Global leisure travel in 2023 continues to gain momentum with figures indicating an impressive 25% year-over-year-to-date growth from 2022 to 2023. In addition, a study by Mabrian of over 400 million tourism-related interactions on social media revealed that demand for experiential travel activities is taking over from conventional travel motivations for the first time.

As people move away from traditional holiday desires such as sunbathing on the beach or shopping in big cities in favour of more exciting and authentic experiences, it is clear that technology is playing a vital role in connecting travel companies with eager travellers looking for their next big adventure.

Adopting a ‘tech-first’ mindset to the travel booking experience

Getting inspired to book a holiday or travel experience is one thing, but if the booking process is complicated or long-winded, then it’s far more likely to be abandoned. And with two-thirds of revenue in the global travel and tourism market coming from online sales channels in 2022, it is clear that booking abandonment continues to be a key challenge for travel companies.

This was exactly the problem that Oli Dannatt, founder of travel tech startup SkiYodl, has been looking to solve since he returned to the UK after spending ten years as a Ski instructor on the slopes of Verbier, Switzerland. He quickly realised how difficult it was to book ski holidays from the UK, and set to work developing SkiYodl, a tech-first, ski-second website that allows people to browse and book the perfect self-catered ski accommodation in just one click.

“In a world where you can book almost anything in a single tap, the ski travel market is yet to catch up,” explains Oli. “Today’s customers demand a hassle-free online experience and booking a ski holiday is no different. Throughout the building of our website and app we have maintained a ‘tech-first’ mindset prioritising usability and optimised customer experience.”

This approach has certainly paid off as over 3,700 skiers have now used SkiYodl to book their holidays. “Through sharing local knowledge, giving customers access to a network of experience, and showing them where to go and what to do, they can get straight to the good stuff when they arrive in the mountains,” Oli adds.

Integrating ‘social commerce’ solutions to aid decision making

There is no denying that social media plays a pivotal role in the modern travel experience. In fact, Phocuswright’s ‘Under the Influence’ report suggests that more than half of all leisure travellers used social media to make travel decisions, with the American Express Global Travel Trends report putting this figure at a staggering 75%.

It is well understood that the real power of social media is its influence. When looking at the travel booking experience, it turns out that it is in fact friends and family who are the ‘real’ travel influencers. When asked which social media accounts travellers browse for inspiration, 55% across all age groups answered those of their friends and family, by a significant margin. As they seek unique experiences, they are more willing to trust personal contacts who they know for recommendations, inspiration, or advice.

“Travel is a social experience, so the booking experience should mirror this and enable conversations between Friends & Family travellers to unfold directly from the travel site,” explains Jonathan Abraham, CEO of Joyned, a SaaS company that offers a social decision-making plug-in for travel websites, by enabling their customers to discuss, decide and book together online. “Many forward-thinking online travel companies are already achieving this through integrating software solutions such as Joyned Booking that provide a real-time, secure area on the travel site for groups to discuss and make travel bookings together,” he adds.

Embedding instant insurance options to protect against the unexpected

Experiential travel often involves travelling to unique destinations or taking part in unusual activities. These ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ opportunities often come at a significant cost and so greater thought is given to what could potentially go wrong whilst on the trip.

Every online booking has associated risks for travellers - the weather might be bad during a trip, a flight may be cancelled or a vacation rental host may cancel the booking. One technological innovation that is making covering these risks easier than ever is embedded insurance, which helps fit coverage to the exact needs of travellers.

“Embedded insurance solves one of Insurance’s biggest consumer experience challenges - being under or over covered”, explains Meitav Harpaz, CEO of Pattern, an Embedded Insurance company that helps travel companies offer personalised protection products. “It is very common for travellers buying insurance to not have the right insurance and then get unpleasantly surprised when things go wrong. With personalised embedded insurance, we are tailoring the insurance to the details of the booking and purpose of the trip, so that travellers are covered for what they care about most. It’s a huge asset that builds confidence in the booking process for the brands offering this to travellers in their purchase path as it gives travellers the ultimate peace of mind that their vacations are properly covered,” he adds.

Simplifying the small print to make experiential travel more inclusive

A greater desire amongst travellers for more engaging, adventurous holidays has also seen a rise in new risks to cover. For Phil Denman, CEO of Capacity Insights, a specialist underwriting MGA for health, dental and travel insurance, when the entire insurance industry, from underwriting to selling, uses technology to become more customer-centric and accessible, the more people will feel empowered to book experiential trips.

“Often, the riskier the trip, the longer the policy documents which can be a deterrent from people purchasing the necessary protection for their trip, or maybe even the trip itself,” says Phil. “The insurance industry could deploy technology to make the products and policy documents more accessible. For example, with language models being at the top of most newstands currently, it seems strange that so little has changed around the insurance industry’s document sets over the last 20 years. Whilst products have moved from desktop to laptop to mobile, the methods of communicating benefit schedules and terms and conditions haven’t changed.”

“If we deploy the latest technology to help people fully understand complex insurance documents whilst making it easy to purchase necessary insurance quickly, travellers will feel much more comfortable opening themselves up to experiential travel,” Phil adds.