Skift Take
Travel marketers may really be off base if they overplay their hand toward Millennials. Two studies found that although Millennials as a group have huge buying power when it comes to travel, other groups' travel aspirations aren't all that different.
Forget what you think you know about traditional travel marketing principles and crafting effective loyalty programs. There aren't many differences among Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials, Gen Zers, road warriors, or vacationers — at least not when it comes to how they travel.
If you want to engage consumers of all ages and types, and build brand loyalty with them, you've got to look beyond those definitions to get at the heart of their shared travel wants and needs.
That's what two new studies, one from Price Waterhouse Coopers' (PwC) Consumer Intelligence Series, and another from Upshot, a Chicago-based marketing agency, seem to be hinting at.
The PwC study, "What's Driving Customer Loyalty for Today's Hotel Brands?" interviewed 1,026 business and leisure travelers (59 percent business; 41 percent leisure) ranging in age from 21 to 69 to understand loyalty behaviors across a spectrum of guests.
What the PwC researchers found, in some ways, was surprising: "Millennials are not unique in their attitudes and behaviors toward loyalty programs. In fact, they are quite similar to travelers aged 30+," the researchers note. On average, travelers ages 30 and up have 3.6 hotel loyalty memberships while Millennials (ages 21 to 29) have three.
"There are some differences between Millennials and other travelers [when it comes to loyalty programs] but they're not as significant as we thought," says Adam Kennedy, PwC hospitality and leisure advisory leader. "They're just not as varied."
The Upshot study, "Travel Quest: Building a Travel Superbrand," takes that assessment further. "Demographics, or even business versus leisure designations, have ceased to offer predictive value for understanding individual travelers' preferences," the study's authors write. "Instead, these distinctions have blurred as today's travelers fluidly shift between mindsets depending on their immediate circumstances."
For its report, Upshot conducted an online survey of 500 frequent travelers (having taken three or more trips a year) with equal representation of Millennials, Gen Xers, and Boomers, as well as an equal number of business and leisure travelers.
Brian Asner, Upshot planning director, says that when the agency initially embarked on this study, it was focused on examining traditional travel categories like business and leisure, Boomer and Millennial, but what he and the other researchers found was that it was more important to realize that "breaking down trav
