At WiT Japan & North Asia earlier this month, ADARA’s chief marketing officer, Carolyn Corda openly discussed the changing forces in marketing travel brands and how companies can leverage data to better understand their customers.

We are in an age where marketing is driven by data and consumers are more aware than ever about brands’ attempts to interact with them to drive sales. Travel companies are being confronted by the challenge of how they develop personal bonds with customers that transcend the transactional, into something more sustainable and long-term.

“How we personalise interactions for consumers in the next five years will be most interesting,” said Corda.

The biggest common problem faced by travel brands and marketers, says Corda, is the fact that no one has a single, unified view of the customer at any point in time, and understanding what their individual needs and interests are.

Secondly, travel brands are “most familiar with [how customers travel] a customer when they travel with [their] brand, but they get very little visibility, if anything, with what’s happening when they’re travelling with other brands, airlines, hotels or tour operators.”

She was clear about the fact that just like the industry as a whole, travel marketers have a highly fragmented view of the customers they serve – understanding them only in terms of how they interact with their brand directly, rather than how they interact with brands in general.

Thus, travel marketers need a single and expanded view of their customers, so they can understand them more holistically.

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