Tours and Hotels Look for Innovative Ways to Cater to Luxury and Budget Road Trippers

Personalization is key in travel, fostering loyalty in unique ways. But most road trips aren’t being sold by a company — American road trips have long been DIY. For so many American travelers, road trip personalization is easily done at little cost. Seventy-six percent of domestic trips in 2016 relied on the traveler’s own vehicle as the primary mode of transportation, according to the U.S. Travel Association’s 2017 Domestic Travel Market Report. Then drivers can hook up Pandora, bring Hulu on a tablet, log into Netflix on the hotel room’s Roku, rely on Waze for intel, and get Yelp reviews anywhere imaginable. But companies are increasingly finding innovative ways to accomodate road trippers at both ends of the economic spectrum. Mid-range travelers, who can upgrade from DIY but can't afford luxury, can turn to a tour operator like Auto Tours USA. Many options hover around $1,500–$3,000 per person, but unlike a more exclusive experience, these trips can be recreated without the middle man, if the traveler is willing to do the research and comparison shopping. Longstanding operator Trafalgar offers a Route 66 tour for just a slightly higher price. International visitors are different altogether. They're likely not shipping their cars to the states, and may be unfamiliar with the territory, so a tour operator can help shape the experience and make it feel accessible. With a tour operator, the more a traveler spends, the more possible and complex personalization becomes. This is what leads luxury tour operators like Black Tomato to offer an “ultimate wild west road trip” for over $12,000, excluding flights, plus another through the Florida Keys for just over $5,000. Think high-end vehicles, six-star hotels, private guides, helicopter tours, and champagne toasts. Luxury Road Trips Lure International Tourists Luxury road trippers expect high levels of personalization, according to Sam Highley of All Roads North. Plus, nostalgia is especially influential among Highley’s international clients. “There’s just this amazing heritage and folklore, from Lewis and Clark, Steinbeck, Kerouac, all these great migrations of people throughout the country, the history of Route 66,” said Highley. “That still draws a lot of people, certainly international travelers.” More than half of the All Roads North clientele is actually American, though this happened unexpectedly. Highley, originally from the UK, started out marketing exc