Why the Travel Industry Loves Web Push Notifications

All of us, or almost all of us, love to travel. Right? While it’s true that traveling is an experience that most of us care to include in our lives, the reality is that it isn’t always easy. Figuring out your destination, the amount of time you wish to spend, and determining a realistic budget and sticking to it, are just a few of the tasks you’re faced with when deciding to take a trip.

All of this planning takes time, and in our busy lives today, it has gotten difficult to find that time. Travel companies realize this, and have taken to finding ways to make it easier for their customers. One of these ways that has proven to be very successful is the use of web push notifications. These push notifications help customers through the entire journey- including before booking, through the entire booking process, the time leading up to the planned trip, and even during the trip itself.

For this reason, the travel industry loves web push notifications and the possibilities they offer in terms of customer engagement, revenue opportunities, and boosting customer satisfaction. Let’s explore why web push is so great for this industry.

Advertise Travel Deals

Let’s start at the beginning of the process. For most people, you start by researching destinations and seeing the cost of hotels and flights. Perhaps you find a hotel that you are really interested in, but the price is simply too high. Instead of having to monitor the hotel each day to see if the price drops, imagine how much easier it would be if you could be alerted via push notification of a price reduction.

Travel companies can also advertise broader sales and target people based on their interests. For example, if you are running an end of summer beach vacation sale, you might target users who have previously searched for destinations located on or near a beach in order to alert them of the sale.

These types of notifications help make the booking process easier for users who are still in those initial planning stages and are in need of a push to finally make a reservation. Not only do these push notifications help you by increasing your bookings, customers also get the benefit of the convenience of pricing alerts and sales deals that they may otherwise not be aware of.

Give Booking Reminders or Recommendations

A big issue ecommerce brands deal with is cart abandonment, and the same applies to those in the travel industry. In fact, cart abandonment tends to be slightly higher in this industry, at nearly 82%. A major reason for this abandonment is because research is a very prominent part of travel. Users may in fact be strongly planning to book a trip, but they first want to research numerous websites in order to find the best deal. Nearly 40% of users agree that they abandon a travel website simply because they are still researching.

A great way that travel companies can capitalize on this is by retargeting these users and reminding them of what they were looking at. Similarly, you can also decide to provide recommendations based on what a user looked at. Say a user seemed very interested in Hotel A but didn’t make a reservation. Why not recommend to them Hotel B, which has a lot of similar features but is slightly cheaper per night? Again, the idea here is to help make the booking process easier.

Deliver Travel Plan Notices

Once a user books a trip with you, web push is still a great way for you to communicate with them. Travel plan updates are a popular type of notification that users really appreciate.

The above example is just one way you can alert users about their upcoming trip. If you handle flights, alert users when it is time for them to check in. Or, send a notice if their upcoming flight is delayed. Real time alerts like these make the travel experience smoother for your users and makes them more likely to want to book another trip with you in the future.

Web push is one of the best platforms for real time alerts, and keep in mind that they deliver to mobile devices as well as desktop devices.

Share Related Travel Info

There are two distinct types of campaigns worth mentioning that you can send to users once they book a trip with you. We just discussed travel plan alerts, and the second type has to deal with information related to an upcoming trip. For example, if you run a blog that features information about popular destinations, you can trigger to send notifications about this content to users who have booked a trip to a given destination.

If you’ve got a blog post discussing the ten best restaurants in Miami, why not trigger a notification to send to any user who has booked an upcoming trip to Miami? Not only are you getting more traffic to your website, you’re providing quality content to users who are very likely to find it relevant.

Aid Customers with Planning Advice

Finally, you have plenty of options for sending campaigns to users either after they have completed a trip, or to users who have yet to book with you. Consider sending out helpful tips that will help your customers to save money, and help you gain their business (instead of booking via one of your competitors).

Consider sending out travel alerts regarding popular travel times, such as during the holidays (as pictured above). Let users know when flight prices are expected to increase, what cheap days are to travel, and other various traveling tips. This helps encourage users who are imminently starting their booking process, and will help keep your company in mind to other users who may begin the process soon.

Wrapping up

The travel industry is a great candidate for using web push notifications. Through all stages of the booking process companies can send relevant, personalized notifications that will help increase conversions and boost customer satisfaction by making their booking process more convenient than ever.

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