It’s coming to that time of the year when we all start daydreaming about 2020 holidays to destinations near and far.
The internet allows consumers to research their holidays in more depth than ever before, opening up travel booking sites to closer scrutiny. Online reputation can be a powerful influence on travel agent take up – both bad and good.
YOUKNOW, using Brandwatch Consumer Research, analysed the South African conversation around nine of the top travel sites in the country over the past year to find out which were faring the best online.
These are: Travelstart, Travelcheck, LekkeSlaap, Cheapflights, Thompsons, Flightsite, Pentravel, STA Travel and Flight Centre.
Of the travel sites we looked at, Flight Centre was mentioned by far the most in the past year, accounting for a 44% share of the conversation. Flight Centre was followed by Travelstart (26%), Lekkeslaap (14%) and STA Travel (8%). Thompsons, Flightsite and Travelcheck accounted for the least share of voice accounting for only 3% of conversation combined.
The conversation about travel sites increased during the Christmas holidays, peaking between the 25th and 29th of December due to discussion about Flight Centre’s competition to win a trip to Mauritius in collaboration with Glamour SA.
Brands with the highest percentage of positive conversation were Pentravel (36%), Travelstart (29%) and Thompsons (27%).
The conversation around Pentravel praised its customer service, especially their expert advice.
The brand with the highest percentage of negative conversation was FlightSite. Much of the negativity surrounding FlightSite regarded the inability to get in touch with customer service. So that’s a snapshot of the online South African travel companies.
*This data was analysed using Brandwatch Consumer Research, with the most volume of conversation coming from Twitter, for the period of January 2019 - January 2020.
