Consumers known as Generation Y are expected to become the main consumers in the global travel and leisure industries within the next five to ten years. In order to effectively engage this new customer base, brands should know how these users communicate and how they use their main source of information — the Internet.
According to the Hospitality Technology website, travel and leisure brands should concentrate on producing video content for video-sharing websites, particularly YouTube, in order to reach their core audience. Engagement with online video content has been soaring in recent years, with YouTube emerging as a major platform, boasting more than one billion unique visits on a monthly basis and recording six billion hours of videos viewed per month. A recent study by Cisco predicted that this year 90% of total web traffic will be video-oriented.
With these figures in mind, it is evident that brands should embrace video content marketing for better outreach and visibility. Video also boosts engagement and conversion rates; users are 67% more likely to book a holiday if there is a video tour available on the website, and those who actually view the video are 89% more likely to book, Hospitality Technology points out.
Having a YouTube video on the brand´s website is important for several reasons: on the one hand, YouTube is a familiar platform to the vast majority of users – this could increase brand favourability. The attention span of users is also decreasing, suggesting that they are less likely to view photo galleries or read descriptions and are more likely to watch a short video. Moreover, videos tend to rank high in searches, which is an extra benefit for businesses, the website concludes.
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