Hotel Marketing Podcast Episode 201: Top 3 Takeaways From the Latest COVID Traveler Sentiment Study

In today’s episode the TravelBoom team is going to dive into the 13th and 14th editions of the Covid-19 Traveler Sentiment Studies and discuss the key takeaways that will impact hoteliers as we close out 2021 and look toward 2022.

Listen to the full podcast for details and you’ll learn:

  • It’s all age based: Those under 40 are pretty relaxed about covid, 40 – 55 are a little bit more concerned, 55 plus are highly concerned.
  • 48% of respondents are changing their travel plans: Nearly 1/2 of travelers surveyed said they are either hesitant to travel or are not going to travel at all.
  • 52% are planning more travel in 2022: 52% are going to take more trips than 2021 and 40% will take the same number of trips, that means 92% plan on traveling! If this holds to be true, we are going to have another fantastic year in the travel industry.
  • Older travelers are very hesitant to travel: Traveler’s under 55 state the Delta variant has largely not impacted their travel behavior  62% plan on traveling as usual.  However 56 and older (skewing 75 or older) are much more concerned and only 42% plan to travel as usual.
  • International travel requires a different message: Canadians have been largely locked out of the US for the past two years. In fact, of those surveyed only 24% of Canadians said they have traveled in 2021, compared to 73% of their U.S. counterparts.
  • Without fail, people are mainly concerned with a hotel’s cleanliness policies: When asked, “How would the following protocols increase your confidence in staying at a property?” the The #1 response was guests wanting a “A Deep Cleaning Between Guests.” Furthermore the next question was, “The next time you travel, which of the following would you want the property to communicate to you prior to your stay?” The top two answers were updated cleaning protocols at the property (#2), which just came in behind status of local mask requirements.

========================

60 Seconds To Success

We all know how important links are to building authority for your hotel’s website. Link building is a very tedious and time consuming task with a whole lot of rejection, however, one easy way to get links is to leverage existing relationships. 

First, identify your vendors, both operations vendors and Marketing/Tech vendors and find out if their websites use testimonials. 

If they do, reach out to your vendor contacts and let them know you’re happy with their product or service and you would love to offer a testimonial. In your email, write a quick couple of kind & truthful sentences about your relationship with that product or service and include a link to your website. In many cases they will copy & paste this response into their existing testimonials on their website. Kindly ask that they make that link clickable and thank them again for what they do for your hotel. 

========================

Newsaroos:

Get Your Google Eco-Friendly Flair 

========================

Submit your questions and topic ideas on Twitter to @_travelboom or info@travelboommarketing.com.

IN ADDITION TO THE PODCAST WE HAVE A BUNCH OF WHITEPAPERS AND STUDIES YOU CAN DOWNLOAD HERE

Schedule a Free Evaluation

Stop settling for mediocre results. Partner with TravelBoom and transform your data into a competitive advantage.

Schedule a Free Evaluation