Amadeus Reveals Online Secret: Niche Travel

The secret to online success is niche travel, Amadeus says in “Niches Great and Small,” a section of Amadeus’ report The Amateur-Expert Traveler. The free downloadable report looks at the possibilities for travel agencies to build more customer loyalty by catering to specific interests.

“To survive in a more diversified marketplace, TV corporations created 'niche' channels with narrowly focused content: gardening and home improvement, women’s interests, extreme sports, travel and food, to name just a few,” Amadeus reports. “As travel opportunities expand, online resources broaden and customers become more savvy about booking and pricing, smart travel companies are starting to do the same and think small, rather than one size fits all.”

“Niches Great and Small,” says niches are smaller than general markets and a company won’t sell a high volume of a single niche product. However, a company can establish its own economic niche by covering a spectrum of smaller markets.

“To become large, a business must work out how to standardize across a number of niches to gain sufficient economies of scale to make low volumes on a number of niches add up to a large and profitable business,” the report says.

About half of the expert panel sees significant opportunities for online travel business in these niche markets. The top three niche travel markets, according to Amadeus’ travel experts are family travel (56 percent voted), lifestyle travel (50 percent) and adventure travel (39 percent).

Other niche travel markets on the rise, according to Amadeus, are aircraft charters,  eco/green travel, religious travel, ground transportation, weddings, and dining reservations and travel goods.

Travel companies that use specialization as a selling strategy say that offering definitive knowledge of a particular product—such as adventure travel—to a targeted group of consumers results in brand loyalty, Amadeus reports.

The report concludes that niche markets and specialization are “rare routes to profitable growth” in an online world where loyalty is “hard to earn and easy to lose.”

Travel agents can download a copy of The Amateur-Expert Traveller report at www.Amadeus.com.