This travel company increased bookings by 40% with data. Here’s how you can too.

After digging through some data, travel agency Costa Rican Vacations increased its website conversions by 40%.

The company regularly examined its customers’ average spend, length of stay and number of travelers. But one day the team decided to look deeper, beyond the average. They found that many real customers didn’t look like the ‘average client’ at all, the average was a reflection of the customers on the two opposites of the spectrum; those who spend alot, and those who don’t.

According to Marketing Sherpa, they used this information to cater to the customers who spent more, rather than the average which led to a 40% improvement in the site’s conversion rate.

Data doesn’t need to be complicated

Just as the case study above shows, data-driven decisions deliver great returns. And finding the data to drive those decisions don’t need to be complicated.

Here are some questions to get you started

What to sell

By doing a deep dive into your tour & activity offerings, you’ll be able to better understand your product performance. Most owners would know what their best performing tours & activities are, but what about the second best or the third and thereafter?

Further digging into your products breeds greater up-selling and cross-selling opportunities. For example:

• Do your customers book more than one tour?
  Use this knowledge to cross-sell more tours to customers who only book one tour.
• What extra’s do your customers usually purchase?
  Use this knowledge to upsell these add-ons during their checkouts.
• What about booking sizes? How many people usually attend each booking?
  You could offer different sorts of packages such as family tours based on the above.

When to sell

A little digging will show you how far in advance customers usually make their bookings, when they usually make their bookings (eg. month, day or time) and even when most people prefer to go on their tour.

This will help you understand when you should start marketing for your tours & activities and which sessions you should focus on. For example, if your tours are less popular on weekdays, you could run marketing campaigns specifically for your customers to book their activities on weekdays.

Consider the time in which they make the booking. Some operators may find that customers are more likely to make their holiday booking during their lunchtime. Some psychological studies found that people tend to make bookings early in the week so they have something to look forward to. Use this data to see when works best for your customers.

Who to sell to

A little data digging would allow you to find the commonalities between your customers. For example, their demographics like their age and gender, where their from, what their interests are, how they prefer to make payments, etc.

All this greatly affects how you should communicate or advertise to your customers. For example, if your customers are more female, using ads with females as the subject could prove more effective, and vice-versa if your customers are more male.

Their age, gender and interests can be used to more effectively target audiences on Facebook & Google while their payment preferences can be used to boost conversion rates on your website.

Where to find data

Contrary to popular belief, data can be found pretty easily now. Google Analytics is a great place to start. You’ll be able to find the majority of your top-level data very quickly. Rezdy’s Reports will allow you to dive deeper into your tours & activities, sessions and timings to find all the answers to the questions mentioned above.

Need help with Rezdy Reports? Check out the support articles here.