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
How do you convert with cosmos
And even better from tomorrow (if things go to plan) well have all the tour operator packages live as well as the DP options.
)