The Travel Industry is an interesting one to say the least as new alternatives are constantly at play causing millions of consumers to pursue these rather than the typical hotel or resort experience. However, is this just a temporary set-back or is this something we should be concerned about? In 2018, a Future of Millennial Travel Report was released by Resonance Consultancy showcasing a surprising fact that among 52% of millennials they surveyed, they found that owner-direct rental services like Airbnb was among their least preferred method of accommodation. That survey also revealed that only 23% revealed that these services were their ideal form of accommodation. This of course explains the hotel construction boom that has occurred in San Diego as the number of hotel rooms being built has doubled which out performs any other county within Southern California. Orange County based Atlas Hospitality recently released a group document showcasing some new year-end figures forecasting a continued building boom both up and down the state of California with a record 10,793 hotel rooms opening last year alone and a whopping 125,749 more rooms to come. So, with travel and hospitality consistently growing in these markets and platforms, the question often comes up, “what’s next for travel marketing?” Well it’s obvious that images are essential to this industry as social networks like Instagram have become a very useful tool for eye-grabbing new consumers with beautiful images and graphics of their properties. The way we consume content is consistently innovating as the old ways of search are quickly dying away. With that being said, travel marketers are setting a new tone for this visual based society as they increase their investments in voice interfaces as this likely will be the future of how their consumers will engage content for the years to come. It’s obvious that with this new data, services like Airbnb aren’t the only ones that’ll need to innovate their approach, it very well could be the whole hospitality industry needs a fresh new concept as consumers are going to continue to move forward but it is ultimately our decision as industry leaders, whether or not we will continue to stay ahead of them or not.
