NEW YORK, Feb. 05, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- IgnitionOne, a global marketing technology and data analytics provider with a focus on the travel and hospitality sector, today announced the release of its inaugural Hospitality Industry Report, establishing key industry benchmarks from Q4 2018, including average booking lifecycles, booking rates, cart abandonment rates, and business and leisure differences for all tiers: Luxury, Upscale, Midscale, Economy, and Extended Stay.
In Q4 2018, the hospitality industry reported 4.7M in direct to website bookings with $1.35B in total revenue, and a reported $2.4B in lost revenue due to cart abandonment. These numbers extrapolate to an estimated $5.4B in total revenue and just under $10B in lost revenue over the course of a full year.
“Through the power of Customer Intelligence (CI), hospitality marketers can respond to current customer behavioral trends in real-time, allowing for budget and optimization agility,” said Eric Bamberger, SVP, Hospitality at IgnitionOne. By understanding customer intent and interests, marketers can now serve hyper-personalized experiences based on behavioral data, which further enhances their goals and ROI. CI puts the power back in the marketer’s hands by unlocking and enabling actionable insights from the multitude of data sets available across their owned assets and customer touchpoints.”
Additional Highlights:
- Total site traffic on mobile devices increased by 10 percent in December from October and November 2018.
- Economy hotels’ booking rates are 2.5-3% higher than the average booking rate.
- Midscale and Upscale booking rates are only slightly below the overall average, while Luxury has the lowest booking rates—about 2.5% lower than the overall average for the quarter.
- On average, travelers book Upscale and Luxury trips about 40 days in advance of their check in date.
- On average, that lead time is 2.5x longer than Economy trips, 2x longer than Extended Stay trips and almost 1.5x longer than Midscale trips. - Across Q4, Extended Stay hotels had the highest abandonment rates - 4% higher than the overall average.
- Economy and Midscale hotels saw the largest increases, with up to 12% more cart visitors failing to complete a booking in December than the prior two months.
"This report takes an unprecedented look into bookings and visitation data, by providing insights that no company has produced to date. The data signifies a shift for hotel marketers as consumers value cost-effectiveness over brand loyalty," said Will Margiloff, CEO of IgnitionOne. “With the average traveler visiting upwards of 30 sites before booking, personalization in the customer journey is a must. And to achieve true omnichannel personalization, hospitality marketers must leverage CI to help move the needle. By personalizing messaging to offer guests what they want, the booking journey will be made more efficient."
Contrary to reports about the government shutdown impacting travel activity, the IgnitionOne Hospitality Report analyzed that there was a limited impact on the industry overall, between December 22, 2018 and the end of the year, compared to earlier in the month. Daily volume of bookings dropped by only about 2% after the shutdown—a slight decline that can be attributed to seasonality. YoY analysis also shows that the December booking rates were actually slightly up from December 2017.
Methodology
The IgnitionOne Hospitality Industry Report was based on first-party data gathered from more than 18,000 hotel properties across more than 50 hotel brands. It looks at global trends including site visitation, likelihood to complete a booking, and site activity prior to booking, as well as trends in booking details such as lead time, length of stay, and booking values. The data is aggregated to show trends over time as well as by hotel tier.
For more information and to download the full report, visit here.
About IgnitionOne
IgnitionOne’s leading Customer Intelligence Platform empowers marketers to find and engage their most valuable customers across channels using a data-driven approach. By focusing on cross-channel scoring and robust personalization, IgnitionOne’s technology provides real-time, actionable insights for smarter marketing decisions and omnichannel engagement to maximize overall results. IgnitionOne is one of the largest independent marketing technology companies in the world, currently scoring over 600 million users monthly in 75 countries and powering more than $60 billion in revenue each year for leading brands, including General Motors, CenturyLink, La Quinta and Acer, as well as advertising agencies such as 360i, GroupM and Zenith Media.
For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.
Media Contact
Kite Hill PR, Rachel Jermansky
rachel@kitehillpr.com