Today’s travelers crave memorable experiences and deeper engagement with brands. Sixty-nine percent of travelers are more loyal to a travel company that personalizes their experiences online and offline.
To deliver a cohesive experience across multiple channels and media, marketers need to think holistically about measurement, with a focus on overall customer value.
Many marketers currently evaluate the success of digital channels in silos. However, leading marketers – primarily U.S. companies that significantly exceeded top business goals in 2016 – are 1.5X as likely as the mainstream to say they have a clear view of customers’ journeys across channels and devices. Focusing on business metrics and overall profit across all channels is the key to long-term growth.
How can travel companies keep up? Three principles can ground a holistic approach to measurement.
Know the role that mobile plays in a customer’s journey
Are your leisure customers starting their research on mobile, and continuing their research on a laptop or other device? Do you cater to business travelers, who may research last-minute hotels or flights on their smartphones, then show up in person to book? Mobile’s impact on the travel journey is higher than ever before. After researching on their smartphone, 79% of mobile travelers completed a booking, which is significantly higher than the 70% who did so in 2016.
The ability to measure how mobile influences the customer journey is critical. According to Booking.com, 1 in 2 traveler journeys start on mobile. Based on that insight, Booking.com created an app to capture last-minute travel intent, a behavior that’s playing out in search. Over the past two years, travel-related searches for “tonight” and “today” have grown over 150% on mobile. People are regularly searching for “flights today” or “hotels tonight.”
Hilton has also innovated by being laser-focused on mobile experiences in the handheld age. It’s enabled guests to check in and select a specific room through their mobile devices, for example.
