The merchant-customer relationship has long relied on an exchange of information between the two parties.
The village shopkeeper needed to understand the preferences of a family shopping at their store to recommend new products they might like; the shopper, through their purchase behaviour or explicit feedback, needed to let the shopkeeper know if the recommendations were on target or not.
Shoppers got better recommendations and had more positive engagements with the shopkeepers understood who they were, their context, and preferences. Shopkeepers who knew their customers earned these customers’ trust and their repeat business.
These fundamentals remain even as commerce has shifted online and where having 1:1 engagements becomes harder at scale. Today’s travellers crave personalised offers and experiences when they travel. But in order to deliver truly personalised communications and engagements, travel marketers need access to real and insightful customer intelligence data.
Unfortunately, when it comes to sharing personal information many consumers are at odds with the brands they interact with most. Consider the opposing dynamics at play. According Boxever’s recent survey:
Two-thirds of travellers don’t want brands tracking their location and
Over half of travellers don’t want to share their personal information
BUT
Nearly two-thirds of travellers want offers targeted to where they are and what they’re doing and
Over half of travellers want offers tailored to their needs and interests.
These opposing findings ring true for leisure and business travellers alike.
As a result of this mismatch, travellers feel like the travel brand doesn’t know who they are. The respondents in Boxever’s survey said offers and communications they receive from travel brands:
- Don’t correspond with where they are and what they are doing (62%)
- Aren’t tailored to their needs and interests (43%)
- Make them feel like the brand doesn’t know them (29%)
- Don’t distinguish between their work, personal and family needs (20%)
Read the full survey findings in Boxever’s report, Grounded by Untargeted Marketing: Travelers Frustrated with Airline, Travel, and Hospitality Communications.
Source: www.boxever.com