We recently spoke with TravelBound's president James Phillips about what his company is seeing for 2018. What are the hot destinations? What are the booking trends agents need to know? Here's what he had to say:
TravelPulse: What key booking trends are you seeing for the rest of this year and into 2018?
James Phillips: The first trend we're seeing is uplift in more upscale accommodations. Seventy percent of our booked accommodations are four- and five-star. Part of that is because we spent the last couple of years trying to move our brand into a more upscale position.
We rebranded 18 months ago and readjusted marketing to be more experiential and showcase our destinations, whereas before we were value-based.
Hotels, too, have started to launch soft brands but rather than fall into a consistent format to fit with their hard brand, they've decided to stick with the unique features of a hotel and emphasize those. This is driven in part by the massive trend in terms of consumers looking to upgrade, and we've seen hotel brands and the industry move in that direction.
Second, we've definitely seen more demand in what hotels would call alternative accommodations-apartments, houses. We've always featured that content but now there's really demand to start flagging that content and how to better merchandise what we have.
The demand has been driven by Airbnb as they've very successfully addressed the issue of "Yes, it's an apartment but how do I know it's up to a given standard?"
Consumers are much more willing to trust that apartments can be of the same quality as hotels.
TravelPulse: What are the most popular destinations being booked with TravelBound?
James Phillips: In terms of destinations, it's been a very interesting year. Out of the gate, we saw really strong demand for Australia, New Zealand and Asia. We saw a slight rebound in Western Europe and thought it was going to ignite but it remained flat.
What we did see was southern Europe, especially Greece, really ignite. Greece is up around 50-percent-it's really a pleasure to watch.
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We've also seen airlines really impacted by the Iceland effect-Reykjavik sees more than 3 million visitors a year-and the change in the airline model. Airlines are creating mainstream destinations out of niche destinations. It's a combination of high-quality airlines and convenient stopovers. It's allowed consumers to experience not just a destination but two or three in one hit.
A big change to look out for in a couple of years is how low-cost flights have taken hold. Norwegian Air, for example, set up multiple point-to-point routes operating out of different routes based on their legal structure and have allowed low-cost transatlantic travel at a price point that hasn't been available.
In general, Europe has become more challenged and less predictable, but we've seen a real uptick in Asia. It's been very successful for us. Japan had a great year. North America really grew last year and is still growing this year-unpredictability led to a greater demand for domestic travel.
TravelPulse: Is what you are seeing representative of travel patterns overall or specific to TravelBound?
James Phillips: I think TravelBound features well over 100,000 hotels on our site. And, we have 15,000 services so we have a great depth of product. We are a global company so we generally see what's going on in the market and because of our scale, it's reflective of the wider market. We see what Asian travelers…what European travelers are doing. We are a barometer for the overall market.
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