The COVID-19 crisis may have altered the when and how people will eventually get comfortable to travel, but it has not affected the why people travel. Experiencing a new destination for the first time through the richness of its culture, or simply getting away from the daily routine and discover less crowded places, is what drives many people's love for travel.
It’s hardly surprising that the in-destination spend on activities is the third-largest travel segment after air and hotel, accountingfor 10% of global travel revenue .In 2019, the tours, activities and attractions market represented $254 billion and was growing at a fast pace before the start of the COVID-19 crisis.
But while the in-destination experiences market is fast-growing,the fragmentation, limited technological advancement and lack of standardization of this sector pose some roadblocks. Actually, it would be fair to compare the industry to the early challenging days of online hotel bookings, before pioneers in aggregating hotel content started to facilitate the connection of the disparate market of independent and boutique hotels.
Today, with the growing interest for local destinations and for authentic activities, there is a big opportunity to streamline this sector and bring new experiences to travelers.
This is what we want to achieve withAmadeus Sherpa , a B2B distribution platform to connect, aggregate and distribute destination experiences through the most appropriate channels, at affordable cost. Much like no mountaineer would consider scaling a peak without his trusted Sherpa by his side, so also the Amadeus namesake hopes to become an aide, guide and facilitator to each one of the players in the tours and attractions ecosystem. Here's how:
Opening new revenue opportunities for hotels
Although not being the only channel to promote and sell activities, hotel is one of the most important, and this is why Amadeus Sherpa first started to work with them.
The potential of distributing tours and activities provides to hotels an additional source of revenue in the current challenging situation as they can collect a fee on the activities booked thanks to their recommendations. Considering thatmost travelers book their tours and activities in the last minute , usually once they have checked in, and they trust hoteliers as a local, reliable source of information about things to do,hotels are therefore in an ideal position to gain customer loyalty by offering this very valuable service.
Amadeus Sherpa is a simple, efficient platform that allows the hotelier to bring together the main activities of a place as well as many other lesser-known activities. As a comprehensive catalogue of destination experiences, it does away with the multiple leaflets and maps typically found on reception desks.
Putting Activity Providers on the map
The tours and activities market is highly fragmented and underdeveloped from a digital distribution perspective. With a diverse set of local players who are mostly offline with non-standardized content,80% of gross bookings are still made offline and on the go . This is a major missed opportunity for activity providers to grow their business, as they need to adapt to new travelers’ expectations such as online booking and payment capabilities.
A platform such as Amadeus Sherpa will help the players gain more visibility with travelers and get more bookings.
Helping Content Aggregators grow
Tours and activities is a diverse and complex sector with more than a hundred of sub-categories. It's difficult to expect a single aggregator to comprehensively cover the options available at a particular destination. As a matter of fact, most aggregators are continuously looking for content curation, differentiation and personalization capabilities, as well as new sources of revenues.
As an integration hub, Amadeus Sherpa will give content aggregators access to a bigger platform, adding personalization and data management capabilities to ensure that content offerings are pushed to the traveler in a contextualized and personalized manner.
To sum up, the Amadeus Sherpa platform will accelerate the digital transformation of the tours and activities sector by improving supplier connectivity, enabling information exchange across the ecosystem and delivering high personalization capabilities to resellers. Ultimately, what is the most important for today’s travelers? It is to get an easy access to a diverse choice of activities which are local and authentic. Amadeus Sherpa will contribute to provide this more meaningful and complete end-to-end traveler journey.
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