Travel Companies know the importance of driving repeat bookings from previous bookers but often fail to do this effectively.
Acquiring new customers through Google PPC often incurs costs that match or exceed the profits from their initial holiday bookings. This is due to intense competition, as many holiday companies bid on long-tail traffic and core terms, driving up costs to sustainable levels only by companies with high repeat booking rates.
Traditionally, travel companies have sent “One to Many” offers with minimal personalisation, relying on customers to revisit the company’s website to check availability if they find an offer appealing.
Fortunately for the travel industry, open rates remain high at 57% due to its appealing nature, and marketers often consider this channel highly cost-effective due to its low cost. However, this perception may significantly overstate its benefits.
Recent research shows that customers who receive non-personalized emails are 40% less likely to purchase from the sender. Thus, email campaigns might generate inexpensive leads but could also decrease overall repeat bookings unless they are personalised, with 71% of customers demanding personalisation in exchange for loyalty (Ref McKinsey).
I have therefore focused the efforts of my AI Business Neural Voice in solving both this quandary whilst providing a cutting edge “Dream Stage” tool for customers.
Seeing is believing so watch a video of how it works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY4AKYDnGfo
And/Or have a play yourself https://www.neural-voice.ai/characters/emily/
Previous bookers receive an email two months before their booking anniversary, inviting them to engage with AI Emily to discuss potential holiday destinations.
AI Emily has access to comprehensive internet knowledge, enabling detailed conversations about any global destination, from top hotels to the best bars and beach clubs and providing a “dream stage” tool for customers to use when deciding next years holiday destination and holiday type.
More importantly, she operates at 25% of the cost of a human agent and is available 24/7, providing “Instant Response” and engaging customers immediately in the holiday planning process. The AI stores a template of the customer information required to create a link to a live page of availability in the background, and Emily will tease this information out of a customer during a conversational process for selecting a holiday destination.
Hence, at the end of the conversation, she can directly send a WhatsApp or email link to current prices and availability to the customer while automatically updating the travel company’s CRM with these “Future Holiday” needs.
This enables the business to “Ultra-Personalize” emails by leveraging insights into the customer’s “Future Holidays” plans rather than relying solely on historical travel data.
Using McKinsey marketing metrics, Neural River estimates that this approach will double repeat booking conversions, significantly enhancing ROI from email marketing activities.
It also introduces a top-of-the-funnel “Dream Stage” tool to assist customers in selecting their holiday destinations for the following year, which may enhance customer loyalty as, frustratingly, most travel websites still require you to know where you want to go before you can use them.
The AI revolution extends beyond cost-cutting, providing new marketing channels like personalised emails and effective lead conversion from Instagram.
In the AI landscape, early adopters could outpace larger competitors, reminiscent of how low-cost carriers once disrupted large vertically integrated travel groups.
So get moving, guys.