Challenge: As online travel agencies have become more prominent, a national travel agency with brick-and-mortar locations wanted to re-position its brand to remain relevant in a leisure travel market rapidly evolving through technology. Specifically, the brand hoped to differentiate itself from online competitors by highlighting its personal attention and customized services, and targeting affluent travelers who seek a first-class leisure travel experience.
Objective: To better understand the needs and attitudes of 4 key target segments in order to learn the value of a personal travel agent and inform future messaging and brand planning, ultimately to drive consideration of the brand’s travel agents.
Solution: Plan-it conducted a series of focus groups among the 4 key target segments across multiple markets in order to delve into the customer journey from conception to execution. Each segment was probed on the ideal vacation and travel agent relationship, as well as brand perceptions, and reactions to the current and potential new websites. Plan-it then developed a survey instrument to quantify the findings from the groups.
Result: Plan-it identified key attitudes and leisure travel decision drivers for each target segment, and created in-depth profiles to inform targeted messaging efforts and vacation package offerings. Plan-it also made recommendations for direction of the website redesign based on feedback from the groups.