Segmentation of the travel market is crucial for gaining a better understanding of the needs of Russian customers

Based on our experience, it has been observed that owners in the travel business have limited understanding of their target audience. Market segmentation knowledge within the travel and tourism industry is fundamental to any marketing strategy. It is only by comprehending your target audience that you can properly set goals and objectives, develop a suitable offer, and select the most efficient tools to achieve your KPI. If you aspire to gain a deeper understanding of your target audience and how to promote your travel business to engage only interested Russian tourists, then refer to our blog.

Travel industry market: segmentation types

Let’s begin with the fundamental types of target audience segmentation in the travel industry, which are utilized in marketing:

• Social and Economic Characteristics: This refers to education, income, and social benefits, which indicate buying preferences and financial stability.
• Geography: This refers to categorizing audiences by countries, cities, regions, or streets, depending on the scope of the project.
• Demography: This includes age, gender, and marital status, which affect buying behavior. Teenagers tend to make impulse purchases, while older buyers make more informed purchasing decisions.
• Psychographics: Although more abstract, it is still a significant criterion to consider. It includes social status, lifestyle, and interests.

In addition, we will discuss other types of travel industry market segmentation that can provide you with a more detailed understanding of your target audience.

Travel Purpose Segmentation

• Leisure Tourists who plan leisure trips tend to take a long time to decide, conducting research, and making informed choices. They expect activities such as beach recreation, tours, shopping, and other extra criteria to be available.
• Visiting Family Trips to visit family are usually planned well in advance and coincide with holidays (e.g., New Year) or vacation periods.
• Seminar and Congress Participation Trips for seminars and congresses are typically planned 1-2 months ahead, and tourists tend to stay only for the event’s duration. Most of these tourists do not have extra money expenditures in mind or only have minimal ones.
• Business Trip Tourists on business trips usually have a budget allocated by their company, with limited choices of airlines, hotels, etc.
• Medical Treatment These tourists travel to other countries to receive medical treatment that is not available in Russia, or the quality of medical care is lower. Some options for preventive treatment, such as sea recreation, are beneficial for asthma patients.

Traveler Preferences

• Marital status

Married travelers tend to prioritize comfort and relaxed recreation, while solo travelers are often seeking new experiences and opportunities, and may not prioritize comfort and tranquility as much.

• Organized vs Self-Guided Tours

An increasing number of Russian travelers prefer to plan their own trips and travel independently. In fact, independent travelers make up 34% of the Russian market.

• Travel Duration

Studies from 2017 show that 52% of Russian travelers spend 1.5-2 weeks on their trips, while the percentage of those who travel for shorter periods increased by 6% and those who travel for longer periods decreased by 5%.

• Accommodation Choices

4-star hotels are the preferred choice for Russian tourists. In 2017, the percentage of 4-star hotel guests increased by 2%, while the popularity of 3-star hotels decreased by 3%. The number of stays in 5-star and 2-star hotels and hostels remained relatively unchanged.

What methods can be used to gather information about the target audience?

• Conduct surveys and engage in face-to-face conversations with tourists. Seek feedback from both past and current guests to gather valuable insights.
• Online polling services can be used to survey a large number of internet users, but it’s important to keep in mind that not all users will be relevant to your target audience. Carefully consider the questions and mechanics of your survey to ensure that you gather useful information.

If you aim to gather data about Russian tourists who have visited or are planning to visit Bali, choose an online polling service that mainly focuses on respondents from Russia, such as testograf.ru. Begin your poll with a fundamental question: “Have you ever been to Bali?” If the respondent answers “YES,” proceed with further questions to gather the information you require. In case the respondent answers “NO,” confirm if they intend to visit Bali. If the answer is still “NO,” it implies that they are not your target audience. Therefore, it is essential to prepare a series of questions with uncomplicated answers.

• Analytics services offered by search engines such as Yandex.Metrics and Google Analytics can provide valuable insights into your website visitors. These tools can track a wide range of information including search queries, age, gender, location, interests, and the most frequently visited pages or products.
• Social media platforms provide valuable insights into your target audience’s demographics, interests, hobbies, and leisure activities. By analyzing the profiles of your customers and the groups they are a part of, you can obtain information such as their sex, age, education, and focus areas. This data can help you create a comprehensive profile of your target audience and can also be utilized for advertising purposes in the future. Popular groups and websites among your target audience are ideal for placing ads and promoting your business.
• Data from marketing and social research.

Promoting based on the profile of your target audience

Once you have created detailed profiles of your target audience(s), you should develop a tailored promotion strategy for each one. This involves selecting appropriate advertising channels, determining the type of ads and crafting effective messages that resonate with each specific audience.

After the advertising campaign has been launched for a month or two, you can evaluate its performance for each audience. Based on the results, you can refine your target audience profiles and adjust your advertising channels and messaging accordingly.

It’s important to constantly review and modify your target audiences and advertising tools based on the data collected during the campaign.

For example, you can use our Customer Journey Map (CJM) as a segmentation example for two groups of Russian tourists. To download the CJM, simply provide your email address.

Example of promotion based on CJM

To make it easier to understand, you can download our CJM, which includes two customer maps based on the analysis of two different target audiences:

1. A married couple over the age of 40 living in the Far East and both employed, planning a vacation together, but with the wife making the final decision (as is common in Russian families).
2. A 28-year-old single male living in Moscow, working as a freelancer, with interests in photography and travel.

The CJM includes the following charts:

Actions: This chart illustrates the complete process from the decision-making stage to the end of the trip.

Thoughts and feelings: This data helps in creating a primary advertising message for a specific travel audience.

Satisfaction: This scale indicates the most favorable period to deliver a message. Additionally, it assists in determining the manner of the message.

Touchpoints: This chart includes the most popular advertising channels and tools to achieve the desired goal of not just attracting Russian tourists but also creating a positive impression and a desire to return.

Let’s analyze how to utilize the CJM of a Russian tourist for the example of a married couple if you are promoting Thailand as a travel destination in the Russian market:

1. At the consideration stage, you can influence the decision-making process by being a trigger. To achieve this, you can use targeted banner ads on social media platforms like VKontakte and Odnoklassniki, featuring Samui beach, with a key message that encourages the wife to make the decision for a vacation. TV ads can also work effectively at this stage.
2. The next stage is Research, where the couple searches for information on different countries through search engines like Google and Yandex, based on recommendations from friends and their own interests. A key strategy here is to optimize your travel destination website with context ads.
3. Country selection is the next stage where feedback sites hold significant influence over the majority of Russian tourists. It is crucial to monitor reviews beforehand and take necessary steps for negative feedback management. This stage calls for implementing remarketing strategies, such as targeted ads with offers of ready-made tours, to those who have shown interest in Thailand.
4. Since the audience we are targeting tends to purchase ready-made tours through travel agencies, the choice of travel agency and tour becomes crucial. Factors such as loyalty of agencies to your country, their familiarity with the country’s offers, and the conditions they provide (transfers, tours, hotels, etc.) play a significant role in decision-making.

Your goal after a purchase is made is to turn another Russian tourist into a loyal and recurring customer. This requires consideration of various factors such as flights, hotel accommodations, restaurants, services, and tours. As you can see, this is a more comprehensive task that is carried out locally within a country.

The previous section illustrated only one potential approach for creating a marketing plan utilizing CJM. Additional promotional strategies may be incorporated at any stage to achieve better outcomes.

To wrap up, we want to emphasize that in order to find the most effective channels and formats for each audience, experimentation is crucial. When testing new audiences or channels, it’s not necessary to reallocate your entire budget. We recommend setting aside 10-15% of your planned expenses in advance for experimentation. Over time, you can use the results to determine the most suitable promotion channels for each audience.