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Millennials shaping the trends for future travel

It’s travel focus week on Bdaily. Here, Nicky Tatley, content editor at BusinessesForSale, examines the youth travel market.

Forward thinking travel companies are fast modifying their operating models for the increasing numbers of newly independent, techie and uber-connected ‘Millennials’ who are hitting the road with high hopes.

These young travellers, who were born in the late eighties and nineties and had their tastes shaped during the technological advancements of the noughties and beyond, now want to see the world, and are expecting to be catered to on their own terms.

Tough economic times coupled with ever flourishing web connections have made frugality and autonomy an innate quality in 20-30 somethings, and the good news is that the consequent shifts and innovations in the travel industry will benefit us all.

Whereas travel agents have been the only port of call for previous generations, it is becoming clear that the younger market want to be masters and designers of their own adventures. Connectivity is vital to the new global traveller with fresh technologies fuelling their wanderlust. Better mobile maps, niche on-line review sites, last minute bookings, check-in kiosks and ubiquitous Wi-Fi are high on these traveller’s wish-lists.

The Millennial generation are not yet the core customers of airlines, hotels, and travel companies, but in the next decade, when they enter their peak earning, spending, and travelling years, they will be, and the travel industry will have to take some quick steps to keep up. In March of this year, Expedia, and its innovative Business Travel management arm, Egencia, published a comprehensive report on how technology and the demands of the Millennials will affect the travel industry.

Key revelations from the Future of Travel report for the UK include:

• Merging business with pleasure: Millennials are more likely to extend a business trip into a personal holiday than older employees are. 56% of British Millennials have done so, compared with only 22% of those over 35.
• Data sharing: 61% of British Millennial respondents save data (such as passport details, credit card information and contact details) online to streamline the travel booking process, compared to only 38% of non-Millennials.
• Reviews: 90% of British Millennials admit that travel reviews are important for leisure travel, compared to 73% of non-Millennial travellers. Furthermore, 75% of Millennials agree this is also important for business travel, compared to just 57% of non-Millennials.

The report details the importance of mobile booking resources to these travellers and the need for responsive design approaches.

“By providing contextualised, multiplatform travel solutions and services on the go, like Egencia TripNavigator, we are directly supporting the future traveller’s need for speed, flexibility and instant access to global travel content.” says Rob Greyber, president of Egencia.

Existing travel businesses must adapt to entice the new breed, whose spending on business flights is projected to reach nearly 50% of the total by 2020, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Many hotel chains are updating their image to cater to their screen hungry clients with ‘technology lounge’ inspired lobbies, slick furniture, and fast, free Wi-Fi everywhere.“ All of the major brands – Hilton, Starwood, Marriott, InterContinental – have developed hip products that are targeted at the younger traveller,“ says Chris Klauda, vice president at D.K. Shiffet &Associates, a travel and hospitality research company.

Luxury tour operators such as Abercrombie and Kent are offering more affordable trips for the casual, yet style conscious and connected client and Marriott has recently announced that it will partner with IKEA to launch Moxy Hotels – a chain designed specifically for Millennials. This brand is set to open in 150 locations in Europe over the next 10 years.

New initiatives in the travel world would do well to emulate the user-friendly, stylish rental sites such as Airbnb, Insirato and Portico who minimize risk and hassle for the client by pre-vetting accommodation and providing the all-important PLU (People Like Us) factor for the modern traveller. This peer-to-peer model favoured by Millennials has inspired slick transportation sharing services with bikes, cabs and cars, such as Car2go which enables you to locate a vehicle in the vicinity and use it without jumping through the usual car-hire hoops.

The promise of streamlined, souped-up resources and a faster-paced travel industry is an exciting prospect for any generation as we look set manage our own journeying and no longer our expectations.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BusinessesForSale .