Years ago, I booked a flight with a new, almost underground travel agency. I remember landing after a slight delay and, just as I was hanging my coat at home, the landline buzzed. On the other line? The same travel agency.
“Heard your flight got in a bit late. Just wanted to check in and hope you’re settling in okay now,” they asked. I stood there, phone in hand, genuinely surprised. It was such a simple gesture, but enough to make me pause.
Until recently, “personalization” was a term you’d mostly hear in e-commerce circles. Customers overwhelmingly want it—90% already expect organizations to know their interests and anticipate their needs. I believe, in this next era of travel, personalization is going to be the force shaping customer experiences and operational models.
The modern traveler is armed with more information and choice than ever before. This customer is not just seeking a service, but an experience meticulously crafted around their individual preferences. In a word, they’re seeking hyper-personalization. The directive for businesses is clear: adopt, adapt, and be ready to deliver these experiences.
The future of travel is (hyper) personal
Imagine the level of care I got from that travel agency at every touchpoint on the traveler’s journey. Businesses have long used analytics to personalize offerings for individual consumers, and travel companies do this too, but only up to a point. With the advent of artificial intelligence and analytics, we’re on the brink of crafting travel experiences that are tailored like never before.
Picture a hotel where the front desk doesn’t just remember that you’re celebrating an anniversary. Hyper-personalization is the front desk knowing that you like your air-con set to a specific temperature or that you prefer memory foam pillows, and not because the hotel handed you a questionnaire at check-in, but because it just knows.
I must stress – this “hyper-personalization” push is not just theory; the dollars-and-cents benefits are already showing. Take Hyatt, which partnered with AWS to use data to personalize the guest experience by suggesting specific hotels that matched their interests or selling add-ons like spa visits. According to Hyatt, this partnership boosted their coffers by a whopping $40 million in six months.
Not every travel business wants to reach the scale of industry titans like Hyatt, and that’s okay. What’s important is that hyper-personalization isn’t just a luxury of the big players. Whether you’re a boutique travel agency or a B&B, crafting these experiences for your guests is well within your reach.
Begin your AI journey or wind up in destination nowhere
Travel has always evolved with technology. Once we navigated with a map and compass, over time we arrived at online bookings. Now, we’re at another critical juncture, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI). As AI and machine learning become more prevalent, the travel industry is getting smarter, more efficient, and yes, more personal.
Today, virtually every company is expected to be a tech company, and yet the travel sector is lagging in many ways. At a time when travelers seek instantaneous, tailored experiences, the sector risks falling behind if it refuses to modernize.
According to AWS data, 86% of executives in the travel and hospitality sector see AI as a major driver of business value. However, a mere 15% of firms in this field are applying AI at a sophisticated level.
The slow pace of adoption extends to many facets of the travel experience. Many tour operators are clinging to paper maps and manual scheduling, while airlines are fighting with outdated reservation systems.
The travel sector is overdue for digital disruption. Many businesses in this space are battling slim margins, stiff competition, and constant surprises from worldwide events. But those that are willing to invest in the correct technology will be the ones that set the pace for this industry.
Let your data be the passport to new territories
AI thrives on quality data, and right now, many in the hospitality sector are dealing with patchy, fragmented information scattered across various segments.
Case in point: A look into 4.5 million guest stays showed 68% of loyal hotel guests had more than one profile – 18% had double profiles and 14% were dealing with three or more. Given the duplicate data and errors that come with it, it’s no surprise that hotels struggle to use guest data.
There are examples of travel brands addressing this challenge. Thanks to a partnership with PwC, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts streamlined its data processes and overhauled its data architecture to make data transfer between systems more efficient. This overhaul allowed Wyndham to access guest insights faster and more accurately, and reduced the time spent on managing their computing environment by 40%.
Data is often stashed away in siloed systems, which can be a nightmare for consolidation. Even if some companies manage to pool it together, it’s often held in a generic database, which causes headaches for analysts: mismatched formats, duplicate entries, and a mess of contradictions.
If businesses want to master hyper-personalization, they need to start with organized, reliable data about their customers.
Rethink how to segment and engage your customers
Segmentation is a tool travel companies already use to group and serve different customers. In order for businesses to get ahead on hyper-personalization, they need to rethink how deep this segmentation can go.
We like to call this idea the web of one, and a recent report by McKinsey and Skift uses the term “segments of one.” Beyond semantics, it underscores a simple idea: zeroing in on individual traveler nuances and treating each person as a unique entity.
Consider our friend Jack. Jack is a leisure traveler; basic macro-segmentation would place him in this broad category, and many companies might be content with this generalization, but imagine if we go deeper. Thanks to advanced analytics, we could uncover Jack’s love for nature. This is segmentation, yes, but with a finer lens. And why stop there? Further refinement might reveal his penchant for mountainous terrains.
If we want to get even more granular, we could identify that within those nature retreats, mountains are where Jack truly wants to be. The magic happens when hyper-segmentation kicks in. Here, it’s not just about knowing Jack likes mountains. It’s about understanding that Jack is an avid high-altitude trail runner, planning his next solo ultra-run. This level of detail is so personalized that the company is essentially looking at Jack as his own segment.
This level of hyper-personalization won’t happen overnight. Just as with innovations like self-driving cars, there’s an adjustment period. We’ll get to a point where such detailed personalization becomes the norm, which is why businesses need to get ready now.
Hyper-personalization might be a luxury for major companies today, but it’s soon going to be non-negotiable for every travel business, big and small. This shift is why our company recently rebranded to TravelAI.
While the challenges with hyper-personalization will be plentiful, the potential rewards are colossal. For businesses in the travel sector, it’s time to embrace the future of hyper-personal now, or get left behind in this new era of travel.
