Personalizing the travel relationship

Modern marketing is all about data — and thanks to marketing technology, we can use this data to engage in highly personalized conversations with our customers.

In an industry like travel, where preference really does rule the roost, ensuring that we can deliver relevant offers to our customers is key to driving brand engagement, loyalty, and sales. And yet, for many travel companies, their customers are still largely anonymous.

Yes, we can discern specific preferences from a user’s online activity: what they consume on social media, what websites they visit, what articles they read. But to genuinely know a customer and create a human connection, they need to be conscious participants.

That’s where travel companies with rewards or loyalty programs have a distinct advantage. At Arrivia , members of the partner programs we manage willingly share their data because they know we’ll use it to provide them with a holistic and targeted experience.

By asking questions like — what’s your budget? Do you have children? Which times of the year do you like to travel? — we can customize travel offers instead of bombarding them with irrelevant content. Moving from a traditional mass messaging approach towards a personalized one during the pandemic allowed us to engage with members more deeply and better understand their readiness to travel.

Personalization is a tactic that member-based travel programs can employ across all touchpoints, from marketing communications like e-mails, direct mail, and text messaging to dynamic merchandising. For instance, if a member has expressed that they prefer family-friendly cruises instead of all-inclusive resort stays, we can highlight those types of trips when they log on to their booking platform.

Delivering value and loyalty through data

When it comes to where customers choose to book their travel, travel companies know there isn’t much loyalty. While they might prefer one hotel brand to another, whether they decide to book through an online travel agency or directly with the travel company, the decision usually comes down to price.

Here, member-based travel rewards programs are also at an advantage. As a group with a defined membership structure (customers must become members to access travel offers and benefits), these programs can negotiate exclusive pricing and inventory that’s not available on public platforms. They can also use that inventory and adjust their margins more effectively.

How? It all comes down to having those personalized conversations. Imagine an airline with a robust loyalty program. Through its fulfillment partner, it secures a 60% discount from a luxury resort brand for members who book a one-week stay at the same time as their flight.

The airline sends this offer to members whose profiles match the hotel brand’s value proposition, increasing the likelihood of conversion. By segmenting its members into audiences, the airline can create different narratives around the deal and automate all marketing communications based on the audience characteristics.

Here’s an example: for travelers with young children, the airline could create a "family" campaign that highlights the hotel’s family-friendly amenities, while it could slot empty-nesters into a "wellness" audience and share details about the on-site spa.

Instead of jumping from one travel platform to another for every part of their trip, the member stays engaged with the airline’s program because of the incredible value and convenience they’re getting. Meanwhile, the airline captures more of their member’s travel spend over the short and long-term.

The power of data-driven marketing in uncertain times

During the height of COVID-19, many of us dreamed about the day we could travel again. That pent-up demand is helping to fuel the travel recovery. But as the arrival of the Omicron variant taught us, that can change on a dime.

Travel companies that rely on annual marketing plans have a more challenging time responding to world events. At Arrivia, we have adopted a start-up mindset when it comes to our marketing; we work in short sprints. In other words, nothing is set in stone.

We can be agile and more strategic, scaling our marketing efforts in real-time with minimal human resources, thanks to automated, data-driven marketing technology.

If we see a sudden drop in demand for international vacations coinciding with an uptick in cases abroad but notice our members are still interested in decompressing, we could inspire them to book trips closer to home by creating offer packages for domestic resort stays instead.

By constantly evaluating demand, customer feedback and booking patterns and using automation to create granular audience segments, we don’t have to guess what travelers want and need; we can do it with certainty.

That is an incredibly powerful capability to have in your toolkit when you don’t know what the future holds six or nine months from now. We’ve been able to harness that thanks to the data that members share with us through their profiles, search and booking activity.

Serving customers with timely and relevant travel content allows them to feel in control of what messages they receive while encouraging interactions that drive sales. With their well-defined audiences, member-based travel programs are the most cost-effective way for travel brands to collect the quality data needed to build these capabilities.

They can deliver value that speaks to an individual’s definition of the word, whether that’s highly discounted pricing, a free room upgrade or access to an exclusive experience.

In a highly competitive landscape like travel, where loyalty can be fickle, that’s the key to forming long-term, trusted relationships that yield positive returns again and again. The ability to offer rewards that deliver loyalty, revenue, growth and more customers should be on every travel company’s mind.

* Check out this interview with Zotara and PhocusWire's Kevin May, discuss why data and understanding customers is so important during the COVID recovery.