Holiday Travelers Biggest Frustrations: Poorly Performing Sites, Apps

As con­sumers solid­i­fy their trav­el plans, brands need to ensure their web­sites and apps don’t go down, and also offer incen­tives when pos­si­ble.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

As con­sumers solid­i­fy their end-of-the-year trav­el plans, brands need to take extra care to ensure their web­sites and apps don’t go down and also to offer incen­tives where pos­si­ble. That’s accord­ing to the results of a new hol­i­day trav­el sur­vey.


Forty-one per­cent of Amer­i­cans are plan­ning to book hol­i­day trav­el this year and will use web­sites and apps “for every­thing from pur­chas­ing air­line tick­ets to upgrad­ing seats.” That’s accord­ing to a hol­i­day trav­el behav­ior study from cloud and mobile test­ing com­pa­ny SOASTA. The study looked at the habits and pref­er­ences of Amer­i­cans plan­ning hol­i­day trips.

Addi­tion­al­ly, 57 per­cent of respon­dents said a poor­ly per­form­ing web­site or app “would be more frus­trat­ing than deal­ing with the TSA.” Fur­ther, the biggest frus­tra­tion they list­ed was app fail­ure when check­ing flight sta­tus.

Accord­ing to SOASTA, 34 per­cent of respon­dents will be book­ing hol­i­day trav­el through a web­site and 13 per­cent will opt for a mobile app. In addi­tion, 31 per­cent say they are wor­ried about expe­ri­enc­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems when book­ing trav­el, includ­ing: slow load­ing, unre­spon­sive­ness, crash­ing, and bad inter­face.

One of the things we tried to under­stand through the sur­vey was how do peo­ple plan and buy trips and how much of it is online and also rein­force the fact that not only do [brands] need good design around how dig­i­tal prop­er­ties are devel­oped and dis­played to the con­sumer, but they also need to make sure [the sites and apps] work in a fash­ion that meets [con­sumers’] expec­ta­tions,” said Peter Galvin, vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing at SOASTA. “There are things peo­ple told us and we’ve seen in oth­er sur­veys — if the app doesn’t load quick­ly or is unre­spon­sive or crash­es, not only will con­sumers go to a dif­fer­ent app, but when they are look­ing at some oth­er activ­i­ty, they will bypass the app they had a bad user expe­ri­ence on.”

That means brands need to con­sid­er per­for­mance in the designs of their sites and apps and how their con­sumers are inter­act­ing with them, he said.

Con­sumers are also using web­sites and apps to upgrade their flights. Forty-five per­cent of hol­i­day trav­el­ers said they would be moti­vat­ed to upgrade their air trav­el, list­ing fac­tors like:

  • Sat­is­fy­ing a need to unwind fol­low­ing a stress­ful hol­i­day.
  • Avoid­ing shar­ing a flight with ram­bunc­tious or loud chil­dren.
  • Cheer­ing them­selves up before see­ing their rel­a­tives.

The study, which was con­duct­ed online by Har­ris Poll among about 2,000 U.S. adults, also found three out of four Amer­i­cans would con­sid­er delay­ing their flight arrival dur­ing the hol­i­days by 24 hours or more for an incen­tive, like a free flight. In addi­tion, 41 per­cent of respon­dents said the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a first-class upgrade could be enough incen­tive to delay their flight by 24 hours or more.

And, per SOASTA, oth­er “pop­u­lar” incen­tives for delay­ing flight arrival by 24 hours include a free hotel stay near the air­port (38 per­cent), dis­count­ed future trav­el (30 per­cent), extra reward points (20 per­cent) and, believe it or not, a chance to sit next to Renee Zell­weger (6 per­cent).

A SOASTA rep said the Zell­weger response was one of 10 options “with Renee being top­i­cal” in light of plas­tic surgery rumors ear­li­er this year.

I think…why you’re see­ing so many loy­al­ty pro­grams is that it’s about con­tin­u­ing to have a dia­log with cus­tomers and so one of the crit­i­cal ways to do that is hav­ing a loy­al­ty pro­gram that, for exam­ple, gives you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have more inter­ac­tion with con­sumers so they feel close to the brand and they feel spe­cial as an indi­vid­ual inter­act­ing with that brand across again all of the dif­fer­ent chan­nels of com­mu­ni­ca­tion you have with a con­sumer,” Galvin said. “Just being able to con­tin­ue to have a dia­log and have con­sumers engage with you will cause them to be much more respon­sive to future offers and incen­tives.”

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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