Youth travellers are tourism trailblazers. They stay longer, go farther and spend more. They are motivated by experiences, authenticity, and cultural understanding. This is a slice of what WYSE Travel Confederation found in 2012, when 34,000 travellers ages 18-35 took part in the third edition of the New Horizons survey. For WYSE Travel Confederation members, this research is an integral part of their marketing strategy.
However, this unique 280 billion (USD) travel segment changes quickly. The values and interests of Millennials travellers cannot be seamlessly projected onto GenZ. The New Horizons survey is the only recurring global survey of the youth travel segment, which makes the findings vital for tracking changes and developments in the market over time.
“We always really need up to date reports,” said Alice Hawkes, GVI Director of Marketing. GVI is a WYSE Travel Confederation member which applied New Horizons research to day to day operations after the 2012 report was released. “We used the New Horizons 2012 findings to help our strategy and focus our time and energy resources,” Hawkes explained.
Now that the fourth edition of the New Horizons study is underway, GVI has been a leader in facilitating survey results – with nearly 100 responses rolling in from their customer base in just a few weeks. GVI shared their tactics for encouraging survey participation from their customers. The good news is, they said it really doesn’t take much work at all.
“It has been a pretty simple undertaking. We have a good following on social media and we started regularly sharing the survey there,” Hawkes said. “We also send out segmented emails every few days and email our entire mailing list once every two weeks. We encourage survey participation in each email and have found that our followers are very interested.” Hawkes said GVI doesn’t typically offer prizes or competitions, but they don’t mind partnering with organisations who do – if the campaign fits the GVI mission. “Since our customers aren’t used to seeing prizes being offered in our emails, I believe the chance to win some interesting prizes really stands out to them.”
The effort required to share the New Horizons survey with young travellers may be small, but the impact of the New Horizons research on the industry becomes greater with each edition. Preliminary findings of the survey will be presented at the World Youth and Student Travel Conference (WYSTC) in Montréal 26-29 September. The survey will close approximately a month after the conference. WYSE Travel Confederation encourages retailers and suppliers of travel products tailored to youth and student travellers to share the survey with customers to increase the reach of the study and deepen industry knowledge. Distributor tips and resources are available to be downloaded and adjusted to suit the organisation’s preferences.
