Many times we’ve said here that travel is, above all, experience. That is, not just a physical movement from one place to the other, or staying outside the house more than one night. At least those things don’t define the importance of the travel. Such speech is not quite original, and has been stated by several authors from sociology or anthropology.

But now marketing has begun to exploit it. According to what Michael Peluso, from Travelocity - one of the most popular tickets selling sites in the Internet, they conceive travel as an experience. But, while analysts who work on the topic from the social sciences view do so to focus on the practices and representations built in the travel, Peluso does it with another end: if the key of the travel is experience, it’s because it’s more important than the price. That is, the bet is clear: to try to separate Travelocity from a “site for people who are looking for cheap things” to place it as: “a site where people look for fascinating experiences and are willing to pay their worth”.

To market the experience is the base of any touristic proposal. But to state it in such terms of differentiation is another thing. And surely it announces marketing moves in the field of online tickets selling sites, to position themselves to fight for the market of business or five stars travellers. The important thing is that the key element of all this is “experience”. That is, to transform into something more than a mere seller of packages or flight tickets, and jump to a higher category. Maybe, soon, we’ll have titles such as “travel experience organiser” or something.

Michael Peluso’s, from Travelocity, declarations can be found at Hotel Marketing Online.