Always orbiting: How consumers plan travel experiences now

Alex Gersovitz (0:00)

If I were a CEO today in the travel industry, I would start to think about, if you want to keep the bookings that you have, building that emotionality, the story, the feeling around it, I think will become increasingly important. Because I think you're seeing more and more in the tools of empowered people to revisit on a continual basis, and people are taking that opportunity to change.

Roberta Fusaro (0:20)

That's McKinsey partner Alex Gersovitz. He's talking about how the sheer number of travel influences and options have changed the way people plan and book their trips.

So instead of committing to a choice, travelers are changing their minds if something better comes along. Alex joins me and McKinsey partner, Margaux Constantin, to talk about what that means for hotels, airlines, and travel platforms.

Lucia Rahilly (0:47)

Okay, Roberta, be honest. When you're making your travel plans, do you look and then book and then look again?

Roberta Fusaro (0:56)

So I do. I book the hotel, and then I second-guess myself, and I spend two more weeks checking whether there was a better option, and yeah, it's a constant push-pull in my brain.

Margaux Constantin (1:13)

Yes.

Lucia Rahilly (1:13)

So I thought this was so interesting in the research. You are, as you may know, in the majority, 80 percent of travelers continue their research after they book. It's called orbiting.

Margaux Constantin (1:28)

Yeah.

Roberta Fusaro (1:29)

No, I was really, I was fascinated by that point too, when we were speaking with Alex and Margaux.

Lucia Rahilly (1:35)

So you're not alone.

Roberta Fusaro (1:36)

This is The McKinsey Podcast, where we help you make sense out of the world's toughest business challenges.

I'm Roberta Fusaro, your host for today. Alex, Margaux, thanks so much for joining the podcast today.

Alex Gersovitz (1:49)

Thanks for having us.

Margaux Constantin (1:50)

Pleasure to be here.

Roberta Fusaro (1:51)

We're talking about some research today about the infinite travel choices that consumers have today. You've done a deep dive into how people plan and book travel. What surprised you most about how different that process looks today?

Margaux Constantin (2:07)

This whole traveling thing used to start with, at least there was an intent to start with. That's not the case anymore because just intent is always on.

It's become such a big part of people's lives. We see survey after survey, people just want to travel more and more, younger generations want to travel more and more. It's becoming a higher and higher share of disposable income. That's an absolute secular trend. As a result, it means intent is just always on. What we're seeing is rather than having some funnel and journey from, I want to book something, to then I research, to then I make a decision, there is more of this notion of always orbiting, always exploring multiple destinations, multiple inspirations at the same time. The second one is 60% of travelers say it's much easier than before to research and find good options.

They're also spending more time researching. It's easier to find information and I'm spending more time on it, which is quite a paradox. That's partially because they just enjoy it. 80% of travelers just enjoy the researching as part of the experience itself. You want to enjoy the trip before you go just as much as when you go there. You feel a greater burden on choosing well. We found that this gives anxiety to about 50% of travelers. We definitely feel a burden of choosing right.

Alex Gersovitz (3:37)

I was surprised by that too. We asked a question of travelers. If you could be presented with three different things. One is a somewhat limitless list of 500 options for your trip.

A curated set of 10 options or just one single option and a recommendation saying you should do this. Which would you prefer?

And I was surprised. It was about 60% of people picked that middle option and say, I don't really want the limitless 500 list. I also don't want you to tell me what I should do, whatever sort of recommendation, inspiration, LLM you're using or AI-based tool you're using. I want 10 curated to me, tailored to me ideas that then I can sort through, sift through. I think so much of AI has been about efficiency and doing things as quickly as possible. And clearly for travel, there will always be this more emotional exploration element that I think is really important. And you can see clearly as a trend throughout the work. Right.

Roberta Fusaro (4:36)

One point that I wanted to get back to, Margaux, you talk about the always on source of inspiration for travel.