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The Challenge: Crafting an Engaging Booking Experience That Captivates Travellers During Planning Stage
TravelUp, a global leader in online travel, has built its reputation on offering personalized vacation packages and competitive deals to millions of travellers worldwide. TravelUp faced a crucial challenge: creating a booking experience that effectively engages travellers while booking.
Understanding the Market Opportunity
A fundamental disconnect between traditional booking platforms and modern travel behavior:
- High Cart Abandonment Rates: Approximately 83% of travel bookings are abandoned, often due to the travellers need to discuss, plan, engage and validate on other platforms
- The Rise of Group Travel: Approximately 80% of trips are group trips, yet most booking platforms are designed for individual users.
This underscores that most booking platforms fail to accommodate the social nature of travel planning. “In an era where social validation holds immense importance, travel sites must engage consumers effectively or risk losing them,” said Craig Ashford, Chief Commercial Officer at TravelUp.
Solution: Implementing and Optimizing with Joyned to Keep Users Engaged
TravelUp partnered with Joyned to transform their booking experience. Joyned’s vision is to provide users with all the tools they need for travel decision-making directly on the partner’s website, with seamless collaboration as a key aspect. In Craig Ashford words: “Joyned brings a social element to the TravelUp experience, allowing customers to share holiday, hotel, and flight options with those whose opinions matter most—friends, family, or travel companions—facilitating real-time endorsements and seamless collaboration.”
Travelup didn’t just stop at implementation, they worked with Joyned through a process of smart optimizations, driven to make impactful data driven decisions together.
Results: Unprecedented Impact on Virality
Through the smart optimizations with Joyned, TravelUp successfully attracted high-intent travellers—those more likely to form groups, engage, and convert. As a result, they achieved an impressive 50% average virality rate*. This means that for every 100 users engaging with Joyned, 50 additional users were organically driven to the website. Such a high level of virality is rare in the travel industry, where organic traffic acquisition is typically low,
Impact: Measurable Impact on Business Performance
By implementing a social revenue strategy, TravelUp achieved dramatic results for Online Conversion Rate, Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), and Average Order Value (AOV), enabling them to increase their group travellers revenue by 200% (3X on their baseline).
The results particularly shine in group booking scenarios, where they prove to have even more significant impacts on performance.
+36% Higher Conversion Rate
- Joyned users had 36% higher CVR than standard users
Up to +20% Average Order Value
- Solo travellers using Joyned: +15%
- Group travellers using Joyned: +20%
Up to 3X Average Revenue Per User
- Solo travellers using Joyned: 1.5X higher than standard users
- Group travellers using Joyned: 3X higher than standard users
The partnership between TravelUp and Joyned demonstrates the untapped potential in creating engaging experiences and social user journeys.
“With Joyned, we’re not just improving conversion rates—we’re transforming the way travellers connect, plan, and book,” said Craig Ashford, CMO.