Who buys travel money at airports?

• Over 6,000 customer travellers surveyed by Global Exchange
• More than 51% of participants were under 40
• Almost 70% of customers surveyed were men

Salamanca, 10th April 2017.- Global Exchange, the Spanish multinational specialised in foreign exchange services reinforces its strong customer focus.  Knowing Customers’ needs is the key strategy of the Salamanca-based company, whose selling point is offering best-in-class services, tailor-made to the specific needs of each Customer looking for currency exchange. To do so, Global Exchange wanted to find out their average customer by conducting a survey to over 6,000 of their own customers in their branches in nine countries. The survey revealed that average customer is 41 year-old, male and American citizen. This customer profile is the most frequent travel money buyer at Global Exchange.

Getting to know the traveller

There is no such a thing as best age for travelling but there is an age where chances are you’ll exchange more money though: 41 years old. This is one of the conclusions drew from the Global Exchange study made to figure out who was the typical currency exchanging traveller. The analysis revealed that the average traveller using foreign exchange services is a young profile: 51.69% of participants asked by the Spanish company are under 40 years old; 37.05% are between 40 and 60 and 11.26% are over 60.

American men exchange more

Global Exchange’s survey includes 6,253 Customers of 140 different nationalities, Americans having the biggest share. The second leading nationality are Spaniards, (14.26%), French (5.55%) and Brazilians (4.37%).

Global Exchange’s survey shows as well that men buy more travel money than women. Particularly, 69.59% compared to 30.41% of women.

What they need to exchange currency for?

Here the answer is almost unanimous: for holidays. This is the reason behind most of the travellers buying their travel money at Global Exchange, 61.91% to be specific. Nonetheless, there are still travellers who stated other purposes for their travel money needs, 16.58% being for business reasons and 10.12% to visit family and friends.

How often do they exchange currency?

Global Exchange wanted to know how travellers arrange their travel money needs when going abroad and how often they need to exchange currency. Here the survey reveals that 44.7% if its Customers exchange currency once a year or less, while 24% do it once to twice a year. Meanwhile, 18% needed to exchange currency 3 to 6 times a year and 12% use their services more than 7 times a year. This means that 30% of Global Exchange’s Customers use currency exchange services more than 3 times a year, while 24% do it between once or twice yearly.

Methodology

Global Exchange’s study to know the traveller profile is based on results obtained from customer satisfaction surveys conducted over 2013, 2014 and 2015. The survey sample includes 6,253 Customers interviewed in 9 different countries at 16 international airports.

About Global Exchange

Global Exchange is the third leading company in the world providing currency exchange services to travellers at international airports and other major travel destinations. Founded in 1996 in Fuentes de Oñoro (Salamanca), Global Exchange is present in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Jordan, Mexico, Morocco, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Spain, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago, Uruguay, Russia and Australia through a branch network of 235 branches in 55 international airports of five continents. The company serves around 4.8 million Customers annually and employs over 1,900 workers, 400 of which are based in Spain.

During 2016 Global Exchange serviced almost 5 million customers at a world level, almost twice as many as in 2012. In 2016 Global Exchange finished its strategic plan 2012-2016, four folding profit before taxes up to 9.7 million euros.