2020 Travel Marketing Trends

In 2020, needs, behavior, and aspirations of Russian travellers keep changing. A new decade in tourism will continue under the umbrella of development of technological and conscious tourism.

Enhancement of online service role

In a chain of the tourist-destination system, a bigger and bigger part is being played by metasearch engines (hotel, ticket, and tour booking aggregators), online travel agencies, and review sites. Firstly, this is caused by the fact that the modern generation looks to the experience of others more and more and learns reviews before making a final decision while online services, as a rule, have respective ratings and comments. Secondly, the simplicity to purchase travel products, from separate air tickets to organized tours, combined with offer customization, stimulates growth of online purchases.

Private tours

Travellers want to get useful personal recommendations and learn about millions of new opportunities that they did not even think before—if possible, they all should be in one place. Today, big data technologies allow getting more and more detailed information about travellers. Based on this data, tourists should get information that is in their best interests.

As Booking.com experts believe (and we agree with them), in response to this demand, more and more services with elements of artificial intelligence will be emerging in 2020, offering destinations for trips, landmarks, and leisure options on the basis of your preferences, previous trips, and other factors such as weather and location popularity.

AR/VR

For modern travellers, it is already not enough to read simple reviews to get a full picture of the upcoming travel. They want to see and feel everything to the last detail in advance: what will be in store for them during the flight, what a room in the hotel will be like, what landmarks are worth visiting etc. Today, AR and VR technologies are already being mastered by many travel service suppliers (air companies, hotels, destinations), and in 2020 this trend will only be gaining momentum.

Alternative tours

An overall environmental concern affected tourism, too. More and more travellers think how to go on vacation and do least environmental damage. So, according to the poll by Booking.com, more than half of travelling respondents from Russia would like to contribute to the reduction of the tourist flow to the much-in-demand destinations and are ready to go to a similar, less loaded region in order to do less environmental damage. Therefore, travel offices in various regions should think of elaboration of alternative routes for ‘conscious’ travellers, which will allow an increase of the tourist flow to a country while avoiding overtourism.

When elaborating alternative tours, one should also think of a travel mode: the more environmentally friendly and exotic transport will be, the more attractive a tour will become for Russian tourists. Almost half (44%) of respondents from Russia are going to refuse from fast-moving means of transport to reduce an environmental impact, while 64% respondents would prefer a trip on a longer route, during which they could get various impressions. Transportation means that will perfectly suit those willing to slow down are numerous: by bike, by tram, by sledge, by boat, and even on foot! According to the research, 65% travellers from Russia do not mind spending more time getting to their recreation if they can use a unique transportation vehicle doing this. At the same time, 65% surveyed tourists would like to make kind of a trip to the past, going by a historic train (for example, the Flying Scotsman or the Orient Express).

Recommendations

As we noted in the very beginning, new technologies, customization, and development of conscious tourism are becoming primary trends of travel marketing in 2020.

RMAA Travel experts always keep their eyes on the ball and are ready to help you adapt a marketing strategy of Russian tourists’ attraction and implement it with the use of advanced marketing tools and technologies.

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