Holiday & travel brand index – Q4 2019

Every quarter we survey British consumers on their brand awareness and preferences in relation to the holidays and travel industry. Our latest insights into this industry can be found below. 

To compile this quarter’s holidays & travel brand index below, we looked at three things:

• Percentage of unprompted brand recall within the holidays and travel category
• How likely a person is to purchase each brand (Purchase Intent)
• How likely a person is to recommend each brand (Net Promoter Score)

Key changes in brand attributes

What a quarter it’s been for British travel. Beloved brand Thomas Cook ceased trading overnight, leaving travellers in turmoil and the looming uncertainty of Brexit continues to have Brits exercising restraint and tightening the pursestrings when it comes to exploring overseas. 

Holidays usually aren’t small purchases – they’re an investment of money, time, and effort. All of that means that holiday & travel brands need to fight ever-harder to win consumer trust, and stand out from the crowd as a memorable and reputable brand. 

Each quarter we ask consumers to rank the top 10 holiday and travel brands they’ve named in eight categories: reliability, convenience, customer service, price, trust, online presence & website, memorable branding & adverts and variety of trips available. Here are the main winners, losers and movers this quarter:

• There’s been a huge mix-up in the rankings for Q4. airbnb has made its way into the top 10, and has managed to nab almost every first place ranking – they’ve won gold for seven of the eight brand attributes this quarter. The British public voted them the most reliable, most convenient, best priced, most trustworthy brand, with the best service, the best online presence, and the best variety. They’re kind of a big deal.
• The only attribute that airbnb missed first place on was memorable branding, which went to Jet2 this quarter. Tripadvisor, who achieved lots of first place rankings in Q2 and Q3 this year, were hot on airbnb’s heels this time around, but have ended up ranking neutrally across the board in Q4.
• There’s only one travel brand on consumer’s minds when it comes to poor performance this quarter. Thomas Cook, surprise surprise, have managed a clean sweep of last place rankings in Q4. Last quarter, they were ranked last for convenience, price, and online presence – this quarter, they’ve added reliability, service, trustworthiness, memorable branding, and variety to the list.
• In Q3, Virgin took first place for quality of service, Booking.com for best price, and Trivago for memorable branding. This quarter, Booking.com and Trivago have ranked neutrally in all attributes, with Virgin falling off of the leaderboard entirely.

Key Takeaways

• The holiday & travel industry is volatile, and so is this quarter’s leaderboard. TUI remain comfortably at the top, managing an increase in Total Brand Equity despite a small drop in unprompted brand recall. They’re the only brand who stay in the same position from Q3 to Q4.
• Several brands have climbed the rankings this quarter – easyJet, British Airways, and Trivago have all hopped up two places each, despite all dropping in unprompted brand recall. Expedia have made an impressive jump from sixth to second place – while their NPS has dropped in Q4, they’ve made gains across the other metrics, and are one of only three brands this quarter to see an increase in unprompted brand recall.
• Four brands have dropped down the leaderboard. Booking.com has fallen one place, from second to third, thanks to a slight drop in NPS and being overtaken in unprompted brand recall by Expedia this quarter. Jet2 have also dropped one place, from fourth to third – they’ve seen a pretty dramatic drop in unprompted brand recall in Q4, falling from 14.4% to just 5.3%. The biggest drops, though, came for Tripadvisor and Thomas Cook, who fell from fourth to ninth and third to tenth respectively. 
• When it comes to Thomas Cook, it’s evident that the public’s perception of the much-loved brand has been swayed over the last quarter. They achieved the second best unprompted brand recall score this quarter, but, as one responder put it, “for all the wrong reasons”. Their total brand equity has plummeted from 220 to -880, and the NPS from 63.6 to -73.9.
• There’s one newcomer on the board this quarter – airbnb has soared into eighth place, claiming the best NPS of the top 10. Though their unprompted brand recall was lower than most of the other brands on the board, the level of positive consumer sentiment around the brand has pushed them into the limelight – and this quarter, they’ve pushed Virgin out. They’ll need to work on their memorability to keep their position going into 2020. 

The Full Report

The report includes:

• The UK’s leading holiday and travel brands for awareness, purchase intent and Net Promoter Score
• Overall brand strength and total brand equity index
• Industry averages and market dynamics
• Key takeaways for the UK holiday and travel industry

The report is based on a nationally representative survey of 1,000 people in the UK (aged 18+), surveyed in January 2019. 

Click to view research

Brand index methodology

The Attest Brand Index is a platform agnostic measure of a brand’s total brand equity in the health and wellness sector, as determined by real consumers.

What does that mean?

When we say ‘platform agnostic’, we mean the results are not influenced by any particular method of collecting them, like looking exclusively at social media mentions or at brand search terms. This reduces bias and gives us a more accurate view of a brand’s strength in its category.

Learn more about why we think this is the best methodology for Brand Intelligence.

Brand Index data is gathered every quarter from a nationally representative survey to 1,000 UK consumers aged 18-65.