The Experience of Travel Marketing

Why are trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty brands slow to adopt mobile tech­nol­o­gy? A recent sur­vey of 1,000 peo­ple found that 54 per­cent of British trav­ellers are dis­ap­point­ed in the trav­el industry’s inabil­i­ty to improve their hol­i­day expe­ri­ences because of a slow adop­tion of mobile tech­nol­o­gy. In fact, these same peo­ple would love the con­ve­nience of a mobile check-in when they’re fly­ing, check­ing into a hotel, or hir­ing transport.

Adobe believes that brands should “make expe­ri­ence their busi­ness” and recent­ly launched a large-scale adver­tis­ing cam­paign focused on encour­ag­ing brands to do just that. The results from the sur­vey of British trav­ellers reveals that trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty brands aren’t meet­ing the expec­ta­tions British cus­tomers have for their trav­el expe­ri­ences, which should come as an alarm.

A num­ber of brands in oth­er sec­tors have already adopt­ed mobile tech­nol­o­gy as a key com­po­nent of the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence side of busi­ness and are thriv­ing as a result. Brands in the trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor, how­ev­er, have failed to adopt mobile tech­nol­o­gy as quick­ly. The expe­ri­ence for cus­tomers in these indus­tries is one of frus­tra­tion as they’re able to use their smart­phones to make pur­chas­es almost any­where but in the trav­el realm.

The sur­vey also found that trav­el cus­tomers want the added con­ve­nience of being able to access doc­u­ments relat­ed to their trans­port, accom­mo­da­tion, and vis­i­tor attrac­tions all in one place, with­out hav­ing to car­ry a raft of paper doc­u­ments, as well as bet­ter tools to aid with lan­guage trans­la­tions. Although many of these tools are avail­able, they aren’t cen­tralised into one con­ve­nient place trav­el­ers can access on their mobile device.

As British cus­tomers move into the hol­i­day sea­son over the next sev­er­al weeks, many brands in the trav­el and hos­pi­tal­i­ty sec­tor can expect to face missed oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, which rais­es a num­ber of ques­tions. Why are trav­el brands slow to adopt mobile tech­nol­o­gy when it’s a clear expec­ta­tion of their cus­tomers? What’s hold­ing the indus­try back? Should these brands real­ly be alarmed by the sur­vey results? Do the results hon­est­ly reflect the true state of the indus­try or is there a per­cep­tion gap? What are your thoughts?