just any old hotel, pick the ones that have the highest user ratings in order to entice prospects with something they truly value: honest customer reviews. Intermediaries can easily spot these digital word-of-mouth superstars by segmenting data to include only top reviews, by comparing them side-by-side in a column chart.
It’s vital to know which sources are bringing prospective customers to the booking site, as well as how many of those customers actually book. Likewise, if an intermediary runs social campaigns they could even visualize visits vs. booking vs. conversion by channel to identify where their social campaigns are received the best. By identifying the top performing channels and sources, it is easy to identify where we are reaching not only potential, but also qualified prospects.
Finally, intermediaries should map out the facts (literally)! If they track top travel destinations, they are able to not only get to know the wants and needs of their target audience, but also to effectively plan campaigns around the destinations they already know are enticing travelers.
Once intermediaries know the KPIs and charts that bring them the most valuable information, and have set up a stellar performance dashboard, they must then begin to act. Data-driven intermediary organizations can utilize their dashboards on a daily basis to weigh ideas, get to know their audience, strategically plan, and predict future outcomes.
We’d love to hear from some travel industry experts on this topic! What other KPIs and visualizations do you find useful for your intermediary dashboard?
Sweetspot Marketing Director. Wakeboarder & travel enthusiast. Communication Studies graduate of Texas State University, San Marcos.
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