Hollis Thomases

Increasingly, companies realize that paying lip service to their audience in the form of brand positioning and advertising messages may bring in customers, but not retain them. Brands have to live up to the expectations they create for their customers, and those expectations cross boundaries of time, device and form of interaction. Companies in every industry need to think hard about how to produce great customer experiences, and travel has its own unique challenges.

Each year, Phocuswright publishes an annual “trends” report that discusses the most significant technology-driven issues or developments that will shape travel distribution in the course of the year and beyond. This year we incorporate the views of our extended analyst team, who are industry experts in a range of areas. This paper features introductions to more in-depth discussions on these topics that will be published throughout the remainder of this year.

This paper presents an overview of how and why the traveler’s expectations matter, the process of creating great digitally-transformed customer experiences, and mistakes that should be avoided. It also provides examples of digitally-transformed leisure and business traveler customer experiences, digital transformation leadership requirements, and considerations for the future of the customer experience.

Businesses spend a lot of money on marketing and advertising with the goal of driving sales, revenues, and profits. For a very long time, that meant focusing on ways to drive consumer attention to the product or services the business chose to promote. In the parlance of travel, this focus has been on the destination, not on the trip itself. Digital has, however, precipitated the altering of this thinking. With the de-centralization of how and where people buy, marketers have had to become more customer-centric, paying attention to customer segments, behaviors, expectations, and experiences. The assemblage of these new focal points is called the customer journey, and this report will more deeply explore — through the combination of travel-specific and generalized sources — the customer journey, its value to a business, and how customer journeys can also foster innovative thinking and execution for travel marketers.

Keeping up with the latest and greatest bright shiny object in digital marketing oftentimes feels like a race with no finish line. Making determinations on how much attention, time, resources, and actual budget to allocate to new advancements in digital marketing challenges any professional, even the savviest. With the pace of change and the pressures of competition, brands must weigh their decisions based on both where they think their consumers will be next and how much they want to be leaders versus followers in that space.

No longer a nice-to-have, digital advertising – particularly for travel marketers – has become a must-have as part of virtually any annual strategy. As so much of the traveler experience now begins and ends online, to reach prospective buyers at the right place and time, travel marketers continue to re-allocate greater advertising budget to digital. Yet complexity and fast-changing technologies continue to plague digital advertising at-large, especially due to growing concerns over accurate measurement criteria, ad fraud, non-human website traffic, fake news, brand safety, and user-installed ad blocking software. Issues of trust and transparency have further compromised digital advertising.

While travel as an industry is not generally associated with speed, the behind-the-scenes business of travel cannot afford to think or act leisurely. Ever-advancing new technologies, disruptive and competitive forces, and unpredictable economic factors strain even well-situated players. This article lays out the key challenges for the future of travel, and provides recommendations on how to keep up with the fast pace of change in order to deliberately transform and reinvent.

Search marketing has long been the grand poobah of digital marketing. In travel, industry marketers have relied heavily on Search strategies to lead prospects down the conversion funnel. This paper discusses the historical importance of Search, examines indicators that Search’s dominance could be slipping, and recommends what travel marketers should do to adapt their digital marketing strategies to keep ahead during changing times.

Native advertising has become the darling of digital publishers, but is it right for travel advertisers? This Analysis explores the various types of native advertising available to travel marketers, using examples to highlights some of the advantages and challenges of each.

Most travel advertisers want to drive action, frequently in the form of bookings and/or revenue. With its scalability, cost-effectiveness and potential to effectively reach target audiences, data-driven advertising has rapidly evolved into a preferred revenue-generation tactic. This Spotlight presents the information needed to understand and navigate the data-driven advertising ecosystem, including key terms and considerations, resources, recommendations and travel-related case studies.