Digital transformation trends have captivated many industries and your travel business is one of them. Healthcare, tourism, banking, and media & entertainment are some of the early adopters of digital transformation, however, it would be indulging into bravado, saying that all businesses from these industries have adopted the digital trends with similar fervor. Today, even companies in the government and public sector are adopting digital means to serve the public, from booking tickets to finding the hotel, traveling has become much easier and comfortable.
Big firms in the travel segment like Expedia, Trivago, Make My Trip, and Goibibo has not only adopted digital transformation but has also set an example for the small businesses on how to tread the path and achieve customer satisfaction. For an industry to get revolutionized, it is essential that businesses in the small and medium scale segments adopt similar technologies, of course on a different level, to provide services and handle customers.
With so many technology companies willing to serve small and medium scale travel enterprises at cost-effective rates, it is time for them to adopt digital transformation to connect with their customers and serve them in the best possible way.
Signs that Tell Your Travel Business Needs Digital Transformation
According to a study by Pew research, 95% of Americans have mobile phones and 77% of those are smartphones. Travel companies should consider this as an opportunity to connect with their customers and utilize the platform exceedingly to enhance business operations and recognize customer preferences in advance. Below are 6 signs that ring the bell for digital transformation:
1. You Lose Business Because Customers Cannot Reach You on Time
When your customer wants to make an urgent booking, but since you are not available online, he has to find your brick and mortar shop or connect to you personally, so he books from your competitor. If this is the common scenario for your business, it is time that you work upon your online presence. Online booking is a reality and if you have a website, your customers must be able to do the booking from there.
2. You are Not Even Aware that Your Customers have Posted Online Reviews About Your Company
According to American travel booking website, TripAdvisor, before booking an online hotel, millennial travelers read about 6-12 reviews. And if you are not even aware of how you are being rated by travelers on different websites and forums, it is time to rethink your business strategy and make a change.
3. You are unable to Offer Personalize Packages to Your Customers
If your shop is offline, it is difficult to recognize the customers, who come to you, even for queries, in the first meeting, leave aside offering the personalized packages. Professionalization is the key to success in the travel industry and deploying big data technologies can help you get real-time insight into the situation.
There are mobile apps that can enable you to send notifications to the travelers, who anytime have placed query from you for destination or transportation. Through apps, you can also guide them to avail less hectic itineraries and enjoy traveling based on their interest.
4. You are Not Sure Why Your Customer Left without Booking from You, Wasting Your Time and Energy
Providing every customer, the same information is time-consuming and hectic. Let a mobile app do this task for you, and you spend your time building the right infrastructure, networking, and core marketing activities. In the market, IBM has already ready launched a highly advanced Cognitive Computing technology, which is a self-learning system that helps the business to identify the behavior pattern of their customers and enable companies to take decisions accordingly.
Apart, a traveler leaves behind a vast quantity of data from multiple devices and channels at several stages including planning, research, price search, booking, cancellation, and feedback. As a business, you must find innovative ways to use this data for your business, including understanding their behavior, creating personalize packages, and developing marketing campaigns.
5. Paper-works are Consuming Most of Your Time
If paper-works are consuming most of your time and you are not able to keep a track of your customers and their exact itinerary, better you search for digital transformation strategies. Through a well-integrated website and intuitive, feature-rich mobile app, you can track your customers’ detail in a much easier and efficient way.
6. You are not available 24X7
Being available 24X7 for customers is fairly impossible for a brick and mortar shop. That’s why it is better to rely on technologies that enable you to connect with customers throughout the day as well as in the late evenings. A study published in emarketer.com reveals that by 2019, mobile will attract more viewers than TV and mobile users spend 99% of their time using apps.
Also, through apps and big data analytics on the volume of travel data, you can realize the capabilities to better understand your customers’ preferences and predict the future. For this, you don’t have to manage an IT team of your own. You can contact a digital transformation consulting company that will analyze your business processes and develop a digital strategy to achieve the desired outcome.
The Bottomline-Investing on Digital Travel Solutions is Not a Luxury Anymore
Today, businesses need to understand that they are dealing with DIY travelers. For them, businesses in the travel industry have to create facilities through which travelers can explore the places and make the decision on their own. The key job of businesses will be to develop a responsive environment to deliver a smooth experience to customers.
Adopting digital transformation practices can enable travel businesses to create this environment, meanwhile, understand the behavior and predict the future decisions of the customers.
Author
Siya Carla is Business Development Manager at Finoit Technologies, a leading mobile app development company which makes ideas into reality by providing unique web design and custom software development services.
Also read: 5 Customer Experience Mistakes That Destroy Your Business