High Value City Travel Report 2017

The focus of this year’s IE High Value City Travel report based is on two megatrends that are much intertwined already and keep becoming even more intertwined day by day: the digital (travel) evolution and the ever-growing quest for deep, meaningful (travel) experiences. We see digital giants like Google, Airbnb, Tripadvisor and Expedia taking major strategic decisions and investing heavily in travel experiences creation, facilitation, promotion and sales. They are, together with many small and not-any-longer so small travel tech start-ups like Getyourguide and Musement, driving the evolution from online flight and accommodation booking only, towards a much more complete pre-booking approach including activities, experiences and events. Many of the activities, events, and experiences have been offered before, but they have mainly been sold offline and locally. The mentioned players now offer different channels to finally make all this offer visible and bookable. Without any doubt this is an upload spiral: more experience inspiration and booking channels will stimulate more offer, which in turn will further improve the relevance of the channels, etc. Before digging deeper in the dynamic supply side development, the report will make understood the elementary difference between meaningful high value experiences and standard activities and events. The art of experience creation, management, and marketing is especially crucial for the premium travel markets. Based on last year’s primary research of high value travellers from the US, UK, Russia and Latin America the report will also deeper explore the demand for experiences before exploring the mentioned game-changing developments on the supply side driven by travel and tech firms alike.