E-Loyalty in Travel and Tourism: Results from a representative survey in Germany, USA and UK

Loyal customers are an important asset for companies and are of increasing value for online businesses. Many companies in the travel and tourism industry selling their products through the Internet take various measures in order to increase customer loyalty. This study analyses the perceived usefulness of these e-loyalty instruments as well as the determinants of e-loyalty. For this explorative study, an online survey was conducted using the IPSOS omnibus with a representative of 1'000 respondents from the USA, UK and Germany. The analysis showed that loyal customers are rare. Many bookers can imagine booking again with the same provider or website; however these might be habitual customers who do not particularly prefer one brand to another. Moreover, the study concluded that loyalty programmes are not very popular in Germany and the UK compared to the USA. The most important factors for building up loyalty are a suitable layout of the booking process on the web and a good reputation. The study also revealed that German travellers rather like recommendations from other travellers, while for US based travellers, the brand and the reputation of the company they book with is of great importance. For all travellers, appealing communication via social media channels is considered to be of least importance compared to other loyalty instruments. The cluster analysis conducted in this study led to four different clusters depending on the importance of the following (e-)loyalty instruments and (e-)loyalty determinants: “outgoing frequent travellers”, “outgoing infrequent travellers”, “contact person likers” and “loyalty dislikers”.