Brazilian Anna Gemelli, 28 years old, is packed and ready to travel to South Africa. She first visited the country in 2014 on business, was charmed with the place and decided she would come back with more time to enjoy the tourist attractions. In 2020, she and her mother will spend 15 days on vacation in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Pilanesberg, a traditional destination for those wishing to go on safari.
Graduated in Tourism, Anna deals with the planning of her trips with priority. She has visited seven countries: Russia, England, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa, Colombia, and Paraguay. “In recent years, I don’t remember a single year that I didn’t travel abroad or within the country, or that I didn’t save money to travel,” she says.
The trip to South Africa, however, was an exception. Anna didn’t have the money set aside to take advantage of the promotional airline tickets she found. “Probably, if I couldn’t split the tickets price by installments, I wouldn’t have been able to travel, because I didn’t have the total amount available in cash,” points out.
As for tourist attractions and accommodation, Anna says she also considers installments, in case she finds a good deal. For her, besides being the condition that allowed her to travel to South Africa, the payment by installments allowed the dilution of ticket expenses throughout the year.
By choice or by need, installments and collection in local currency are payment methods required by Brazilians. In some cases, such as Anna’s, they are key points for the decision to buy a tourism service. Therefore, offering an attractive price does not directly guarantee a conversion. For most Brazilians, it is only possible to take advantage of low prices if there is a payment method fitting with their reality.
This was another discovery from EBANX‘s Beyond Borders Research 2018-2019 – The cross-border consumption in Brazil. The study that listened to over three thousand Brazilian consumers to identify their consumption habits on international websites.
Among respondents who answered about travel, 40% prefer to pay for air tickets in reais and by installments and 38.4% have the same preference when it comes to accommodation. Those who choose to pay for tickets by cash and in reais are 9.5% and for accommodation, 9.9%.
Because they generally have a larger average ticket, airline tickets and accommodations require more planning and come as pre-trip expenses. As for the tourist attractions, that usually have lower average tickets, the relevance of installments and local payments drops a bit, but remain the choice for one out of four tourists.
The Marketing Head of Opinion Box – the company responsible for applying Beyond Borders Research questionnaires – Daniela Schermann, stresses Brazilians’ preference for diversified payment methods.
“Offering different kinds of payments is very important for companies that want to go further, especially in e-commerce. The data from the survey we conducted with EBANX reinforce this trend also in the tourism market, highlighting how the payment methods influence the purchase decision”, she analyzes.
