If you are not there already, personalisation has been sitting on the marketing ‘must-do’ lists for years, and I mean years, I remember using personalisation through email comms and website content way back in 2007…admittedly basic stuff, but still personalised. Most travel brands have always known it’s important, but the shift we have been seeing is different.
Personalisation isn’t just something marketers should do, it’s something travellers expect as standard. And when it’s missing, they notice.
Today’s travellers want brands to recognise their preferences, anticipate their needs and offer experiences that feel relevant to them. In fact, 71% of consumers expect personalised interactions, and 76% say they feel frustrated when they don’t get them.
In an industry built on emotion, imagination and experience, I expect, is even stronger.
But here’s the part that often gets overlooked – meaningful personalisation is only as good as the data behind it, and that’s where things can get tricky. Many travel marketers are working with fragmented systems, inconsistent data, or customer profiles that don’t tell the full story….or no systems in place at all.
When data foundations are weak, campaigns become generic, decision-making becomes reactive, and opportunities to influence travellers at key moments are lost. Not only does this effect customer experience but also your revenue.
However, when travel brands do get data-driven personalisation right, the results speak for themselves. Studies show personalised content can increase lead conversion rates by up to 202%, while targeted recommendations can boost booking value by 20% or more.
In email, personalised messaging delivers 6x higher transaction rates, and brands using behavioural data are 85% more likely to convert enquiries into bookings.
So yes, personalisation isn’t optional anymore. But it’s also one of the biggest opportunities in front of the travel sector right now, especially with the abundance of smart AI driven tools at hand. The brands that invest in clean, connected data and smart activation aren’t just meeting customer expectations, they’re setting the benchmark for how travel marketing should work.
The question has shifted from ‘Should we personalise?’ to ‘How quickly can we build the data foundations to personalise better than the competition?’
Strativatemarketing.com.au
