Travel websites miss abandoned bookings opportunities analysis shows

Travel websites miss abandoned bookings opportunities analysis shows

Optilead conducted tests on 100 top travel and leisure websites to see how well the travel industry is managing its abandoned bookings.

Image via Shutterstock

Optilead conducted tests on 100 top travel and leisure websites to see how well the industry is managing its abandoned bookings.

To test this, three incomplete bookings were made on each site.

Only 16 sites made any attempt to re-engage with these abandoned bookings, with values averaging over £2,153. The majority (14) of these follow ups were just simple automated emails.

One site even failed to do any sort of follow up for a booking worth over £12,500, despite requesting all of the customer’s contact details.

According to Lead Response Management, the most successful remarketing efforts are made within the first hour of the customer leaving a website. During this time they may still be sat down and ready to buy.

However, the average response time across all channels was 11 hours and 35 minutes.

Only five companies picked up the phone to contact the customer. A ‘click-to-call’ feature was only offered by three websites, although none were proactive in its use.

Just one website employed a multi-channel approach to their remarketing efforts; sending an email, followed by a call, followed by a secondary email.

Steve Lawton, International Director of Optilead, said: “Huge numbers of customers are currently looking for their dream holiday online, but they are not getting the help they need.

“High rates of abandonment are often put down to high booking values, or people just taking a look at prices. But as sellers, what we should be looking at is what we can do to take this opportunity and help customers complete bookings when they show an interest.”