A new survey performed by Deloitte shows some really unexpected news there is a sharp decline in consumer loyalty to hotels and airlines. Only 8% of respondents say they are loyal to a particular hotel brand and always stay in its hotels. Somewhat more participants of the survey, 14%, say they always use the same airline company.
Nowadays, many hotel companies try to make their customers more loyal by offering various reward programs. However, customers seem to be blind to these efforts. Respondents were rather uninterested in such programs, and placed them only on the 20th place out of 26 hotel attributes. Airline rewards were placed on the 19th of 26 attributes. These figures are much behind results of previous surveys. Surprisingly, only 45% of respondents name loyalty programs important. More than a half of customers (56%) say they are satisfied with the loyalty program of their hotel.
Global economic downturn continues making a serious impact on decisions of consumers and their habits. Therefore, respondents named value for money as the most important factor when selecting a hotel to stay or a flight to book. Customers traditionally seek comfortable hotels with good location and not overpriced services.
The part of the survey dedicated to social media also brought quite surprising results. As many as 63% of respondents say they never want to use social networks to interact with a travel brand. 44% of customers do not even read reviews and never visit social media dedicated hotels. A large part of respondents (80%) do not want to download applications of hotel or airline companies. Consumers tend to use old and trusted methods they know 61% visit hotel websites to make a reservation, and 59% buy airline tickets online. Almost a half of customers say they have used flash sale sites that offer discounted trips. Being not very interested in social media, consumers say they are very concerned about simplicity and security of a purchase process, and email subscriptions with latest news and discounts.