Like all business sectors, the travel industry is investing massively in digital to improve the sacrosanct customer experience and when I read the discourse of many solution providers, digital would be the answer to almost all the problems of industry players.
Considering the investments required and the impact on the customer experience, I think this is a point of view to be tempered.
IT essential to the travel industry…in the back office
To begin with, don’t make me say what I don’t want to say: IT is essential to the proper functioning of the sector. Whether it’s for operations management, yield, pricing, etc., its added value is undeniable.
But we’re talking about back-office, not customer-facing tools.
A fully digitalized customer journey
And you will also tell me that the customer journey is now totally digitalized and it is true. Whether in the hotel, airline or restaurant industry, it is possible to have a completely digital and paperless experience.
Ticket purchase or hotel reservation, reservation management, check-in, check-out, baggage tracking, customer service, irregularities management, boarding passes, purchase of additional services… everything is now done online.
This seems to contradict my point. Well, no, quite the opposite.
All the things I just mentioned are what I call the most basic of courtesies, what a player in the sector should offer at least to his customers. In 2023 it is a given and the question should not be asked.
What is important in this context is not what is done but how it is done.
Not a technology problem but an experience problem
If we assume that the technology exists and that the players in the sector are equipped with it, why is it that the experience is perfectible and that it happens, I think we all witnessed it, that sometimes we find things not very obvious or even complicated?
It’s usually not a problem of technology but of design, journey design or even processes that have been poorly thought out or executed.
If I take the example of my troubles with TAP about my lost luggage:
– the company has the best tools on the market in terms of customer relations, the fact that it doesn’t work is only the result of its policy, its culture, its processes and misguided staff.
– as far as the faulty baggage tracking is concerned, there again the tools are there but if nobody updates them and if nobody takes the trouble to go and look for a suitcase on a baggage conveyor belt, they are of no use.
– then as for the deplorable experience on their site again it’s a design problem, not a technology problem. I don’t think it was designed and tested from the perspective of a real customer. This is a major fault but technology has nothing to do with it.
And initially the primary cause, the fact that a baggage has not been loaded, is a human error.
All this to say that the answer to most customer experience problems is not to invest in additional technologies but to use the one you have.
Who judges a travel player on their online experience?
And then to tell you things as I mean them I have never heard anyone say “the service on board was bad, the seat not comfortable, we got delayed, the hotel room was ugly BUT the online experience was great so I am happy”.
People assume that digital must work and in the end judge only on the product. If the digital doesn’t work or doesn’t work properly it’s a problem that can sometimes cause a sale to be missed but customers will always and only judge the product and it is the product that will make the word of mouth and the reputation of a company.
So when I hear some airlines or hoteliers boasting about their massive investments in digital while the product leaves something to be desired and is far below the promise, I think there is a problem in managing priorities.
A good digital experience is not and should not be a substitute for a good physical experience with the product.
Bottom line
Travel players are rightly investing in the digital experience of their customers, but they should not overlook the fact that more and more technology is not the answer to everything, that the way technology is used is essential and, above all, that for customers the digital experience will always fade behind the product.
Image : digital travel experience by Kaspars Grinvalds via Shutterstock.
