The Product Benchmarks Every Travel and Hospitality Company Should Know

Travel is soaring. After the Covid-19 pandemic—when the industry lost 75% of its value—demand has surged and more people are traveling than ever before.

The best players in the business are poised to capture the biggest share of the burgeoning demand for these products. In this post, we share how you can join them, drawing on exclusive data and takeaways from our 2025 Product Benchmark Report. You’ll discover where travel and hospitality teams stand today, how top performers win, and what to do next.

What the numbers say: Travel and hospitality product benchmarks

Acquisition, activation, engagement, and retention rates for the travel and hospitality industry’s 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles.

Our analysis shows just how much it pays to be the best. While median travel and hospitality products saw a growth rate of 1.4%, top products saw one of 7.6%. That gap is a big deal when you consider that it means top products grew more than 5x faster than their median counterparts. And that speed adds up: Top travel and hospitality products saw an annual acquisition rate of a whopping 141%.

But adding new users will only take you so far. Our analysis of companies across all industries found that the leaky bucket problem is real. In fact, there was no relationship between products in the top quartile for adding users and those in the top quartile for retention. That means solely focusing on the top of the funnel won’t guarantee you repeat customers.

A better bet? Focus on delivering value, ideally within the first week. We found 69% of products with strong early activation were also strong three-month retention performers, demonstrating that speed matters. And that difference compounds. For example, at three months, the top travel and hospitality products retain 25% of their customers while median travel and hospitality products retain 10%—a 2.5x difference.

The power of early activation

The real challenge for most products, regardless of industry, isn’t attracting users; it’s keeping them around long-term. A seamless customer experience that quickly gets users to that first aha moment is key. Indeed, if your users come back after one week, there’s a good chance they’ll still be around months later.

This chart illustrates how activation (left) relates to retention (right). The thick blue bar at the top shows that users in the top quartile of activation are also in the top quartile of retention. The thick pink bar at the bottom shows that the opposite is true. This suggests a strong correlation between activation and retention.

3 strategies to perform like the best travel and hospitality companies

So by now you know how important early activation is to long-term retention. How do you go about boosting it? Borrow these winning strategies from top travel and hospitality tech companies.

1. Remove friction from booking because every second counts

To convert more dreamers into bookers, focus on optimizing your search and booking flow. Reduce unnecessary steps based on previous behavior or location to make the path to booking fast and intuitive.

Do it in Amplitude: Use funnels, journeys, and Session Replay to help you identify friction and drop-off points. Leverage those findings to improve the customer journey and show your users value more quickly.

2. Personalization is the antidote to churn

Use behavioral data to serve up content and recommendations that keep users excited about travel. If you’re seeing high bounce or drop-off rates, invest in tailored experiences based on consumption patterns and preferences, whether that’s a route, destination, or tour theme.

Do it in Amplitude: Use Amplitude Audiences to segment your audience by any combination of behavior, profile, or product data. Target high- or low-propensity users with the right campaigns.

3. Test experiences to unlock growth

Use A/B testing to measure impact, validate ideas, and optimize every touchpoint using behavioral insights. See how you can adjust the user experience to boost engagement, how feature changes impact activation, and what campaigns, experiences, and CTAs best drive conversion.

Do it in Amplitude: Use Amplitude Feature Experimentation to test ways to improve the user experience, adopting a process of continuous iteration focused on optimizing for loyalty and retention.

Put your product on the path to growth with benchmark insights

The travel and hospitality industry is brimming with opportunity. Smart strategies, such as focusing on activation, can help them make the most of the sector’s growth.

Product Benchmark Report

Discover what else our Product Benchmark Report reveals about the way the best-performing companies win and the lessons you can apply at your own organization.

Read the report