The Changing Face of Travel: A Payments Perspective

Travel used to be rigid. You’d book your ticket, reserve a room, and follow the carefully arranged plan of your travel agent. But in 2019, a younger and more independent generation of travellers is demanding a kind of travel that’s as flexible as they are.

Millennials increasingly want a brand of adventure that they can adapt to fit them, rather than having to adjust their own lives around the requirements of this or that holiday experience. 57% of respondents to a 2017 PhocusWright survey said that they wanted travel operators to tailor the experiences they offer based on the personal tastes of their users, with a further 36% noting they’d be willing to pay more for a service that did so.

Personalisation and customisation is key, and the skyrocketing rates of solo travel mean that operators who are able to capitalise on those trends will reap some pretty tremendous benefits. Beyond being able to recommend relevant trips to consumers who’ve booked with you before, it also necessitates a new approach to payments to meet the changing needs of the young travellers exploring new payment methods as readily as they explore the world.

Omnichannel

In an increasingly mobile – and mobile-oriented – world, adapting websites and checkouts for an assortment of various devices is essential. Google has found that younger travellers are conducting their travel research and booking via their phones with greater frequency than ever, which means a truly omnichannel experience is deeply important for travel companies hoping to make inroads with younger holidaymakers.

A reliable payment service provider is capable of providing expanding travel operators with the means to establish a genuinely frictionless payment experience across a whole range of devices, allowing customers to pick up right back where they left off regardless of whether their journeys began on their tablets, phones, or home computers.

Alternative payment methods

There’re many ways to pay. Though it’s impossible to speak for each individual consumer, there are some common trends across regions, age groups, and industries. Understanding which method – and where – is most likely to result in a successful payment and satisfied customer is imperative for doing business in multiple markets. Payment service providers typically partner with a selection of popular payment systems to facilitate a global reach.

Transaction types

Person-to-person (P2P) payment apps have proven immensely popular among the younger generations. Already, more than three quarters of millennials are using apps to transfer money to one another, though the older generation isn’t far behind. When settling tour operators, hotels, booking engines, or other travel companies, younger consumers have come to expect flexibility, whether that be through splitting payments with friends, delaying payments until their salaries come in, or paying through a series of installments.

The bottom line is that regardless of whether they’re teenage gen-Zers or slightly older twenty-something millennials, new generations are moulding the future of travel, and the industry must either learn to accommodate them or risk getting left behind.