Even as the U.S. travel industry gradually shows signs of recovery from the COVID-19 fueled losses, an independent research commissioned by Travelport showed recovery can be further boosted by addressing consumer trust gaps in public transparency, COVID-19 preventive measures, data privacy and information credibility.
Conducted with Edelman’s Data and Intelligence unit, the survey has shown that the travel industry is not trusted as much as the market leaders would like. However, as countries open up and travelers seem eager to go on holidays, there seems to be a rare chance to address the concerns and win back consumers’ trust.
As per the survey, the four trust gaps are:
1. Price transparency
Based on the study of 11,000 travelers across 10 countries, including 1,000 in the U.S., the two most important factors in building consumer trust in travel agencies and travel suppliers are having ‘no hidden costs’ (64%) and ‘fully flexible or refundable products’ (55%). Sadly, most travelers deem industry performance in both these areas to be poor (67% and 61% respectively).
Travelers in the U.S. were among the world’s most disappointed, with 31 and 16 percentage point gap between importance and performance on the two factors.
2. COVID-19 health and safety
About 52% of U.S. travelers felt that the travel industry has performed well in implementing COVID preventive measures. However, half of them said they would like more reassurance on how well these measures were being practiced, particularly improved air filtration, social distancing, managed queuing and boarding.
3. Data privacy
About 35% U.S. travelers said they trust travel companies to use their personal information in the right manner. Globally, this was more apparent among Baby Boomers (33%) and Gen Z (36%) respondents.
When it comes to using information to personalize experiences, U.S. travelers said they were most comfortable with companies using data that they had actively shared with them during one-to-one conversations (46%), past booking behavior (44%) and loyalty activity (44%). On the other hand, they were less comfortable when information was sourced directly from social media activity (26%), public records like credit scores (31%) and past shopping, search and booking behavior with other companies (35%).
4. Information credibility
The survey revealed that a significant number (73%) of U.S. travelers rely on their friends and family as a source of travel-related information, with review websites coming far behind (46%). The least trusted sources were the ones with vested interest in selling, such as social media influencers (23%) and celebrities (19%). Globally, Gen Z was found to be the least trusting in almost every category.
A similar trend was observed when examining trust in different types of travel-related information. Customer ratings (52%) and written customer reviews (46%) featured high among U.S. travelers, while third-party certification (34%), photos of products such as hotel rooms provided by travel companies (37%) and third-party ratings such as hotel star systems (39%) were the least trusted.
Enabling retail
The survey also revealed that trust directly influences purchasing behavior. Due to the pandemic, 49% of U.S. travelers prioritized trust over all other factors when choosing a travel supplier. Many travelers said when trust is established, they would consider purchasing multiple travel-related items (50%), upgrading their package (40%) and buying non-travel-related items like credit cards (29%).