Travel 2014: Which restaurants, hotels and places will people travel to?

TripAdvisor have completed a survey of nearly 20,000 travellers to find out how they intend to travel in 2014.

The infographic is included below for you to see the results, though here are some interesting things you can see immediately.

1. UK travellers intend to spend less

An incredible 4 out of 5 British travellers are not optimistic about the economy. In contrast however, people from further away intend to increase spending, compared to 2012. One thing that is very interesting is that 73% of British travellers intend to take shorter, more frequent trips to travel in 2014 in the UK. In fact, 20% more trips.

This is a major opportunity for UK restaurants and hotels. However, if these travellers are not able to easily find our restaurant or hotel, we won’t be able to take advantage of this additional business. Customers are far more likely to be looking for places to stay on apps, smartphones and reputation sites like TripAdvisor, so these are a priority. If an international traveller arrived on these shores looking for somewhere to stay or eat, are you confident they would pick you?

2. Europeans don’t like using Credit to fund vacations

It looks like the UK and Europe lead the rest of the world in refusing to use credit to fund holidays. They are however happy to make sacrifices to save up for them. The two biggest areas of savings are from reducing nights out and meals out, which is good news for hotels, but bad news for restaurants.

Does this mean that UK restaurants need to offer better value for money than before to attract people who want to travel in 2014?

3. Hotels are supremely confident about 2014

This would seem to fly in the face of the general sentiment of British travellers, only 20% of whom are optimistic about the economy. Many hotel chains are planning to open new hotels and increase marketing spend.

However, on second glance, it would seem to make sense, particularly in the UK and Europe, as many of the world’s travellers seem to be heading here, while the Brits are also planning on staying here when they travel in 2014. If this happens, it may be a busy continent in Europe next year.

So the big question. What are you planning to change to take advantage of the opportunities this report presents.

Are you updating your web presences so that you can be found by local and international people who are looking to travel in 2014?

If you are, how are you making sure that they work effectively and deliver a complete customer engagement across social networks?

We can help you do this – it is what we specialise in, so feel free to get in touch on 01772 978 199.