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Unfortunately a lot of the personalization happen- are made. This helps our clients find the right
PERSONALIZATION IN TRAVEL
MARKETING: MOVING BEYOND
THE BUZZWORD
As we learned from the Skift 2019 Megatrend, lay the groundwork for a more personalized
“Everything Is Converging in Hospitality,” hoteliers one-to-one strategy moving forward. To better
are shifting their focus from merely selling hotel understand the changing role of personaliza-
rooms to acting as merchants and marketers tion and how today’s marketing technology
who offer access to nearly every piece of the companies support this evolution, SkiftX spoke
customer travel journey. The new objective is with Kurt Weinsheimer, senior vice president of
to deliver the perfect travel experience for each Sojern, and highlighted key takeaways from the
customer along every touchpoint on an individ- conversation below.
ualized, trip-by-trip, basis.
SkiftX: Tell us about your vision for the future
But accomplishing this is no easy feat. As travel of one-to-one personalized marketing in the
brands across all industry sectors are starting travel industry. What’s changed, and what’s
to realize, the process of understanding the the broader opportunity for travel brands?
customer journey and what travelers want in the
moment requires a more tailored approach to Kurt Weinsheimer: Personalization across multi-
marketing than what’s currently offered. It will ple customer touchpoints has always been the
require a willingness to take personalization to goal for travel marketers. It’s not just a better
the next level, evolving beyond broad-based brand experience, it’s the difference between
target segments and commodity products to winning or losing the booking. A recent study
offer exactly the right product, to the right from Epsilon found that 87 percent of consumers
customer, at the right time. are more likely to do business with travel brands
offering personalized experiences.
To do that, today’s top travel brands must get
smarter about how they gather and use customer What’s exciting is that the technology to execute
data, using that knowledge to deliver customized, on this personalization at scale is now becoming
real-time marketing at scale. Doing so will allow available. Major brands that invest in the right
them to do their jobs better, provide a deeper tools and partners can now combine demographic
understanding of their customers, and more data with psychographic data, along with their
personalized paths to purchase for the travel- CRM and loyalty data, as well as look at real-time
er. It will also allow for a smarter allocation of trip intent indicators like search and booking
media dollars and marketing budgets, unlock data — all to power tailored marketing programs
more precise campaign targeting, retargeting, that systematically deliver timely offers and great
and optimization, and ensure better overall customer experiences.
performance on campaigns.
SkiftX: The longstanding model for travel
Thankfully, travel marketers don’t have to make marketing was built on this notion of target-
this leap on their own. With the help of technol- ing different “segments,” whether that was a
ogy partners like Sojern, travel brands can help business traveler, leisure traveler, or luxury
traveler. Is that model helpful in this new era
of personalization we’re describing?
30 Skift
ing in travel right now is missing this point. audiences — whether brand new prospects,
Travel is very occasion-based, so you need to competitive conquests, loyalty marketing,
understand the trip motivation for that person upselling, and more. With the huge amounts
in that moment and then use that to determine of data analyzed on our platform, we’re able to
how they want to engage when they're in that predict which travelers to target, at what time,
situation. and on what inventory source, with what message
in order to influence a booking. This allows us not
The good news is that on any major trip, I’m going only to drive outcomes but also to maximize the
to be visiting websites and conducting searches return on our clients’ marketing spend.
literally hundreds of times prior to completing
my planning and booking. Travel brands need SkiftX: If someone who's reading this says,
to understand how to see those intent signals, "Okay. How do I get started? What do I do
interpret them, and act on them in a timely next?" What would be your pitch for how to
manner. Because I'm not a business traveler, or move forward?
family traveler, or a romantic getaway traveler —
I'm all those things. It just depends on the day Weinsheimer: The first step is acknowledging that
and the hour that I'm there. Personalization has your brand may have blind spots in its broader
to be, I think, trip-based customization. understanding of how travelers are thinking. Then
you need to apply data science against your static
SkiftX: Are there any limitations with the personas. Don't assume anything about a user.
industry’s current approach to personalizing its Let the data tell you what that user is looking
digital marketing and customer interactions? to do, and test it against what the insights are
actually saying their intent is versus what your
Weinsheimer: I think the biggest challenge with “static” view thinks it is.
personalization is when travel brands base their
efforts on the activity of a very small number We can run that assumption against the hundreds
of loyal customers. Everybody thinks their loyal of millions of users that we see in our algorithms,
customers are devoted to them. But that’s not and potentially come up with different, more
always the case. In addition, the vast majority of creative ideas and observations, and see what
people that are coming to your hotel or airline works. And that's really leveraging our data, our
are people that you've not seen before. This is platforms, and our insights on the back-end to
where travel marketers have blind spots, where understand what works, what didn't work, and
they try to take what they know about a very then iterate against that. Because we're no longer
select number of travelers and push that out in a world where you can run a campaign, see
and then force that on everybody. On top of what happens, and take a break. You've got to
that, travel brands are limited by the data they be always on, all the time, so that you can iterate
can collect from loyalty programs and through and grow, and so the models can learn on a
a website visit or app engagement. minute-by-minute basis.
All of this is to say that even the most sophisticated
and well-resourced companies can benefit from
working with a partner with access to wider pools
of data from across the industry to help them
do things they cannot simply do on their own.
Sojern, for example, is able to see a traveler’s
path-to-purchase across multiple competitor and
travel planning sites to stitch together a more
comprehensive view of how booking decisions
Kurt Weinsheimer
Senior Vice President,
Sojern Inc. Skift 31