Segmenting the Skies – Enhancing Skyscanner’s Traveller First Strategy

Identifying booking personas and trip types to elevate strategy through a  segmentation-led approach

Traveller First Strategy

Used by more than 100m people a month, Skyscanner is the heavyweight champ of travel search engines. The (air) space it operates in is getting more competitive, however, and the pandemic has brought about paradigm shifts, shaking up travel norms and expectations.

Looking to progress their ‘traveller first’ strategic direction, Skyscanner briefed Crowd DNA to design a segmentation-led solution that would enable them to better understand planning needs, booking behaviours and travel aspirations. We got on board.

STRAT7 Crowd DNA were a pleasure to work with, collaborative at each stage of the project, working through solutions together with us. We were impressed with the team’s diligence and how the final report married both the qualitative and the quantitative elements so well.

Elle Scotter, global senior brand manager at Skyscanner

 

Project Design

+ The sample size we worked with was significant: 24,000 travellers across eight markets globally

+ With this scale of data, we were able to create two robust segmentations – one based on booking personas, the other on trip-types

+ We stress-tested our work and identified the most fertile ground for progressing Skyscanner’s strategy, sizing the opportunity in each segment, capturing their attitudes towards travel, their trip experiences and mapping out their booking journeys

+ The segmentation work was supported by mixed-method qualitative research, producing nuance and narratives

Outcomes

The outputs from this project came in two forms. First, the thinking and ideation – a series of workshops with Skyscanner stakeholders, applying the learnings from the segmentation to the traveller first strategy, and identifying the innovation spaces that could be executed against that strategy.

And then the socialisation phase, editorialising aspects of the work in a zine-style report; and producing documentary films to connect the typologies with the wider business.

Our work has enabled Skyscanner to define their target audience more clearly, and contributed to moving the brand towards becoming a destination site that connects with core audience needs when planning and booking trips.

 
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Joe Lockey

Senior Analyst

Joe joined us after completing rotations across our consumer, services and health sectors, whilst gaining exposure to both qualitative and quantitative research techniques.

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Alice Hedlund

Principal

Alice has experience in customer-centric growth, brand strategy and innovation at global scale. She specialises in brand transformation journeys, bridging the gap between business and brand strategy to create holistic and actionable plans for impactful growth.

Helen Donald

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Job Title

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Tom Carvell

Principal

Tom has a science background with a PhD in Materials Chemistry. He has spent most of his career working on in-house front-end innovation where he delivered mid/long term strategic projects for brands such as Durex, Scholl, Veet and KY. He is focussed on delivering pragmatic but provocative innovation strategy for CPG categories.

Manick Pratheeban

Senior Principal

Manick is a brand strategy and consumer insight specialist with 15+ years’ experience helping to grow some of the world’s biggest brands. He has a proven track record of translating trends, consumer, and market data into actionable insights to formulate growth strategies.

Kate Jones

Senior Principal

Kate has over a decade of experience in creating transformative strategies for customer-focused businesses. With a background in consumer insight and behaviour change across consumer health, packaged goods, leisure, banking and other sectors she focuses on elevating the customer experience to create human-centric innovations and foster impactful growth.

Jacob Gascoine-Becker

Partner

Jacob specialises in leveraging consumer research to inform investment strategy and business case development. A management consultant since 2014, he previously spent eight years working in ecommerce and digital marketing.

Ines Achabal

Senior Analyst

Ines is inately curious and creative. She is known for her expansive thinking when exploring client challenges and elevating the visual quality of outputs to maximise their impact.

Helene Mills

Partner

Helene has 20+ years’ experience advising business leaders and investors on growth strategy based upon consumer and market intelligence. Her particular specialism lies in leisure, retail, food and beverage sectors.

Helen Donald

Helen Donald

Partner

Helen has consulted businesses at different stages of growth across a variety of sectors, specialising in consumer packaged goods and consumer healthcare. She is an adept strategist, bringing clarity to the most complex of situations and connecting dots to create rich, future-proofed platforms for innovation, brand positioning and growth.

Allan Chen STRAT7 Advisory

Allan Chen

Senior Principal

Allan’s core skillset provides an analytical and commercial lens to address client challenges. He started his career as an actuary, and since then has held a broad range of strategic roles, improving performance across the private and public sector.

headshot-Bjorn-Dufwenberg

Björn Dufwenberg

Managing Director​

Björn has 15+ years’ experience in insight-driven transformation, across management consulting, as well as brand and innovation agency roles. Most recently he headed up the Customer-Led Transformation practice at PwC Sweden, until joining STRAT7 in 2021. He’s worked on global projects covering consumer goods, durables, spirits and beverages, retail, banking, and private equity.

Kamilla Dala

Senior Principal

Kamilla has 10+ years’ experience leading and implementing insight-driven transformation within global matrix organisations in durable and consumable goods. Areas of expertise cover segmentation, uncovering and translating actionable consumer insights within innovation, product development, brand positioning, strategy and marketing.