Why bad data costs travel brands more than they think

The travel industry is competitive, experience-driven, and unforgiving. One slightly annoying booking flow is all it takes to send a customer straight to a competitor. It’s crucial for hospitality brands to proactively identify sources of friction before they cause issues for their bottom line.

In short, as is so often the case, data is crucial for good hospitality.

And yet, according to Kameleoon research, 67% of industry leaders in travel do not trust their own data, leaving them open to blind spots that can sabotage their growth.

Without reliable data, teams can’t experiment confidently, adding an unnecessary roadblock to improving the user experience. Reliable, unified data empowers all teams to move quickly and do amazing things.

Based on what the experts have told us, this is a big opportunity for travel brands. 

When friction hits booking, travellers bail

In travel and hospitality, the user expects more than a good price. Transparency, flexibility, and trust are incredibly important—nearly half of travellers prioritize trust above all other factors when choosing event suppliers.

That means a bad booking experience can turn a lifetime traveller permanently away from your brand.

In a recent conversation with Kameleoon, Garrett Shannon, Principal Solutions Engineer at Quantum Metric, noted how easy it is to lose customers in the travel industry, saying that “there's statistics out there showing, especially non-loyal customers, when they have a negative experience on the website, they're very happy to go to a competitor.

“They might never install your app, they might uninstall it immediately. And so this is causing teams to really need to iterate their digital experiences and really try to get them right the first time. And so this is where experimentation or A/B testing really comes in.”

Whether it’s hidden costs, flexible fares, or refundable purchases, customers in hospitality are often paying major fees for services. Naturally, they expect stellar digital experiences.

After all, if a travel agency can’t put together a good experience in their app, how can you trust that they can put together a genuine travel experience?

The solution: trustworthy data from robust experimentation

As Shannon suggested, experimentation and A/B testing is a great way travel groups can collect data they can be confident in. 

Running your own experiments linked to your own data warehouses with your unique platform traffic means collecting strong data that is uniquely applicable to your company. 

Statistically significant testing allows all teams to use experimentation to test improvements to your booking flow, app experience, checkouts, and every other digital touchpoint.

This means that:

• Marketers gain greater visibility into campaign impact and can refine messaging in real time.
• Product managers can prioritize features based on genuine behavioral signals from their own customers.
• Engineers can collect data on feature deployments by testing in production to collect real-world use cases.

Real-world examples: Best Western

Best Western is a strong example of how experimentation gives hospitality brands data they can trust. 

Their goal is similar to what we’ve already discussed: reduce friction in the booking process in real time to improve user experience and boost hotel bookings. 

Best Western used Kameleoon, integrated with Content Square, to run continuous web experiments that send them a steady stream of data with which to improve their booking experience. On average, they’re running thirteen experiments at any given time.

“The campaign that had the greatest impact so far was the reworking of the form in the booking funnel,” notes Florainne Nollet, a UX Designer and Digital Project Manager at Best Western. “We analyzed the points of friction with Contentsquare and redesigned the form fields with insights from Kameleoon. Experiments and resulting changes to user experience helped us move more users to the payment page.”

The result was a significantly improved booking funnel that quickly led to a 9% increase in their conversions.

Trust your data again and grow with confidence

Reliable data tells you everything you need to know in order to improve your digital experiences. If you can see what your audience sees, you can fix the friction and glean actionable insights that improve your processes.

Experimentation allows brands to build a travel experience worth coming back to. Two-thirds of hospitality groups don’t trust their own data—imagine the leg up the ones that do must have on them.

If you’re ready to join them, let us know, and start experimenting with confidence today.