Despite OTAs growth, offline ticket sales remain by far the largest point of sale: Arival
A research released by Arival, a research company and community for the tours, activities, and attractions sector, shows that Online Travel Agents (OTAs) now account for 18 pc of all attraction bookings globally, which is a significant increase from less than 10 pc before the pandemic.
In a press statement Arival says that the new research, The State of Visitor Attractions, delves into the big changes in distribution, ticketing technology, operations and marketing sweeping across the sector. The statement adds that ticket distribution for visitor attractions, which include cultural sites and monuments, museums, zoos and aquariums, observation decks and amusement parks, has undergone dramatic change over the past five years.
The report, based on a survey of nearly 700 visitor attractions worldwide, says that despite the growth of OTAs and attraction websites, offline ticket sales remain by far the largest point of sale. Technology remains a limiting factor. One in three attractions to not use a modern online ticketing system and do not have online connectivity to reseller partners.
Douglas Quinby
“Visitor attractions have long been key drivers of tourism, the very reason to visit a place. Traveller demand to see the great sites is boundless, but the availability of tickets, and the travel industry’s technical ability to access them is not. The big online travel experiences marketplaces recognise this, and they have made significant investments to be able to offer attraction tickets, in some cases in spite of rather than in partnership with the attractions themselves. There remains much work to be done to connect attractions to the global travel distribution ecosystem,” says Douglas Quinby, Co-founder and CEO, Arival.
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