How digitalization can enhance the customer tourism experience

It is vital to ensure that the customer experience is positive in the tourism industry. From streamlining services to personalizing experiences, digital development helps the tourism industry to further enhance the customer experience.

Digitalization helps to personalize the customer experience

A trend in personalizing experiences digitally is spreading through all industries – particularly tourism to the point where44% of Chief-Marketing-Officers believe that customer-facing employees will begin to rely on digital analytics to help offer a truly personalized experience. This means that the customer can experience both digital and personal interactions – all of which are enhanced by digital data and advanced analytics.

Typically, customers are now preferring to interact with tourism companies digitally, however, there is still a need for every human interaction to be as informative and helpful.Digitalization will help employees access all the data, analytics and potential interests of a customer when interacting in person. This will continue to help personalize and enhance the customer tourism experience without their always being integrated into the digital aspects.NTG has described how the ‘human touch’ is still vital within the hospitality sector in a previous blog.

Using advanced analytics and data collected throughout a customer’s journey will allow the company to suggest particular activities, promotions, destinations, and attractions to the customer that they know will be of interest to them. This helps to stop the customer from feeling overwhelmed with options that are not of interest to them and to feel listened to by the company. This will further develop the customer’s relationship in the future.

Eliminate gaps between departments

The customer will notice a more seamless transition between each department when digitalization is fully embedded within a tourism company. Not only will this help to make the customer feel more valued and help to create a more positive experience it will also make the process faster as there will be little need for anyone to repeat themselves when the information is digitally available for every department within the company.

Making the process quicker creates a further benefit -streamlining; this makes your employees and interactions more efficient which can lead to more positive experiences for the customer as they can focus on enjoying their time.

Another advantage to having a more streamlined service for the customer is that the customer journey can be personalized every step of the way rather than just in the digital aspects. This means that the customer will have a more positive experience during every interaction in the company, without the pressure of departmental gaps being filled by the customer themselves.

Notice trends and customer wants quickly

Byincreasing the number of touchpoints in the customer journeycompanies are able to analyze trends quickly and effectively. If a customer often has no interest in a particular touchpoint, for example, the company can personalize the next part of the customer journey with this in mind.

Digitalization is not about replacing tourism experiences, but the added value created for and with tourists. Today’s customer is interested in creating and being a part of valuable experiences, rather than having the desire to take ownership of what they are consuming or experiencing. Therefore, the digitalization of tourism companies can help to further create experiences that are perceived as valuable by the customer. Digitization can help to ensure that tourists experience areas safely and without risk, for example, a virtual reality (VR) tour with Mt. Everest ensures that no one is in danger during the experience. This demonstrates how digitalization enhances the customer experience. However, it isimportant to note that travel is unlikely to become entirely virtual, though this is something that will greatly benefit areas that suffer from over-tourism, such as Mt. Everest or the Great Barrier Reef.

If you enjoyed this blog make sure to check out other content related to digitalization:‘How to improve your digital tourism skills’, ‘什么是真正的situation regarding digitalization in German destinations?’,‘Digitalization in Hungary’s tourism – the case of Budapest’and‘Out of the crisis with smart hotels