Canadians Turn To Multiple Channels for Travel Shopping, Buying
by Dori SaltzmanWhile the Internet plays a huge role with Canadian leisure travelers, a significant minority still likes to shop for and book travel through travel agents, both on- and offline.
Those are among the key findings in a recent report produced by PhoCusWright Inc., “Canadian Online Travel Overview, second edition 2007-2011.”
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“Canadians are among the most ardent users of the Internet but a large number have come to make it a habit to research consumer information online, while making the ultimate purchase ‘offline’ or at the store,” said David McCaig, president and COO of the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies (ACTA). “Certainly, this is true in travel where our agencies tell us consumers often come in armed with pricing and other information they have collected online.”
According to the PhoCusWright report, 27% of Canadian travelers use retail travel agents during the shopping stage while a whopping 83% rely on Web sites as their usual method to shop for travel. Online travel agencies (OTAs) are the most popular sites, used by 68% of survey respondents. Other commonly used sites for travel shopping include general search engine (50%), travel provider Web site (48%), destination Web sites (26%), and a retail travel agency Web site (21%).
Younger travelers (aged 18 to 34) also gravitate toward metasearch engines (33%) and social networking sites (11%) when shopping for travel. They are less likely than older travelers to shop on a retail travel agency site (15%) or a destination Web site (14%).
Purchasing Patterns
Though Canadians are big online shoppers, they don’t necessarily do all their purchasing online; 35% of Canadian travelers said they usually or exclusively book offline. Another 30% said they purchase travel both online and offline, and 27% of Canadian travelers surveyed said they usually book their travel through a traditional travel agent.
That figure is driven in part by the strength of the packaged market in Canada. Most packages are still sold predominantly through brick-and-mortar travel agencies, as are the vast majority of cruises and segments like volunteer tourism and exotic tourism, said ACTA’s McCaig.
“Often, a Canadian consumer will buy online if the journey is a simple Point A to Point B,” he said. “When the journey is more complex, however, this consumer turns, almost inevitably, to the travel agent who can handle complicated arrangements. In other words, as ACTA says, there is a limit to DIY travel…”
Despite the fact that Canadians continue to be multi-channel travel buyers, the online leisure travel and unmanaged business travel markets significantly outperformed the total travel market during the recession.
“Cost-conscious travelers looked harder for bargains and deals online, while offline channels — in particular, traditional travel agencies and travel management companies — experienced a sharper decline, with a dramatic falloff in corporate travel demand,” according to the PhoCusWright report.
Agencies Online
The recession particularly benefited OTAs, which in 2009 grew 5% to reach C$2.8 billion in sales. The report included in its OTA data the online bookings of three of Canada’s largest retail travel agency networks, BelAir Travel, Flight Centre and Sears Travel.
Flight Centre, which operates 165 retail brick-and-mortar travel shops across Canada, expanded its business online, including an online booking engine, about six years ago. “The strategy then was to have multi-channel distribution,” Flight Centre president Greg Dixon told Travel Market Report.
Three years ago the agency implemented a different strategy focused on using the company’s Web site primarily to push business to the storefronts. Even so, Flight Centre retained its online booking capability. “There is a group of people we’ve identified who don’t necessarily want to deal with a person,” Dixon said. “They just want to go online and transact travel.”
According to ACTA’s McCaig, “Brick and mortar agencies in Canada are increasing their online presence and enabling online booking themselves. An agency without a Web site is rare. Online is now the greatest storefront in the world. You have to be there, in addition to just down the street.”
