Customer Experience in Travel: 8 Trends Shaping the Future of Travel and Tourism CX

Few things are more important than customer experience in travel and tourism. Today’s consumers expect every part of the travel experience to be simplified, personalised, and adapted to their needs, whether they’re shopping for hotels, booking flights, or interacting with hospitality staff.

Failure to deliver an exceptional experience throughout the customer journey puts even the biggest companies at risk of losing customers (and investors). That’s particularly true now that customers are sharing more of their opinions online via social media. In the last few years, we’ve seen plenty of examples of airlines, hotels, and other travel leaders losing market share due to bad customer reviews.

The good news is that technology is evolving, providing the travel and tourism industry with more ways to delight, support, and retain their target audience.

Here, we’ll look at just some of the most significant trends likely to influence your approach to customer experience in the travel and tourism space.

Customer Experience in Travel: The Biggest Trends

Despite an uncertain economy, demand for travel is increasing. By the end of 2023, international tourism was rapidly approaching pre-pandemic levels, and travel habits are likely to continue to grow in the years ahead. Unfortunately, for companies to take advantage of the market momentum, they first need to bypass a number of customer experience issues.

Trust in travel and tourism companies has dwindled consistently in the last couple of years, thanks to poor online experiences, a limited approach to personalisation, and a range of other factors.

To thrive in this market, business leaders in the travel and tourism sector will need to focus on adapting to a few crucial trends.

1. Customers Demand Hyper Personalization

In 2024, customers don’t just want tailored experiences, they expect them. Around 80% of consumers demand personalized experiences from all retailers, including those in the travel space. Unfortunately, simply using your customer’s name when they call your contact centre won’t be enough.

Customers want every part of their journey to be tailored to them, from the experience they get when they visit your website, to the recommendations you send via email and text.

The good news is that AI should help companies to address this demand. Over 70% of US retailers already believe AI-driven personalisation will help them to achieve their customer experience goals this year. With generative AI and conversational AI tools, travel leaders can offer 24/7 personalized service to customers on every channel.

They’ll be able to leverage data to dynamically adapt their websites and promotions to the needs and expectations of different customer groups. What’s more, they’ll be able to use AI to segment their customers into specific groups based on their location, preferences, and other factors.

2. AI Use Cases Continue to Evolve

As mentioned above, AI will have a significant impact on customer experience in travel. Not only will the latest AI-powered tools help businesses deliver more personalised experiences, but they’ll assist companies with a wide range of CX-related tasks.

Travel and tourism leaders will be able to leverage AI to:

• Transform online journeys: AI-powered site search tools can leverage machine learning and natural language processing to understand customer queries and intent. This will help companies to guide their customers towards the information they need on your website.

• Offer access to AI assistants: With the ability to build their own AI bots for websites and apps, companies will be able to provide every customer with an always-on assistant, capable of offering everything from advice on itinerary planning, to proactive insights into booking issues, delays, and other common problems.

• Enhance customer loyalty: With AI built into loyalty programs, companies will be able to rapidly reward customers for a range of actions, from booking a flight, to leaving a review. This will lead to greater engagement levels, increased customer satisfaction, and better retention rates for tourism and travel operators.

3. The Popularity of Self-Service Continues to Grow

A few years ago, planning a trip required customers to interact with professionals who would help them book their flights and hotels, find the best tourist attractions, and more. These days, customers prefer to handle most of the process themselves. In fact, more than 67% of customers say they prefer using self-service tools over speaking to a human representative.

To respond to this trend, companies will need to create and share more resources that support customers throughout their journey. This means not just investing in AI assistants and bots, but also designing comprehensive FAQ pages, and valuable website content.

The growing focus on self-service may also prompt more travel and tourism companies to invest in the potential of robotics. Already, various companies in this landscape are experimenting with robots to help automate a range of tasks. In hotels, robots can take on concierge-like roles, helping guests “check in” to their rooms and access various services.

For airlines, robots can be used to automate tasks like checking in baggage. More advanced solutions can even help to improve security in the airline landscape, automatically scanning bags for concealed weapons and other dangerous contents.

4. Omnichannel CCaaS Becomes Essential

As customer journeys in the travel and tourism sector evolve, old-fashioned contact centre solutions are losing their value. Companies are rapidly embracing cloud-based contact centre as a service (CCaaS) solutions to ensure they can adapt quickly to changing demands.

A flexible and scalable CCaaS solution allows travel and tourism companies to meet their customers on the channels they prefer, from voice, to chat, email, and video. It also ensures they can preserve context throughout the customer service journey, reducing the need for customers to repeat themselves. On a broader scale, an omnichannel CCaaS platform can unlock various other benefits.

The right technology can provide access to AI tools for self-service, call recording solutions for compliance and training services, and in-depth analytical and reporting solutions. Since an omnichannel platform will collect and consolidate data from every customer journey, this will help companies to better understand their target audience, and make informed decisions for growth.

5. Extended Reality and the Metaverse

During the pandemic, the metaverse and extended reality gave travel and tourism companies a way to engage their audience, even when borders were closed, and travel was restricted. Now that people can travel freely again, these technologies introduce new opportunities to enhance customer experience.

Companies can use the metaverse and extended reality to help customers gain an insight into what a destination is like, before they book anything. Airlines can provide virtual tours of planes; hospitality companies can allow customers to check out a room before booking. Tour operators can even give customers “taster sessions” in virtual reality.

During travel, these technologies can also add extra value to an experience. An augmented reality app, with integrated AI could provide directions to customers as they explore a new location, or translate content into the language of their choice. As more customers embrace virtual, augmented, and mixed reality, these solutions could become a major differentiator for customer experience in travel.

6. Streamlined Online and Mobile Experiences

As mentioned above, the majority of travellers are conducting their own research, booking flights and hotels, and managing other aspects of the travel experience themselves. Often, they do this by leveraging a company’s website, or mobile app. Unfortunately, though many travel and tourism companies are aware of this trend, few have fully invested in a great online experience.

Studies show that effective “user experiences” on websites and mobile apps can impact six out of ten of the top factors travellers consider when choosing which companies to purchase from.

To ensure they’re delivering exceptional customer experiences, and boosting their chances of retaining customers, companies will need to rethink their approach to website and app design. This means thinking carefully about things like “Google’s Core Web Vitals”, improving page loading speeds, and ensuring sites are tailored to the needs of mobile users.

7. The Internet of Things Continues to Mature

The internet of things has been gaining momentum in the travel and tourism sector for a while now. We’ve seen airlines investing in beacons and sensors that make it easier to monitor traffic, track down luggage, and streamline operations. Plus, in the hotel industry, IoT technology can give customers access to devices that they can use to control everything from their lights to their air conditioning.

As the IoT landscape evolves, with new beacons, sensors, and solutions powered by artificial intelligence, we’ll continue to see new use cases for this technology in customer experience. IoT solutions could even help to reduce delays in their airline landscape, by allowing companies to monitor factors that commonly cause disruptions.

What’s more, these tools will contribute to giving industry leaders more of the data they need to make intelligent decisions about how to price products and services, schedule flights, manage bookings, and more. This should lead to a significant improvement in customer experiences.

8. The Evolution of Biometric Authentication

Finally, biometric technology is another major trend that’s been gaining steam in the travel and tourism sector for a while now. Often, this technology is considered more of a solution for improving security and safety than enhancing customer experiences. However, safer customers are also happier customers, more likely to trust the vendors they work with.

Not only will biometric technology help to reduce risks in airports, train stations, hotels, and more, but it can also help to streamline various frustrating parts of the traveller journey. For instance, it’s often much quicker to “check in” to an airport using a facial recognition scan than it is to wait in a queue for a professional to check your passport.

Notably though, companies investing in biometric solutions will also need to be aware of the risks that are emerging in the AI landscape. Deepfakes created with generative AI are becoming increasingly common, creating new challenges for leaders to overcome.

The Transformation of Customer Experience in Travel

Delivering exceptional customer experiences has always been a priority for travel and tourism leaders. However, as customer expectations evolve, leaders in this industry will need to be prepared to adopt new technologies, and adapt to new trends to stay competitive.

Of course, any initiative that involves implementing new technologies comes with challenges to consider, from finding funding, to preserving security and compliance.

At Techgrants, we help companies from every industry, including the travel and tourism space, to find the right vendors to work with, and implement the best technology. Whether you’re looking for guidance on the best CCaaS or AI solution, shifting your ecosystem into the cloud, or searching for risk-free funding, we can help.

Reach out to our team to learn more about how we can help you revolutionise your customer experience strategy.