Adobe Introduces Innovations for Travel & Hospitality Brands

Consumers have high expectations when traveling, craving a mix of authenticity and access. Travel and hospitality brands today have the challenge of cultivating the best experience possible throughout each point of a traveler’s journey: from booking a hotel room to enjoying a cruise’s amenities onboard to stepping onto a flight. The traditional way that consumers have interacted with travel brands has been redefined; brands are selling memories, not just a flight or hotel, and must embrace a focus on the customer journey to stay relevant. But while seemingly every brand talks about customer experience, there’s a major gap: only 31% are truly experience-driven businesses.

Adobe has a strong legacy with the travel and hospitality world; 9 of 10 of the world’s biggest hotel chains and 7 of the 10 largest airlines leverage Adobe Experience Cloud to help craft their customer experiences. This includes Southwest Airlines, MGM Resorts International, Princess Cruises, G6 Hospitality, as well as redtag.ca, who is keynoting at Adobe Symposium. Today, Adobe is announcing innovations to help travel brands create personalized experiences for consumers that are timeless and authentic, leveraging Adobe Sensei, the company’s AI and machine learning framework.

Unearthing traveler behavior

Without data, it’s nearly impossible for brands to gain insight into each customer’s needs, wants and habits. Adobe is boosting measurement capabilities in Adobe Analytics Cloud, so brands can better understand exactly how customers are interacting across digital touchpoints. For example, the way a consumer interacts with an airline’s mobile app is a challenge to track effectively: a traveler may check-in the day prior to the flight on their laptop, open the app to gain access to the boarding pass once in the security line and may check the weather at their destination while onboard, using the in-flight wifi. Adobe Analytics can help the airline understand this as one customer journey vs. separate interactions, allowing more holistic analysis of customer’s needs at each phase of their experience. With an expanded integration between Adobe Analytics and Audience Manager, brands can track metrics and drive valuable customer experiences quickly and at scale. Here, a hotel chain can identify customers who have already purchased a room in the past month, and curtail advertising towards that group, ultimately driving greater ad efficiency.

Flying high with targeted ads

Once a painful process, Adobe Advertising Cloud Creative makes personalizing ads seamless, eliminating the extensive re-trafficking and in-depth design process steps. Leveraging an expanded integration with Adobe Analytics Cloud, brands can personalize ads based on purchase history, loyalty program status, online actions, and much more. A hotel chain could use data on a potential traveler’s loyalty program status to customize an ad, then serve a different offer for an in-house restaurant on a mobile device, once checked into the hotel. With Audience Manager, a brand can build niche audiences based on behavior and demographics, to target effectively. Leveraging Adobe Sensei capabilities within Audience Manager, brands can target new customers leveraging data from clear fans, such as loyalty status and purchase history, to reach new audiences that are most likely to click purchase.

A seamless journey, from start to finish

As consumers’ expectations for fluidity across a brand’s touchpoints become the norm, Adobe Experience Manager is enabling travel and hospitality brands to efficiently deliver connected experiences across any channel. This includes channels ranging from web and mobile sites, to IoT devices to in-venue screens. An airline can promote a personalized deal on fares to Europe via email, then leverage that same content for its website, Facebook, mobile app or any other channel, giving consumers a consistent experience through their journey. With Adobe Campaign, brands can centralize and coordinate communications across team and channels, ensuring brands have the right context, to drive personalized campaigns. A travel search engine could build custom conversion objectives that incorporate data beyond simply flight and hotel bookings, to truly understand the influence of multiple touchpoints, ultimately impacting the customer journey.

Path to personalization

Adobe Target helps brands leverage consumer intent online, to better predict what content and products travelers might want next. Leveraging techniques based on natural language processing, a tailored customer experience is delivered. For example, a travel site can see that a frequent business traveler purchased a vacation rental in Orlando, browsed cruise packages nearby and viewed a video on family-friendly activities in the area. Understanding a traveler is planning a personal vacation as opposed to a business trip, helps the site to provide personalized recommendations, along with more relevant offers. Additionally, Audience Manager helps brands market to a consumer as opposed to a device, by connecting a customer’s journey across all touchpoints, screens and devices.

For more information on Adobe’s travel and hospitality capabilities, visit here.