The journey of a 1000 miles begins with the first step, I'm starting mine with a bad pun and a research goal. The purpose of research for this project was to understand the online travel booking market to get into the minds of potential travelers who regularly book travel through online booking services, and to better understand their behavior concerning online travel booking as well as any other goals and pain points that they considered significant.
NOTE: While this project is set in a fictional future, data had to be gathered from the year 2022. As such, due to the COVID-19 pandemic during that time, data gathered reflected traveling habits during that time and not the future.
MARKET RESEARCH
Space travel is a relatively new endeavor, but will most likely fit into the already existing global travel market and the behaviors associated with it when it becomes a norm.
- The travel industry is estimated to be worth around $1.2 trillion annually, and the online booking market makes up 63% of that, or roughly $756 billion (StratosJets, 2022)
- 27% of all online spending is spent on travel bookings. (Inkadvertising, 2021)
- 83% of US adults want to book their trips online (StratosJets, 2022)
- Over 148 million travel bookings are made online annually. (StratosJets, 2022)
- In 2022, 64% of those who book trips online make them on desktop, and 44% make them on a mobile device. This shows a shift from 2021, when 59% of bookings were done on desktop and 41% on a mobile device (SalesCycle, 2022)
- In a post-pandemic world, three concerns top the charts for the surveyed travelers: (Amadeus, 2021)
- Fear of contracting COVID-19 (41%),
- Quarantine or self-isolation mandates in different regions (41%),
- Last-minute cancellations or changes due to travel restrictions (37%)
- The comfort and ease of online travel booking, along with it’s growth in recent years is reflected in the fact that employment of travel agents is projected to increase only 5% from 2020 to 2030, slower than the average for all occupations (BLS, 2022)
That pun was intended. With an understanding of the current market, I now needed to see how established travel booking companies were currently delivering their services. I conducted a competitive analysis by looking at, and analyzing those who would be likely competitors of ASTRA. Analyzing competitors of ASTRA allowed me to gain more insight into the current travel/trip booking market, as well as identify their strengths and weaknesses that could be utilized in my design decision process
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To better understand the behaviors, goals, and pain points of those who book travel online, I conducted one-on-one user interviews with 4 potential users who mainly booked travel through online services.
- Users spent between $2000 - $10,000 USD on travel per year.
- All users book airline travel on average twice a year.
- 3 out 4 users report an average trip duration of 2-4 weeks.
- 3 out of 4 users stated that they often travel with family and friends.
- All users preferred booking trips on their desktop/laptop as opposed to mobile.
While they generally reported positive experiences with travel, the COVID-19 pandemic their travel habits, including increased stress while going through airports and traveling less than they would normally do. Some important takeaways noted from the interviews are listed below:
- Book trips quickly without hassle
- Spend less than a day traveling
- Discover new places and experiences
- Cancel/change trips in case of unforeseen situations
- Create their own itinerary, search for specific times, dates and airlines
- Confusing, hard to navigate website
- Lack of proper information for, and site not updating to reflect unavailable trips
- Inflexible cancellation/change policies and resulting poor compensation
- Fluctuating prices which force one to move fast to make a purchase
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