The future of package travel marketing

It has been shown on numerous occasions that personalised communications result in higher engagement, conversion, and retention rates. But this doesn’t just mean marketing to consumers solely based on their previous travel habits or their demographics, personalisation is far more than that.

Travel marketing that is personalised and tailored well should act as a concierge service, guiding the consumer to their ideal package with as little work required from the customer as possible.

In a perfect world, you will be able to understand a consumer’s motivations behind travelling, who they are travelling with, what locations they frequently visit, and the activities they enjoy. In person (and online via surveys), it is easy to ask the right questions to get the answers you need: are they looking for a city stag do with their mates, a romantic seaside getaway, or a family holiday with lots to do for their young kids?… But what if you didn’t need to ask the questions to get the answers?

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you

There is an incredible and ever-growing amount of data that, if analysed correctly, can provide a window into consumers’ lifestyle, behaviour, interests, and personality. A lot of current personalisation efforts rely solely on cookie tracking and purchase history to make assumptions about what they may like to see. However, these alone will not provide you with any true insight into the individual themselves or their motivations for travelling. What is required is a deeper insight at an individual level to enhance your CRM, browser and transactional data and build a fuller picture of your customers and what they want. So how can we access this additional level of data?

Collaborating to create a bespoke experience

The new GDPR coming into force this month creates new challenges for travel companies wishing to market to consumers, meaning that retaining customers and improving conversion rates are a top concern. Changing the landscape of the marketing industry, the new rules place emphasis on consent and transparency of what data is being used and what it is being used for.

While gaining explicit consent may seem like a hurdle, many consumers are happy to share their data when it is beneficial to them. For example, 36% of consumers would be willing to share personal information if it resulted in more tailored personalised experiences.

Acuant’s solution PROFILE has the joint benefit of enabling you to gain unique relevant consumer insights while at the same time running on an explicit consumer consent process through which the consumer can choose to connect their digital footprints as an alternative to manually inputting information to register or log in. This way, not only does the consumer experience a smoother process – with necessary registration information pre-filled – you gain a true view of them as an individual so that you can better personalise how you market to them. Discover which of your customers are ego-travellers and which want a budget trip, which want culture and history and which want activities, and which prefer city-breaks versus seaside getaways.