After several surveys by a number of travel organizations and
experts, it has been discovered that people have become more comfortable with
sharing personal information like their location and travel history with travel
companies in return for a more customized service.
Dr James
Canton from leading think tank the Institute for Global Futures, says: “The
future of travel is really exciting, as we’ll see predictive travel analytic
anticipating what consumers want from their experience before booking.
The hotel booking itself
will be helped along by artificial intelligence software agents, using data
mining and intuitive computing. The new travel design science will help create
highly personalized in-stay experiences.”
Let’s take
a look at some of the various personalization efforts that are been adopted and
used by various sectors and support services in the travel industry.
Personalization
by Support services in the travel industry
· New features
used by some of the support services in the travel industry like the 2016
update of Uber’s app enables and ensures data from your journeys is collected
and stored, this will help in learning from your routines and help predict
where you will want to go next.
· Trips
app in an effort to ensure the ease of planning and organizing your trips was
also launched by Google in September 2016; it was designed to thoroughly search
your G mail account for hotel bookings and flights, as well as propose itineraries
and store your reservations.
Personalization
by Airlines
Several
airlines have become more sophisticated with personalized offers by customizing
the airline passengers user experience. However, when it comes to airlines,
every aspect of personalization comes at a fee, especially for the “economy
class VIP”.
A survey
conducted by Sabre in 2016 found that some consumers are willing to spend more
to get extra air travel value such as fast-track security, preferred seating
and enhanced meals.
On the
other hand, booking systems often remember the preferences of premium
passengers and more often than not the flight crew know who they are.
Personalization
by the hotel industry
A chief
commercial officer for a top hotel once said, in the hotel industry there are
real life opportunity to use information gathered from a guests stay to create
consecutive priceless experiences for them when they return. He added that
“Travellers are likely to experience more of this seamless personalization from
their hotels within the near future.”
Personalizing
an hotel guest’s stay is a major factor to creating a lasting experience.
Several luxury hotels now
store information on whether you have any dietary preferences, what newspaper
you read, what floor you prefer, whether you like red wine or white wine
better, if you prefer it sweet or savoury.
At the
point when any guest is booking their room, they are often asked a series a
questions including the purpose of their visit, as this will help determine
small but important details about them and enable the hotel create small
gestures of customised recognition.
Like all
top hotels, staff will go out of their way to remember your name, as well as
relevant facts about who you are and why you are in town so they can converse
with you.
· A perfect
example is when a guest books a room for a business trip but has to arrive
late, the hotel makes sure his or her room is prepared for bedtime straight
away and leave a tea amenity to aid in sleep and an energy bar for the next
morning.
· Elle magazine’s
beauty editor once arrived at the W St Petersburg to discover the hotel had
incorporated the tag line of her own range of scented candles, her love of cats
and shoes to create a more personalized effect. She posted a picture of it on
social media and the reaction it garnered from people said it all.
· Some hotels
have adopted the use of dynamic emails where every time you open one of their
messages, a count down timer comes on and then when you open again the next
day, the content could be different, however the hotel offers remain accurate
and up to date.
· Thanks
to digital innovation, Hilton Honors app can be used to select your room and
can serve as a digital key to access your room instead of the plastic one
usually given at the reception. The digital key also allows you pin your
favourite room and when next you stay at the hotel, you will find a little
heart shape on the room floor.
· Hilton’s
recent partnership with Google Maps also means you can now see special
locations and pick your favourite room near the lake, a park or any other point
of interest. You can also message the front desk, make restaurant reservations
or request champagne on arrival.
The future
of personalization in the hotel industry
Skyscanner’s
director of hotels Nik Gupta agrees: “[By 2024], advances in digital technology
will mean that travellers will have no need to encounter a single human being
from the time that they enter their chosen hotel to the time that they check
out of their room. The fight back against peer-to-peer travel will see hotels
empower their guests with incredible levels of hyper-personalisation through
their mobile devices to provide the unique experiences they want.”
Skyscanner
also foretells that hotel software will link with guests’ social media profiles
so that when they book a particular room, everything is set specifically for
them. Some hotels are already looking up VIP guests online and anticipating
what they might appreciate when they get there.
Do you
believe hyper-personalization is the future of travel or do think this is doing
too much?
Please
share you thoughts.
Author’s
Bio:
Mariam
Barry is a lifestyle and travel blogger.
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