Many OTAs lack inspiration, its become “all about the booking funnel”, to me the destination matters, more so than the hotel or the flight. But exploring online leaves me with a feeling of exhaustion and confusion.
Back in the day Brochures were great. They were 90% content, and 10% pricing. You could easily add post-its, or turn the pages of places you wanted to go, and it was easy to flick between places of interest.
Just because we can load up the screen with real-time pricing and forms, it doesn’t mean we should.
We really must consider what the user really wants at their stage in the journey, a goal of just brand awareness and being valued for the information given can be just as effective in a vendor selection decision.
In some respect Pinterest has provided a tool for browsing destinations and/or instagram, but the experience isn’t quite there yet.
Whilst browsing on my apple TV I was really pleased to see a TUI App for travel. Not a price anywhere, it was just a sense of exploration. I hope more will follow offering more inspiration to their users without the need to offer pricing or jump into a grid of search results.
