How do you convert with cosmos

[hirschnathan]

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Is cosmos the worse converting travel merchant?

Browsing the cosmos website, assuming I deeplink into a property, Cosmos have the number to book offline clearly visible.

Every stage of the booking, (that is 5 stages) there is a message: For Help call us on 0871 43 38 422 or click here and we'll call you back

Not exactly affiliate friendly, couldnt they take away the number for affiliate bookings, or have a phone tracking in place?

[mattg]

In my experience most tour operators show a prominent phone number on their pages, and don't have any tracking, it's the norm, and the default for their sites.

I think this is a bigger issue in 'travel' (tho we're specifically talking about holidays here, not transport) than other verticals. Customer spend is higher, purchase frequency is lower, the product can be complex, and a holiday is not yet a commodity, it's an aspirational purchase for many people. They want reassurance and their questions answered.

And many online booking processes are poor, the temptation for a customer to phone for ease of use (or to try and negotiate a discount) must be strong.

I probably would.

The 'market' (that means us) seems to accept it (in the few weeks I have been lurking here I have seen few discussions on this topic) ... so I guess tour operators think they have no great incentive to change it, they're getting 100% commission free sales.

That's gold dust for a tour operator - but in truth it's short sighted if they are serious about increasing their distribution via affiliates (which is already way cheaper than via 'the trade' ie travel agents).

My hunch is that leakage to phone is in the 40-50% range, possibly more. When many commission rates are already as low as 2-3%, that's a big issue ... it effectively halves an already low commission.

I know of 3 operators (Hoseasons, Superbreak, Travelsphere) who have taken the lead on this issue and either have removed the phone numbers from their site, or track them (which I think is a much better solution - it means the affiliate sourced customer gets the same level of service as any other. Why shouldn't they?). Support them.

Anyone know of any more? (Speak up operators!)

Second best is operators who offer an incentive for online booking. (DFDS for instance don't charge booking fees for online sales, they do for telephone sales, and they highlight this on their site. Some operators offer an automatic discount for online sales). Publish the incentive on your site prior to the click. It's not ideal, but it's better.

Some operators may claim their systems can't do this. I don't buy that. Websites are just computer programs. If they are built in-house, check the source out of version control and get it fixed. If it's bought in from a third party, push it up the chain as an important customer requirement. Insist.

I think any company with a will to could get this done, and I hope they'd benefit from increased affiliate support, their investment would be returned quickly. Their affiliates would get better data and earn the correct commission. (What would happen to that? Most likely it would get reinvested in generating more sales. Everyone wins.)

It would be great to hear from some operators on this - what is estimated leakage to phone? Or am I wrong .. is it a hard fix and not a significant issue in terms of untracked sales?

PS This must be affecting networks too. I assume a %ge of networks' fees are pegged to sales value. So if affiliates are missing revenues, the networks are too.

PPS Sorry, long post for a bank holiday monday! But the weather is minging where I am, may as well get some work done.

- Matt

[Brigadoon]

temptation for a customer to phone for ease of use (or to try and negotiate a discount) must be strong.

The temptation is very strong, when the telephone number is flashing at you on every page of Direct Holidays.

[morleymouse]

I know of 3 operators (Hoseasons, Superbreak, Travelsphere) who have taken the lead on this issue and either have removed the phone numbers from their site, or track them (which I think is a much better solution - it means the affiliate sourced customer gets the same level of service as any other. Why shouldn't they?). Support them.

Anyone know of any more? (Speak up operators!)

Alpharooms And even better from tomorrow (if things go to plan) well have all the tour operator packages live as well as the DP options.

Matt - excellent post

[hirschnathan]

Matt

Alot of the travel sites have taken their number down, sunshine alpharooms hayes and jarvis.......... and H&J even offer a discount for online bookings, so do some others.

I just wish that all merchants especially large ticket items would remove the phone num,ber, its not as if when you call the cosmos helpdesk, the person on the other end knows anything more about the destination than you can see in front of you. I imagine people need sonfidence when booking and need a 'listening ear' whatever it is I am sure it encourages people to just press call back.

Even if cosmos would just remove the call back option I am sure online sales would double, (.25% - .5%)

[mattg]

H you have of course verified with your network and Cosmos that your links are coded correctly and flagged that you're having a problem? And you have asked your network how your conversion compares with their other affiliates? (.... and you have spell checked your sites ...... yeah? ... )

Thanks for heads up re H&J, know any more?

So you agree with my hunch that 50% is lost to phone. (Would be great to hear from an operator on this).

Dan thanks. Sure there is you and those sunshine people, and co-op, probably a bunch more - I was meaning tour operators in the stricter sense of the word. But whatever works, works, of course.

So hirschnathan there are other options for you if you get no joy with Cosmos - link to an agent or dynamic packager, or do some deals & write your own booking system (not a trivial undertaking).

On my site my aim is to work with tour operators for now, though I did put a link, buried deep on my site, to sunshine in order to get a competition entry. It got 3 clicks in May ... and a sale. If I could scale that at a tenner profit a click I'd be wealthy very soon!

[sweetpete]

On Thomson.co.uk we do display the phone number, but i'm sure you'd agree it's not very prominent (compared to some of our competitors).

In terms of the figures we see for leakage then 97% of all bookings across Thomson.co.uk are made online and therefore commissionable for affiliates. We offer chunky online discounts which customers generally don't get if they ring our call centre, they are redirected online as much as possible.

I obviously can't comment on another company and their conversion rate but in terms of Thomson then there would be very little change in affiliates commission if we were to remove the number.

[mattg]

Thx for the stats Pete, that's reassuring. Yes it's pretty discrete.

[cottageguy]

Thx for the stats Pete, that's reassuring. Yes it's pretty discrete.

Excellent post Matt. It's not a technical problem - as you know we were phone tracking from the web site 7 years.

It's a travel problem. Tour operators have been relying on people picking up brochures in travel agents then calling direct for years. So at senior management level untracked bookings are seen as a "good thing". (senior management in travel is by and large not hugely gifted. They didn't go into travel because they were good at maths.)

And to reiterate a point I have made before, taking the phone no. off is not a good idea. Well it might be for affiliates, but not for tour operators, as customers needing reassurance will just go elsewhere. The bare minimum should be a dedicated tel no. for affiliates, with an affiliate ID next to it (dynamically generated) and staff trained to ask, as the first question, "can you give me the ID code that appears next to the telephone number please?"

And finally, that TUI % doesn't ring true to me. I am not casting aspersions - I am sure there is a report currently showing 97% - but leakage is very hard to track and everything you miss improves the notional effectiveness of the online process.

Anyway Good Luck to all.

[mattg]

Tour operators have been relying on people picking up brochures in travel agents then calling direct for years.

Oh the irony ... the 'eureka' moment that lead to my first site (way back in ummmmm 1999) was when I wanted to book a ski holiday. I picked up a brochure from an agent and chose our holiday. Then my choice was to walk 10 minutes into town to queue up to speak to Trayyceyyyyy at Lunn Poly (who wouldn't even know where Serre Chevalier was), or call the operator.

So I flipped over the bro, and there was a 'come back to Lunn Poly' sticker slapped over Ingham's phone number. I mean, really? So I held it up to the light to read Ingham's number through the sticker and called them.

Plus ça change.

and ask, as the first question, "can you give me the ID code that appears next to the telephone number please?"

Yeah how hard can it be. (As Jagger said when Wyman left the Stones, 'No biggie, I'll play bass, ...')

And finally, that TUI % doesn't ring true to me. I am not casting aspersions - I am sure there is a report currently showing 97% - but leakage is very hard to track and everything you miss improves the notional effectiveness of the online process.

Certainly if it's accurate, it's impressive.

I'm reading that as 'of 33 purchases that start with a visit to the site, 32 complete online'.

Whatever, it's reassuring to know TUI are watching it.

Would be interesting to hear comparative data from other brands.

For the brands we run that report phone data back to us, it's a lot more than 3%.

I'm all for encouraging (trackable) phone, let's give the customer all the help they need.

- M (currently in Dublin, about to cruise the Irish Sea on a tallship so afk for a few days. Next stop Douglas IOM .... perhaps! Have a great week all).

[cottageguy]

Certainly if it's accurate, it's impressive.

I'm reading that as 'of 33 purchases that start with a visit to the site, 32 complete online'.

Whatever, it's reassuring to know TUI are watching it.

Would be interesting to hear comparative data from other brands.

For the brands we run that report phone data back to us, it's a lot more than 3%.

I'm all for encouraging (trackable) phone, let's give the customer all the help they need.

- M (currently in Dublin, about to cruise the Irish Sea on a tallship so afk for a few days. Next stop Douglas IOM .... perhaps! Have a great week all).

I think you're probably right Matt, the stats could work on that basis. A truer test imho, is of the the number of people who visited the site, how many booked within x days, and of those bookings, how many were made online.

Love that Jagger quote Tall ship sounds good. I am just back from mountain biking in Namibia, which was a blast, apart from my crutch meaning i was in the support truck :td

Jon

[Travel Pixel]

I agree with pretty much everything Matt says here.

It's frustrating to see phone numbers on travel websites when they could so easily be removed although I appreciate the viewpoint that some customers need that human touch.

In our experience phone tracking converts at around 10-15%.

Id like to see all travel merchants adopt the same tactic as alpharooms and dynamically insert a code if they insist on keeping a phone number. The caller is then asked to qoute that code. Im sure it would take web developers all of 30 minutes to knock up a script.....

Good stuff from Thomson.

Dave

[pistol101]

The Cosmos site was originally set-up with the phone numbers removed for affiliate traffic. They have been having some issues with this which is why the numbers appear most of the time at present.

There are some major changes coming from the Cosmos end, which should start rolling out from tomorrow. The intention is that the site will be phone number free.

[coop1571]

Just spotted this thread...

Matt - Thanks for raising the point about the telephone number.

The telephone number at the stages of the booking engine process are for support. People do speak to a call centre member of staff but if they book offline (over the phone) they will be charged up to an extra £20 more per booking than online. Our policy is always, 'book early and online, travel for less.'

Customers will be encourgaed by the contact centre staff to complete the booking online.

Thanks
Andrew
D F D S Seaways

[hirschnathan]

The Cosmos site was originally set-up with the phone numbers removed for affiliate traffic. They have been having some issues with this which is why the numbers appear most of the time at present.

There are some major changes coming from the Cosmos end, which should start rolling out from tomorrow. The intention is that the site will be phone number free.

Pete.
Its 3 months sinced you posted the above comment and thge number is still being displayed.

Can you push cosmos to remove the tel number

Thanks