Payment experience to influence spending with travelling, Amadeus study

Furthermore, 70% of travellers say a good payment experience would make them select one travel provider over another. Amadeus has undertaken ‘Frictionless travel payments: from complexity to competitive advantage’, a new study investigating what travellers value most from the payment experience.

According to the analysis, travel and payment trends are colliding to drive new behaviour, for example, 74% of people now book travel less than two months before departure and millennials are more than twice as likely to do so than those over 55. When it comes to meeting the payment expectations of this growing group of late bookers, they demand price transparency, a wide choice of payment methods, and improved security.

While new innovations such as ‘pay by instalment’ are particularly popular with millennials, 66% of all travellers confirmed they would be more likely to buy with an instalment option and 56% said they would purchase higher-value services if they could spread the payments.

As the average traveller now relies on more than four different payment methods throughout their trip, it’s clear to see why 38% of travellers cite payment method choice (e.g. cards, bank transfer, e-Wallets) as their number one requirement. However, what matters even more is transparency, with 47% saying unexpected fees, charges or foreign exchange surprises are a major point of friction. 

The study was developed based on a global survey of 5,665 travellers in 10 globally representative markets carried out by Sapio Research on behalf of Amadeus.