The importance of understanding the traveller

In tourism sector or travel industry tracking customers (traveller) for their entire journey –traveler journey or customer journey- is increasingly difficult for marketing departments because of the millions and millions of megabytes they are generated in a short period of time as well as to the multiplication and dispersion of the points of customer contact with the tourism industry.

We are living times complicated for sale in tourism. Consumers are changing so rapidly that being attentive to their needs requires increased efforts. The Internet phenomenon is further complicated because the channels are multiplying, the data generated are enormous and forms of communication are very diverse. As one of the highlights of this revolution is WhatsApp that in less than three years has revolutionized communication with more than 800 million active users.

A report by Econsultancy company and Oracle entitled Cross-Channel Marketing Report 2015 shows that marketers understand the need to be present proactively across multiple channels, but also reveal the difficulties faced when want develop concrete and practical actions to achieve results.

As you can see in this report, yet much of the projects budget, effort and priority is dedicated to social media, web and email marketing. However, the mobile channel is gaining much prominence within marketing departments. In this regard, as part of the marketing mix, 46% of respondents used the mobile channel in 2014 and this statistics increased to 54% in 2015.

In addition to the channels, the report highlights the importance of having full knowledge of the traveler journey to optimize relations and enhance opportunities for conversion and customer’s loyalty. In 2014, 43% of respondents felt that they had a vast knowledge of the traveler journey, but in 2015 this figure has fallen to 39%. Despite this reduction, the report is confirming that second, after preparing a strategy, is understand the traveler journey because is necessary to run marketing projects with results in the different channels.

Companies in the sector are already making serious moves so to increase understanding of its customers. For example, KLM uses Salesforce for complete tracking of their customer interactions.[:]