Noam Toister, CEO and cofounder of Travelier.
The peak season for European and North American leisure travelers is imminent, and the headlines around overtourism are already being written. Europe is on the front line, as evidenced by protests in the Balearics, but the pressure of mass visitation is being felt from Japan to the U.S.
There are many studies into overtourism, and the consensus is that “several factors have led to this situation.”
As an advocate for the ground transportation industry, my take on overtourism is that we need to look at how airlines and airports are setting the demand patterns while recognizing that trains, buses and ferries can help not only to shift these entrenched patterns but also to spread the benefits of tourism to communities who live on the paths less travelled.
At a recent industry event in Berlin, I asked an audience of travel professionals if they knew how many commercial airports—those served by scheduled flights—there are in the world. Very few got close to the correct answer, which is just over 4,000.
Taking Flight
If you’re traveling, it all starts with the flight, but flights can only get you so far. Travelers are forced to go where the flights will take them and this tends to be the most popular, and therefore over-visited, destinations.
Local, regional and national tourist boards, as well as the travel companies themselves, are trying to strategize around how to disperse tourists. However, travelers need to be able to get to the alternatives suggested in the marketing campaigns. This is where ground transportation comes in.
Last year, our company commissioned an independent market sizing research report, which found that the global ground transportation market is worth $198 billion, higher than we had previously thought. The survey also revealed that, once at their destination, travelers book three to five intercity trips, on average. This would explain why, for example, Get Your Guide has a global inventory of experiences covering 10,000 cities when there are only 4,000 airports (remembering that one city can be served by multiple airports). TripAdvisor is probably mapping the world a little differently, but it has 136,000 destinations.
In contrast, we have 170,000 bus stations on our books.
So, travelers are already finding ways to get from airports to these destinations. For some, it’s a private transfer from a dedicated terminal at their arrival airport, but the vast majority are likely to have to have self-transfer, directly from the airport or via the nearest city with a transport hub.
Staying Grounded
Providing travelers with the options for intercity transportation—how to get to destination A from airport B possibly transferring via transport hub C—is starting to happen, and there is room for this to grow by using technology to make this information easily available. Similarly, today’s travelers are digitally aware and have the expectation that their train, bus or ferry ride can be booked and paid for, online and in advance, securely, using the payment method that suits their preferences.
In a previous post, I outlined how there are a number of businesses helping to digitize the ground transportation industry on a B2C level through consumer-facing websites. We are one of only a few that also works with the industry as a wide-ranging B2B partner, helping suppliers with SaaS operational tech to run their businesses, which includes getting their inventory visible and bookable online, either through our B2C portfolio, via other providers in our competitive set, or directly through their own app or website.
Traveler preferences are driving the growth and digitalization of ground transportation. Our research showed that travelers “plan to increase their use of bus, car rental and rideshare … increasingly looking towards alternative modes of intercity transport driven by factors such as cost, environmental concerns and convenience.” Operators are also contributing to the growth, with more and more coming online on a daily basis, increasing the visibility and availability of digital ground transportation bookings.
The final growth driver comes from the travel industry itself and the stated aim of most major players to come up with a “super-app” from where travelers can book and seamlessly manage all the components of a trip in the same place. Most airlines, hotels and some of the more mature bus and rail operators have the tech back end to support this integration at scale, but without the long tail of ground transportation, there is no “connected trip.” For travel to be truly seamless, ground transportation tech needs to catch up with the rest of the travel industry.
Moving Online
Our research showed that only 24% of ground transportation around the world is booked online—in Europe, it’s 30%; in Africa, it’s 7%. But the data suggested that online will see a CAGR of 15% over the next five years, outperforming the overall ground transportation market, which is in line for a CAGR of 4.9% over the same period.
These are global averages, and the scale of offline-to-online shift is leading to consolidation among the existing players, supporting new market entrants, and opening up innovative partnership opportunities with online travel agents, airlines and hotels. With Expedia, booking.com and trip.com starting to work with tech-enabled ground transportation providers, travelers are becoming more familiar and comfortable with visiting the less obvious destinations.
The causes of overtourism are complicated, with many different solutions under discussion, but I believe that making it easier for travelers to get to places is a simple and effective way to shift demand. With the ongoing digitalization of ground transportation, there are more ways for more travelers to get to more destinations—and that is good for the travel industry at large and even better for destinations that currently suffer from overtourism.
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