The State of Skift Research: Our Summer Subscriber Update

Twice annually, we publish our State of Skift Research update, as part of our commitment and service to our growing base of subscribers and clients. We appreciate your support and your perspective on what’s happening in the world of travel and beyond. Since January, we have published numerous pivotal landscape reports including our State of Hotel Direct Booking report, our Global Vacation Rentals Market report, and our State of Destination Marketing report. We’ve also delivered on our deep-dive series looking into companies like Ctrip, Disney, Facebook, and TripAdvisor.

In our ongoing efforts to collect more data, we also designed and distributed numerous proprietary surveys focused on trends in marketing and distribution, budgeting, competitiveness, and changing traveler behavior. Our subscribers are now also coming to Skift Research for thought leadership projects, and for custom research engagements. Overall, we are thrilled about the progress that we’ve made in addressing some of the travel industry’s biggest questions.

Building our subscriber vault, pushing forward as thought leaders

Since January, we have added twelve premium research reports, three data sheets and three premium webinars to our subscription portal, bringing the total number of reports to 80 now available in our research vault. We also launched our Early Access service that gives subscribers exclusive visibility into daily skift.com stories.

For the first time ever, we launched our Travel Habits of The Travel Industry Survey (results forthcoming), distributed to Skift’s global readership base. This was a truly unique initiative focused on understanding the the attitudes and preferences of industry insiders. We also made waves with our 2017 Digital Destinations Survey with responses from over 300 destination marketing organizations. As part of our efforts to demystify hotel marketing and distribution strategy, we partnered with Trivago to distribute our State of Direct Bookings Survey to over 300 hotel properties worldwide.

Here are the reports and surveys that we’ve launched since January:

• A Deep Dive into Disney’s Competitive Position in Travel
• State of Tours and Activities Tech 2017
• The State of the Global Vacation Rental Market 2017
• A Deep Dive into Facebook’s Growing Impact on Travel
• The State of Content Marketing in Travel 2017
• European Venture Investment Trends in The Travel Industry 2017
• The State of Destination Marketing 2017 + Data Sheet
• 2017 Outlook on Hotel Direct Booking
• The State of Loyalty in Hospitality 2017
• A Deep Dive into TripAdvisor’s Competitive Position in Travel 2017
• State of Consumer Payments in Travel 2017
• Skift’s State of Hotel Bookings Survey 2017
• Skift’s Digital Destinations Survey 2017
• Skift’s High-Value Traveler Survey 2017
• Skift’s Travel Habits of the Travel Industry 2017

So far 2017 has been a foundation-building year for Skift Research. As discussed in our 2017 Research Canvas, our goal was to systematically map out the inner mechanics of the travel industry. Our “state of” and “deep-dive” reports have focused on exposing the bedrock of the travel industry, with overtones into big picture trends and consumer research. Going forward, we will continue to innovate and grow with the industry. We do this by revisiting our publication schedule on a quarterly basis, to match the trends and needs of our subscribers.

On thought leadership, we delivered a framework for understanding sustainable tourism in the context of food systems, in collaboration with our partners at the Catalan Tourist Board. We also spoke at numerous events including the UNWTO Gastronomy Tourism Summit in San Sebastian, Spain and the Travel and Tourism Research Association’s International event in Quebec City, Canada, where we presented on the business of data and the role of research in an era of exponential technological change.

Skift Research takes on custom research

In addition to our published premium and commissioned research, we finalized two custom research engagements for clients this year. Much of this work entailed custom market sizing, consumer trends analysis, business concept validation, and deeper diligence on competitive landscape. Going forward, we see an opportunity to grow this segment of our business and will work with our subscribers to deliver bespoke analysis and data whenever possible.

We also want to build a deeper relationship with organizations outside of the industry. As those working in the business know, the travel industry tends to live in a bubble. We believe that our vertical focus on travel, and our hybrid media + research business model gives us the contacts and depth of industry and market knowledge that very few have. Our partnership with RBC Capital and our custom Analyst Sessions that we’ve presented to their buyside community was an amazing opportunity to showcase some of our most recent findings.

Full Steam Ahead Toward 2018

New York City’s hot summer months will not slow down our progress (although we’ll make sure to find time for refreshments during our Friday afternoon happy hours). If in the neighborhood, swing by our new offices in midtown. During the second half of 2017, we will round out our bedrock report series focusing on more company deep dives and big landscape reports. Some topics on the schedule include our big China online travel deep dive, the state of meetings and events, market sizing for developing markets, wellness in travel, the state of venture capital in travel and much more.

More Data, More Modeling

We will also focus on building out our models, so that we can make better projections and forecasts on company and sector performance and growth, particularly for the big online groups and hospitality. Data will become an even more important component to our research canvas; we will invest in more partnerships with web data providers and will continue to field more benchmark surveys. For instance, this will be our second year fielding our Experiential Traveler Survey aimed at taking a psychometric read on the modern-day consumer mindset. The luxury travel consumer will be a big focus for us (more details to come) as well as the future of airlines in the context of merchandising and customer centricity.

Our plate is already quite full and we will staff accordingly as we ramp to the Skift Global Forum in September. Managing growth is now our biggest challenge and we will plan to ensure that the quality of our work continues to meet your expectations. Soon we will add our fourth full-time analyst (myself included:) to the team. We’ve also kept our contributor network very busy on projects.

Thanks again for going down this journey with us.