Just this past month I have had so many enquiries from travel businesses and tour operators that traditionally focus on business travel who are now wishing to make the switch to more leisure travel and in-destination experiences for B2C. Driven by the devastating after-effects of the pandemic, B2B travel is now seen by some as a dead end, so the question for others who focus on business travel is… should you switch or at least add a B2C element?
First, let’s take a look at what is currently happening in the business travel sector.
The changing face of business travel
First let me say that there will always be business travel as it is a necessity for some professionals to meet in person and to make connections; people need to visit factories and to simply get to work in far away destinations But we are seeing a massive shift in how frequent these trips will be. Business travel for the likes of sales and potentially conferences will be much less frequent, with companies choosing th...
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Bad Wifi, internet connection while traveling... this issue has been a problem in the travel industry for decades!
I'd love to hear from the community:
1. How do you tackle this issue?
2. How do you ensure your content remains exclusive to your clients?
I assume this question is about international travel.
I think most travelers will utilise eSIMs as more devices support it and the UX (buying, installing) is getting so simple, anyone can use them.
Customers might also simply stay with their telco. imo the days of shock $1000 roaming bills are over and most telcos now offer cheap(ish) per-day plans for like $3 a day.
As for your second question, is this in regards to digital products such as downloadable guides? I don’t think you can truly prevent someone from copying content, but I’d say most customers (unless they are a sneaky competitor) are not going to distribute content they have purchased. I think others in the community might have more insight into this.
Internet/WiFi—just tether to sim card.
Protecting stuff—we sell PDFs and for a while I chased Scribd to get stuff that members uploaded there removed, but in the end was a waste of time and I don’t bother anymore. When we used to generate PDFs on the fly used to emboss the username on the PDF, ostensibly for this reason, but again, don’t do that anymore. Egregious copyright infringements I chase through DMCAs, but again, there’s a cost benefit analysis at play, and I chase less than I used to—though it became much less of a problem once most of the site was paywalled.
As someone else mentioned, tethering to a cellular data network via a SIM card on a hotspot or phone is always a great secondary Internet source. The fact of the matter is, if you can't provide fast and stable Internet, you're simply not going to attract or retain any digital nomads, or remote working, guests. Whether or not your business can survive without that group is a separate question and depends on environment, competition, etc.
For those travel businesses (booking platforms and property managers) who do have good internet, I believe it's imperative to showcase that in the advertisement in order to attract these remote workers looking for medium/long-term stays. To do this, you need to be providing periodic speed tests with historical data including on dropouts. This instills maximum trust with the prospective guest. The Wired Nomad, my product, has been developing this small, plug-and-play device that can then be integrated into our search engine & aggregator for those wishing to view truly verified Internet/Wi-Fi information.
I usually get a local SIM card, most of the times it’s cheaper as super easier to find that use my Canadian expensive line.