GLOBAL, APRIL 20, 2011 – JWT, the world’s best-known marketing communications brand, surveyed the latest travel trends, focusing on how mobile devices, real-time connectivity and social networking are changing travel experience in its April 2011 Rebooting Travel report.
“Today’s travelers are different from those even a few years ago,” states Ann Mack, Director of Trendspotting at JWT. “They’re tech-enabled, with infinite information at their fingertips, and they’re driven to share experiences as they’re having them. The countertrend is that we’re seeing more vacationers looking to get a break from technology and its dominance over their lives.”
JWT’s travel trends report is the result of quantitative, qualitative and desk research conducted by JWTIntelligence throughout the year. Specifically for this report, JWT Intelligence interviewed travel experts and influencers and conducted a quantitative survey in the U.S. and the U.K. The survey used SONAR™, JWT’s proprietary online tool, to poll 1,024 adults aged 18-plus from March 4-15 of this year. The data were weighted by age and gender.
Key trends noted in the report:
Travel’s Tiny Essential: The smartphone has replaced guidebooks and maps, with its location-based services and guides, mobile mapping technologies and many available travel apps. It’s a one-stop shop that connects travelers with their surroundings, each other and travel brands better than any traditional travel guide ever could. This traveler’s companion is reshaping the travel landscape, placing a world of information about the surroundings within reach and offering a much more personalized experience.
Mobile manufacturers are also getting into the travel market, with products that allow them to check flights, compare itineraries, and more.
The New Travel Currency: Where travelers of old shared (and bragged about) their activities upon returning home, today’s hyper-connected and mobile-enabled vacationers are doing so in real time. Posting photos, video and text updates amplifies the travel experience, affording an opportunity to broadcast far and wide how cool, privileged, worldly, etc. the traveler is. The traveler’s posting photos, videos, status updates and the likes, there’s tremendous opportunity for brands to facilitate online boasting, as American Express is doing with “Social Currency”.
Unplugged Holidays: Vacationers are increasingly seeking refuge from technology: choosing to log off in an effort to reconnect with loved ones, fully recharge and savor real-world experiences.
JWT also reported that while many travelers feel empowered and comforted by having their mobile devices on hand, they’re also feeling weighed down by non-stop reminders of obligations waiting back home. With relaxation being hampered by constant connectivity, vacationers are coming to regard De-teching as the only way to truly get away from it all.
The trend report, “Rebooting Travel,” is available on JWT Intelligence.
