AI-Driven Personalization: Transforming The Travel Sector Offering | By Michael Levinson

Artificial intelligence is a game-changer for hospitality, not least for the new ways in which it will appeal to customers throughout the booking process. Chief among these is a more personalized experience. According to Amadeus’ 2024 Travel Tech Investment Trends for the hospitality sector, 85% of those surveyed anticipate that personalization could help them to deliver more than 5% growth in incremental value. But for vendors operating in the travel sector, understanding how to leverage AI to create that benefit can be confusing.

Here are four ways AI-driven technology can transform the customer booking journey, leading to better business results in the process.

1. Collaborative booking enables crystal-clear visibility into buying intent

Booking trips, experiences or accommodation with friends and family is a fundamental dynamic within the booking process, but vendor sites remain designed with solo travelers in mind. One way that AI-driven personalization is revolutionizing the booking process is by enhancing group trip planning. Industry leaders including Expedia Group and Airbnb are already incorporating ways to increase collaboration on their websites. But this doesn’t just make the booking process more enjoyable, it also enables all-important sentiment analysis – an essential if vendors are to respond effectively to their customers’ needs.

For instance, Joyned’s social revenue platform uses data analytics within the collaborative booking process to enable vendors to gain insight into customer sentiment and intent. Vendors can also better gauge price perception and brand sentiment. Where groups have a willingness to book their perfect getaway but express doubts about one aspect of the offering, this is where crafting personalized offers becomes key.

Imagine a vendor or hospitality website that seamlessly anticipates and responds to customer needs. For example, where a user of the vendor’s site says the offering is “too expensive,” they can then be targeted with specific offers chosen by hotels to remedy any concerns they may have to increase the chance of finalizing a booking. By curating trending offers and promotions, vendors can significantly enhance customer satisfaction by showcasing options that resonate with individual customers or groups, ensuring a personalized and engaging experience.

2. Differentiating your offering to keep customers coming back

Research from McKinsey and Company reveals that 66% of travelers are more interested in travel than they were last year. Post-covid, the desire for travel only seems to be getting stronger. But with this increase in interest comes an increase in competition. Vendors know this all too well. So to get ahead, this is where personalization comes in once again. Vendors must differentiate their offering through AI to keep customers coming back to their website.

By providing an intuitive booking journey that takes into account the past behaviors of customers that finalized bookings as well as those that left the website, vendors can employ strategies that encourage customers to make booking decisions faster by aligning what they are interested in with the presented offering. This is the key to improving customer loyalty and websites should even consider offering additional perks upon a return to the website. However, users would not only return for the personalized offers but also because the vendor website is where the planning and communication of their last trip took place. Most importantly, they come back because they feel valued. This strategy has been proven to work: vendors implementing AI-driven personalization through solutions such as Joyned typically see increases in returning users, made possible by recommending the right options based on users’ search preferences

3. Responding to experiential travel

Today, customers expect more than just a destination: they seek tailored journeys that cater to their unique preferences and interests. Experiential travel has even overtaken conventional motivations for travel – a testament to how important this reasoning has become for travelers. Take the example of a group looking to book a hotel in the south of France. In addition to the rooms, they may also look for a range of activities to do on their vacation, whether it’s touring prestigious vineyards, going on yoga retreats, exploring a national park or sampling French cuisine at local markets. Vendors using AI-based platforms can recommend relevant activities such as these to customers, incorporating a greater level of relevance into the booking process and increasing revenue. Let’s not forget, AI-driven personalization brings added value to both customers and providers while addressing and accommodating an important motivation for travel.

4. An all-in-one experience to reduce abandoned carts

When the booking experience can provide more of what the customer wants, vendors will experience increases in their overall revenue as well as in their Average Revenue per User (ARPU). Put simply, generic recommendations are not sufficient for consumers of today which is why it’s important for vendors to use AI to craft an intuitive and highly personalized customer buying journey.

In the race to ensure vendors stay one step ahead of consumer needs and competitors’ offerings, implementing an all-in-one experience for consumers is a must.. Whether it’s tailored offers and promotions or providing more opportunities for experiential travel, providing an all-in-one experience for customers is the most effective way to ensure consumers feel less inclined to leave your site. But why is that significant? Well, with a basket abandonment rate of approximately 89% on mobile devices, the greater the draw for consumers to leave the vendor site, the greater the chance they won’t be coming back to complete their purchase. Vendors must instead utilize technology that removes this need.

Vendors can reduce cart abandonments through technological solutions that provide on-the-spot information to customers’ most common booking questions, such as the weather forecast, travel options, and even a suggested itinerary. This improves the overall customer experience and allows vendors to gain visibility into conversations that would otherwise be unavailable as they traditionally take place away from the website on instant messaging apps or social networks. Using these insights, vendors can better tailor their packages and deals to current customer demands, leading to significant increases in revenue.

Final words

The potential for personalization to improve results for hospitality and travel vendors through a more enjoyable booking process is significant. From providing tailored offers, increasing customer loyalty, accommodating new travel motivations, or reducing cart abandonments, purchasing decisions are made faster when conversations are kept on the vendor’s page, with AI personalization providing additional information to further reduce the need to leave the vendor site. The booking experience of tomorrow is personalized and it’s arriving faster than you think. By leveraging AI-based social revenue technologies, travel vendors can future-proof their businesses and make a significant impact on their bottom line.

About Joyned

Joyned enables customers to book trips, vacations, and holidays together, making the travel booking experience collaborative. It provides a cross-website, live experience for online shoppers, empowering travel sites of all sizes to own their shoppers’ natural social engagements directly on-site.

The company’s AI-based social revenue platform analyzes and identifies consumer group-buying intent from previously unavailable data. Coupled with actionable insights, it provides visibility into buyers’ decision-making process, intent, group dynamics, conversations, and activities to maximize revenue.

Global online travel agencies, hotel chains, booking sites, and travel tech providers rely on Joyned to uncover hidden opportunities and optimize their offering thereby maximizing revenue, conversions, and customer lifetime value.