The report also provided insight into the pain points, trends and opportunities for the Middle Eastern travel industry.

The research highlighted a significant retail opportunity for travel providers of the 3,090 people surveyed, 52 percent would be prepared to spend between USD101 - USD500 on top of the basic costs for a customised experience if they were to purchase flight or hotel accommodation abroad.

For airlines, this is significantly higher than the current USD21 per passenger spend on ancillaries (CarTrawler 2018 – based on IATA data).

“To align with today’s travellers, airlines, hotels, travel agencies and even corporate buyers must think and behave like true retailers,” said Salman Syed, vice president EMEA, Sabre. “They need to analyse consumer behaviour and market data to better target future offers and fulfil as many traveller’s needs as possible. By using intelligent retailing to provide what travellers want, anywhere, anytime on the device they wish, travel providers can tap into this huge ancillary opportunity, driving increased revenue and improving customer experience to increase loyalty.”