How emotions are influencing customer behaviour during the pandemic

Travel businesses and their customers have gone through a whole spectrum of emotions during the coronavirus pandemic. So how can travel businesses ensure they are eliciting positive rather than negative emotions from their customers as the crisis continues?

Richard Baker, chief commercial officer at Inspiretec, tackled this subject during the recent “Let’s Get Emotional” webinar by Travel Technology Initiative (TTI).

Baker drew on the Plutchik Model of Emotions, which was devised by American psychologist Robert Plutchik in the 1980s. Plutchik’s theory is that there are eight primary emotions – joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger and disgust – that serve as the foundation for all others.

Using the main emotions from Plutchik’s theory, Baker explains that it is vital for travel businesses to elicit positive emotions from customers – such as trust, surprise, joy and anticipation – and gave tips for how businesses can avoid encouraging negative emotions such as fear and anger.

To encourage positive emotions during the booing process, travel company websites need to offer an intuitive, seamless process and user experience. “If I I have to think when using a site, you’ve failed,” he says, and advises companies to “take away frustrations to encourage joy in the booking process”.

Here we condense some of Baker’s top tips for inspiring customers think positively about your brand and booking experience.