Here come the Russians

Relations between Russia and the West may be strained but data from hotels.com suggests that European hotels should ignore the Russian traveller at their peril

Could sanctions by the US and Europe and counter sanctions from Russia negatively impact the hotel sector? If speculation that Russian travellers will travel less in the coming months materialises, then the answer to that could be yes.

But while there may well be some political challenges right now, Marieke Flament, Marketing Director, Europe Middle East & Africa, for hotels.com believes hotels cannot afford to ignore Russian customer who “are completely reshaping the European hotel market”.

According to the European Travel Commission 35.7 million tourists from Russia took a foreign trip in 2012 and that was up from just 7.7 million in 2006. The ETC also forecast that outbound travel was forecast to grow by 7.5% on average until 2017. There is also a rapidly growing middle class, which Nielsen projects will rise to 16% of the population by 2020. Further proof comes from the fact that a rising number of people are searching online for travel related products. For example, Russian metasearch player Aviasales, recently agreed a large-scale technological cooperation Amadeus, handles about 400,000 search queries a day.

The Russian customer is completely reshaping the European hotel market

Marieke Flament, Marketing Director, Europe Middle East & Africa, hotels.com

According to Flament, many Russians are looking for new and novel experiences and for hotels looking to drive ancillary revenues from in-trip activities this presents a real opportunity. For this reason hotels.com is working hard to offer the customer a seamless experience across all platforms – and particularly via mobile. “That’s at the core of our strategy,” says Flament.

For hotels keen to target the Russian customer, it’s important to have the right data and recent data from hotels.com reveals that:

  • 35% of all mobile demand in Russia was for one day stays in Q1 of 2014
  • 65% of all mobile demand in Russia was for two day stays or more in Q1 2014
  • 32% of all mobile demand in Russia was for same or next day stays in Q1 2014
  • Most Russian travellers are looking for hotels with four to five stars

This can be contrasted against broader European trends from hotels.com which finds that:

  • 4% of all mobile bookings in Europe were for one day stays Q1 2014
  • 46% of all mobile bookings in Europe were for two-day stays or more in Q1 2014
  • 31% of all mobile bookings in Europe were for same or next day stays in Q1 2014
  • Every European country’s most booked star category via mobile was 4-star in Q1 2014 with the exception of France which mostly books 3-star properties
  • iPhone App/iPad App users booked mainly 4-star hotels in Europe in Q1 2014
  • Android: The majority of Android users booked 3-star properties in Q1 2014

What Flament is keen to highlight is that all customers are becoming more last minute with 58% of its customers booking for the same day or next day. Another opportunity is in navigation systems and hotels.com is partnering with Ford to embed its product into the navigations system so that a customer can be directed to the hotel they have just booked. And if those directions can be given in Russian, better still!

Marieke Flament, Marketing Director, Europe Middle East & Africa, for hotels.com will be speaking at Online Marketing, Mobile & Social Media in Travel 2014 which will take place in Berlin from Oct 1-2

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