Travel professionals must think like customers to succeed in 2016

Today's travellers increasingly seek digital engagement and expect seamless experiences at every touch point on the journey.

From inspiration to purchase, travellers thread together digital and physical experiences as they interact with a travel brand. So travel professionals must do the same to engage customers in 2016.

Successful brands must think like their customers. They must create seamless experiences and designs that successfully fuse digital, mobile and physical interactions to keep customers engaged at all touch points.

A truly seamless travel experience is one where digital convergence points are involved without the customer recognising it. For example, having enough USB plugs in hotel rooms where customers want to use them, through to a mobile App that offers check-out on the go. Indeed, the intersection of seamless design, technology and customer experience is at the heart of travel innovation right now.

Stand out seamless experiences are those that remove all problem solving for the guest - to achieve such a vision you must think like your customer. If design and technology are successfully coupled with knowledge and enthusiasm from staff associates, willing to answer “how to” questions, brands can create a holistic travel experience and a platform for exceptional customer engagement.

Travel brands that are not trying to simplify and personalise the customer experience across the journey are now in the minority. But stand out brands will go the extra mile to provide services that better reflect how guests actually travel and behave on trips today.

To execute such a vision, travel professionals must capture data at every touch point on the journey, understand that data through advanced analytics, and then act accordingly based on the insight. This requires investment in specialised databases, real time technology, powerful visualisation technology and analysts. But also requires that all departments set up their business processes and empower all staff to capture, and act on, as much relevant data as possible. Once the entire organisation is aligned to the personalisation vision, they can build a strategy to balance the meaningful and engaging experiences with revenue and profit goals.