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01
May 2009
The telephone is still the biggest sales
channel for many travel companies and will
continue to play a huge part going forward.
Lowcost Group chief executive Paul Evans
told the TTI Spring Conference his
call-centre was converting one in five calls
on a good day.
He added that by contrast the
lowcostholidays website conversion rate was
about 1% despite its redesign and ease of
use.
"Telephone is our most successful sales
channel and it's higher value business. On a
decent website you might get a conversion as
high as 7%, especially if it's a commodity
but all this stuff about sexy online play -
don't kid yourself. If it's a multi-product
site conversion could be 0.5% - that's half
a person in every 100."
Evans said that key to the success of a
website was good technology followed by
speed, price and brand.
"If you don't have a decent system and the
internet is the main access to your
business, you are history."
Hitwise head of research Robin Goad said
that in general consumers were spending more
time browsing to get an idea of cost in the
current climate.
Evans added that conversions on travel
websites were low because of the emotion
involved in the purchase.
"The holiday is still aspirational. It's
complicated to research, money shelled out
early and a large purchase item in the
family budget" he said.
He also said he had been astounded by the
drop-out rate at the shopping basket stage.
"We all operate in a Del-Boy environment
where we add and add and add to the price
but if you put it in at the beginning you
won't even appear in the search so you have
balance it out"
Google UK, travel industry manager, Robin
Devlin told the conference that 60% of
online shopping baskets are abandoned ? 12%
before checkout and 48% at checkout.
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