Skift Take
Travel companies have long tried to woo their current customers into buying more, but their promotional tactics have tended to be generic and blunt. Not anymore. Brands are now adopting sophisticated technology to make their sales pitches relevant and effective.
Travel brands are adopting next-generation marketing tools, helping to persuade more of their current customers to splurge on extra products and services in their never-ending quest to boost revenue on the edges.
No prizes for guessing that airlines lead the way. Carriers famously sell more than tickets to fly. They long ago pioneered charging for nearly everything. Now, like other travel suppliers, they're moving away from one-size-fits-all, open-to-everyone promotions.
Airlines have long known they could boost their sales of high-margin products and services if they better understood how to target relevant offers to different customer segments at ideal times. However, they struggled to do that because they had divided their customer information among a jumble of separate databases, such as reservation systems and customer relationship management software.
Today, airlines and other travel companies are solving that problem by merging the data in various ways. Some are pooling their information into so-called data lakes, where artificial intelligence-powered software connects the dots on customer behaviors and preferences. In this effort, the travel industry is taking cues from Amazon and other retailers, which are data-mining pioneers.
"Travel brands find they’re more successful at upselling when they show only a few offers that match customers' likely interests," said Kabir Shahani, CEO of marketing tech firm Amperity. “Having an integrated view of all their data enables them to do that.”
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