AI-driven Personalisation Dominates the Future of Travel and Hospitality Marketing
Travel and hospitality marketing is on the verge of dramatic transformation. Personalisation of marketing communications is moving from dream to necessity, and the change is putting marketers in the driving seat.
A new report, Jet Set into 2025: Travel and Hospitality Trends for Marketers, produced by London Research and customer engagement personalisation specialist Movable Ink, discusses the forces driving this change, and investigates its implications for marketers.
The report describes how customers are continuing to spend on travel, but with signs that the way people think about it is changing. As Accor Hotels’ VP of Customer Engagement for Europe and North Africa, Marc Lantrok, observed in an interview: “Even with the cost of living, people are still not wanting to stop travelling. They might move from a premium down to an eco or mid-scale. But the travel industry is still very buoyant.”
Customers are also increasingly valuing meaningful experiences as part of their travel.
Fulfilling the promise of one-to-one marketing
The technology to fulfil the internet’s promise of one-to-one marketing has now arrived, in the shape of AI. So, as travel and hospitality brands focus on increasing loyalty and developing ancillary spend to drive revenue growth, they now have the tools to personalise their offers to an unprecedented degree.
AI’s ability to generate the vast amount of content required for large-scale one-to-one personalisation also creates a host of new possibilities. These include prescriptive marketing and real-time trip planning.
In the report, Julia Record, Global Director of Communications and Partnerships at the Dorchester Collection, sums up the immediate benefits.
“For us it’s about creating a deep-felt emotional experience and a sense of community and belonging for our guests. How can we get our guests to not only stay in our hotels but also to benefit from the varied elements within and surrounding them such as the bars, restaurants, spas and gardens with all their differing experiences?”
Further ahead, the impact becomes even greater. James Bromley, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Haven Holidays, pointed out that greater personalisation means less friction in performing any activity.
“In turn that means you consume more, and have an even better time on holiday with Haven,” he said. “By the end of next year, you will be able to buy your holiday and, through the same account, pay for food, get a drink and book your next holiday without having to re-enter your card details or tell us who you are again.”
Integrating technology, in marketing and across the business
But broader business uncertainty means marketing budgets remain tight. Matthew Lloyd, Senior Director of Marketing Technology and CRM at Global Hotel Alliance, explained: “We’re not always getting the investment we need to deliver these more segmented, personalised deliverables. My challenge has been to figure out the most efficient way to deliver these things with an overburdened team. That means finding efficiencies and synergies among technology platforms and getting the most out of every platform that we’re looking at.”
Beyond this, the future will require a far more integrated approach to technology across the entire business. Marketers are ideally placed to lead this change. They can see the impact of all the interactions customers have with the brand, even if they can’t see the interactions themselves. They’re also responsible for the customer experience.
As a result, the marketing team of the future will need at least a dotted reporting line from every other activity that touches the customer. This includes sales, product, customer service and concierge teams. This means breaking down data silos across the organisation to create a ‘single source of truth’ about the customer. The twin integrations of data and martech are also vital to the implementation of AI.
Preparing for the next era of travel and hospitality
The report makes three recommendations for marketers preparing for the future of travel and hospitality:
- Understand the impact of customer experience quality on repeat business and ancillary spend. A high-quality experience will encourage customers to stick with you, rather than switch to a competitor. Targeted rewards will build on this, while tailored experiences will reassure your customers that you ‘get them’. Meanwhile, personalised offers of ancillary products and services, delivered at relevant points in the customer journey, will increase conversion.
- Recognise that the data your team needs isn’t solely marketing data. The range of factors that can impact the travel experience is much greater than in other sectors. Personalisation requires an understanding of all these factors, and how they affect every customer. For example, if you’ve lost someone’s luggage, stop sending them marketing emails.
- Embrace your role as an AI ‘change agent’. The personalised future makes marketing key to delivering growth. It also gives marketers a mandate to drive change throughout the business, from technology to organisational structure. However, the barriers are significant. Members of the marketing team will need time to adjust to this new world. The C-suite needs to be made aware of the pitfalls that using AI will create, as well as the opportunities. Both these challenges, and others, will become the responsibility of senior marketers.
Jet Set into 2025: Travel and Hospitality Trends for Marketers is now available for download.