This week we celebrated World Tourism Day 2023. The day commemorates tourism’s role in conserving cultures, communities and environments across the world. It’s fair to say that the tourism industry has been greatly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. From economic instability to travel restrictions and safety protocols, every aspect of the market has been affected. Today, more than 3 years on, The World Health Organisation officially declared the global emergency of COVID-19 over in May 2023, and the travel industry has been gradually recovering. Travel marketing plays an important role in this recovery, finding new and innovative ways to entice the world to book the trip they’ve been dreaming of these past few years.
Putting the global pandemic aside, the travel industry regularly faces challenges that naturally occur alongside shifts in travel trends. Recent research shows a trend towards independent travel bookings through online holiday booking sites and travel comparison sites, and by consequence, a decrease in the use of booking agents and package holidays.
This digitisation of the holiday booking process is why personalised marketing has become crucial to the travel industry. Companies that once relied on face-to-face or over-the-phone communication to tailor trips to customers, are now turning to data-driven personalised recommendation technology, in order to mimic or even improve upon this fundamental interaction within the holiday booking journey.
This article will navigate through how your travel business can use personalised video to enhance each stage of the customer’s journey, from pre-booking to their return home.
Personalising your customer’s travel experience can start before they’ve even booked the trip. If you have existing data on your customers’ previous booking preferences, using that information to help recommend future holiday options can greatly improve, and further personalise, the booking experience.
It is no secret that consumers love to find great deals when making a purchase, and this holds especially true for the travel industry. Offers and deals can be the catalyst that prompts customers to make a booking, as agreed by over 51% of travellers (AIGTravel). Adding personalisation can take these offers to the next level, as 91% of consumers have a stronger preference for companies that tailor offers to their needs (Accenture).
The options for personalising travel offers are endless and can all be achieved by using data from previously booked trips or through AI-driven technology, such as chatbots, to learn traveller preferences. Choose the specific offers that align with their travel habits, which can range from broader factors such as holiday destinations, time of year, and holiday style, to the precise details such as room size and breakfast offerings at a hotel. Better yet, you could include these elements in a personalised video to help your customer to visualise their ideal holiday experience.
As reported by Google, 49% of surveyed shoppers believe that their shopping experience is improved through tailoring deals to previous purchases. Personalising your shopper’s travel offers is a strong first step towards encouraging them to completing a booking.
Leading your customer base towards making a booking begins with helping them to discover their perfect destination. Whilst travel brands aren’t shying away from trip recommendations, there are additional creative methods that can be considered to improve the delivery, including interactive trip recommendation videos.
This style of video works by delivering a series of interactive questions that result in a self-served, personalised holiday recommendation. To help make this interaction lead to a sale, the video’s end scene can include a CTA that directs the customer to the booking page of the trip they’ve been recommended, or a form where they can enter their contact details to receive further information.
Take a look at how Princess Cruises’ helped their customers discover their perfect cruise destination in this interactive trip recommendation video, created in partnership with VideoSmart.
Now that you’ve successfully piqued the interest of a potential customer, it’s time to convert them into a booking.
The booking stage in the travel and tourism industry is a tricky one. In fact, travel sites have the highest cart abandonment rate amongst five key sectors (CondorFerries). This is because customers often change their minds during the booking process for a holiday or trip.
To help lower your cart abandonment rates as much as possible, discovering what causes your potential customers to abandon their booking can be the best first step. This will allow you to better inform your marketing tactics and recover more abandoned carts.
When a customer abandons their booking, personalised and interactive video is a marketing tool that can enable you to gain real-time feedback and create an opportunity to convert a lost sale.
Some examples include:
Sending an email featuring a video personalised to the holiday booking they’d abandoned to draw them back. Did you know that personalised video can help boost email conversion rates by 500%?
Featuring an interactive video on a landing page that uses an in-video poll to help you gain valuable insights on why customers are abandoning their travel bookings.
Or, combine both...
...For example, you might ask, ‘Hi Maisey, what caused you to abandon your booking to Ibiza?’. Follow this question with clickable answers to some common reasons for customers abandoning their travel bookings, which typically include:
The customer is browsing their options before they are ready to book;
Lengthy or overcomplicated checkout processes;
Unable to access information such as cancellation policies;
Not offering flexible payment options;
Unexpected fees are added to the initial price.
You could take this one step further with the addition of variable scenes that are triggered by their response to your poll. This is a great opportunity to address and rectify any deterrents they are facing. For instance, if your customer selects ‘Unable to access the cancellation policy’, the next variable scene could explain the cancellation policy or any other terms and conditions to dispel any concerns. By filling in any gaps in information using video responses, you should expect to see an increase in conversion rates. In fact, a striking 93% of companies have experienced an increase in conversion rates thanks to personalised video content (EConsultancy).
During the booking stage, it is worthwhile to seize the opportunity to cross or upsell. In fact, research indicates that this can account for between 10% to 30% of e-commerce site revenues (ForresterResearch). For instance, when a customer is booking a trip abroad, they are likely in search of add-ons such as travel insurance, car rentals, luggage storage, or excursions; which is a great opportunity to add on services or increase customer spend.
On the other hand, one-fifth of consumers blame lengthy checkout processes as a reason for ditching online purchases (Selfbook), so it is crucial to be skilful when implementing any cross or up-selling techniques.
One effective way to successfully cross-sell products is to leverage user data for personalised add-on recommendations. As the CEO of the Marketing Tech firm Amperity pointed out, “travel brands find they’re more successful at upselling when they show only a few offers that match customers’ likely interests”, rather than overwhelming the customer with too many products that end up causing them to abandon their booking and treated in an impersonal manner.
We all know how exciting the lead-up to a holiday can be, but the prospect of trying to plan activities and an itinerary amongst the demands of day-to-day life can feel stressful and might not leave much time for holidaymakers to prepare. This is a great opportunity for businesses to step up their service, by harnessing digital tools that can help customers to plan their trip with less fuss and protect that feeling of excitement and anticipation.
Bring a holiday or travel experience to life with virtual tours. This could be the destination, resort, hotel, or activity they’re planning to experience during their visit. Virtual tours and video are fantastic tools for helping customers to know what to expect during their visit, make the most out of the experience, and discover any amends or add-ons they’d like to add to their booking to ensure it’s just right, or even inform them of the local cultural norms to respect.
Adding interactive elements to virtual tours and travel video content can help customers to get even more out of them. Interactive CTAs could enable the traveller to click-through to further explore the different areas of a resort, or instantly book various add-ons. Sliding scales could help them discover the different features and pricing associated with the levels or tiers of an experience. All helping to create an in-depth sneak peek of what awaits them.
Even after your customer has made a booking with your travel business, the care and service shouldn’t end there. The lead-up to a trip away has the potential to benefit your brand by ensuring your customer gets the most out of their holiday, which could result in generating great reviews and returning customers. To ensure that your customers return home from a smooth and stress-free experience, you can provide personalised itinerary videos that are tailored to their wants and needs. This can consider a range of factors to personalise the experience, such as real-time weather conditions and specific events that occur whilst they are in the area. Perhaps your customer has a late flight on their last day, but they check out of their accommodation in the morning, you could recommend a spa experience that offers amenities such as showers and changing rooms, so they step onto the plane feeling fresh.
Did you know that 67% of high-income travellers would prefer to use their spending money on experiences than upgrading their hotel room? (Stratojets) To cater to this, your business can even partner with small local businesses to recommend places to go, including restaurants, museums, clubs, music venues, activity centres, and more, adding these into the video itinerary where suits.
Food plays a significant role in travel. With 81% of people believing that food is important for understanding a culture (JerseyIslandHolidays), it comes as no surprise that food tourism has grown in popularity as a trend. Give your customers a taste of what to expect by sending restaurant or cooking class recommendation videos of local businesses in the area, with interactive CTAs where the traveller can directly make a booking.
The post-holiday blues are real! But the customer journey doesn’t have to end upon the return home.
Reviews are astronomically valuable to the travel industry, as 96% of travellers consider reviews to be important during the research phase of planning a trip. It also seems that people are willing to write reviews just as much as they want to read them, as 80% of travel customers who are asked to leave a review will gladly do so (CondorFerries). So, there's little doubt that your travel business is asking customers to leave reviews, but have you considered using personalised video as an innovative way to do so? Create a heartfelt video with snippets of their holiday destination, thanking them for choosing your services whilst requesting their feedback. VideoSmart’s interactive elements mean that you can add an in-video text box for them to write a review. This gentle nudge can significantly boost your review collection, which will in turn increase your visibility and have the potential to boost your conversions by 270% (SpiegelResearchCenter).
You may want to remind your customers of the amazing holiday they had even months down the line after their return. With a personalised video memento, this can feature a recap of the experiences they enjoyed during their trip, including booked activities, delicious meals and scenic views. By bringing back memories from their last holiday, it will serve as a special keepsake whilst also planting the seed for thinking about booking their next trip.
Social media is not a platform to be underestimated when considering its power for influencing travel decisions. By encouraging your customers to post their experience online, and using business specific hashtags to spread the word, you can generate additional business. It’s reported that 86% of people become interested in traveling to a destination after seeing photo and video content in their social feeds (TravelResearchOnline), making it a valuable resource for discovering holiday options.
Despite the drift towards digitisation over face-to-face communication in the travel industry, we have highlighted how adding a personal touch still matters. Making personalised video an invaluable tool for replicating this traditionally human interaction.
To make your next travel campaign fly with personalised and interactive video, contact us at hello@videosmart.com.