Introducing Innovations for Travel and 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 traveller’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 per­son­alised expe­ri­ences for con­sumers that are time­less and authen­tic, lever­ag­ing Adobe Sen­sei, the company’s AI and machine learn­ing framework.

These capa­bil­i­ties include:

• Unearthing Trav­eller Behav­iour: 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 trav­eller 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 per­son­al­is­ing ads seam­less, elim­i­nat­ing the exten­sive re-traf­fick­ing and in-depth design process steps. Lever­ag­ing an expand­ed inte­gra­tion with Adobe Ana­lyt­ics Cloud, brands can per­son­alise ads based on pur­chase his­to­ry, loy­al­ty pro­gram sta­tus, online actions, and much more. A hotel chain could use data on a poten­tial traveller’s loy­al­ty pro­gram sta­tus to cus­tomise 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 behav­iour 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 per­son­alised 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 cen­tralise and coor­di­nate com­mu­ni­ca­tions across team and chan­nels, ensur­ing brands have the right con­text, to dri­ve per­son­alised 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 Per­son­al­i­sa­tion: Adobe Tar­get helps brands lever­age con­sumer intent online, to bet­ter pre­dict what con­tent and prod­ucts trav­ellers 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 trav­eller pur­chased a vaca­tion rental in Orlan­do, browsed cruise pack­ages near­by and viewed a video on fam­i­ly-friend­ly activ­i­ties in the area. Under­stand­ing a trav­eller is plan­ning a per­son­al vaca­tion as opposed to a busi­ness trip, helps the site to pro­vide per­son­alised 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.