COMMENT: Today’s travellers want something ‘perfect’

Travel firms are urged to make it personal.  Iskra Rasheva, marketing manager of Vayant Travel Technologies, tells TravelMole how.

How can personalisation work for your business?

One of the most compelling aspects of the web-enabled world is the ability it gives people to find products, services and experiences that are exactly tailored (sometimes literally) to their needs. 

Online clothes sellers are working hard to offer their online customers the perfect fit: a shirt maker in New Jersey called Stantt now offers its shirts in 70 different sizes. Today’s demanding customer is not happy with just small, medium and large, they want something perfect for them.

Personalisation is one of the biggest topics in travel e-commerce  and, in a sense, it has always been.  The travel industry was talking about personalisation long before other e-commerce players. The idea of dynamic packaging has been around in the travel space for decades.

But in recent years the ability to deliver true personalisation has become possible, with a totally tailored experience available to individual customers at every stage of the travel process.  Dynamic packaging is the basic level of service that today’s travellers expect to find on your site.

Big data analytics (increasingly affordable and accessible) make it straightforward to process huge volumes of data about traveller behaviour and preferences. With the power and speed of today’s computers it is also possible to use these insights to shape the traveller’s experience and make it personal.

Innovation on the provider side has also greatly increased the scope for personalisation.  As airlines have unbundled fares to provide transparency and more competitive pricing, ancillary services have made many choices available to the traveller. 

Do you want lounge access at the airport?  Do you want to pay a bit more to bring more bags on your trip?  Is there a special seat you prefer on the plane? With the arrival – and wider distribution – of ancillary, the traveller has an unprecedented ability to shape their travel experience.

Today’s customer  expects to be able to  create their very own made-to-measure travel experience on your site. So how should you go about offering a personalised service?

• Groundwork, not guesswork: personalisation is all about the data.  The ability to offer the traveler a made-to-measure experience will rely on your ability to capture, process and deploy data insights.  Big e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Etsy are collecting, analysing and deploying data all the time to shape the customer’s online experience and drive sophisticated recommendation systems.

• Trial and error: there may be no arguing with numbers, but when it comes to designing your User Experience (UX) you will have to rely on your taste and judgment (at least at first).  The key thing is to experiment: create your e-commerce UX and then see how shoppers react to it.  At what stage does your customer want to specify their choice of ancillary services? Before or after they press the Search button?

• Think socially: If people are volunteering information about themselves through your social platforms, consider how you could use that to fine tune the individual’s UX.

• Be as demanding as your customers: when you are looking for a retail system, don’t accept the first thing that comes along. If you want to be able to offer personalisation, you need a flexible solution that lets you design a customised experience that offers everything your customers could want and which is true to your brand. 

Finally, be prepared to look around to find inspiration for your personalised travel shop.  Some of the best things we’ve seen in travel e-commerce did not originate in travel but instead come from online grocers, social media communities or news sites.   Keep your eyes open: around any corner you can stumble upon something that will help you get personal with your customers.