Travel and hospitality customers are determined to create more memorable experiences by delivering more personalization. Airlines come top of mind as flight delays and cancellations have become much more common. Whether caused by extreme weather, supply chain issues, IT outages, or other factors, these issues can overshadow all of the strides carriers have made in improving the customer experience.
This makes connecting with customers on a more personal level an imperative for carriers to win and keep their loyalty. In fact, 71% of customers expect a personalized experience when interacting with a brand every time, and 76% express frustration when their expectations aren’t met.
In an age when a frictionless experience defines success, a customer-centric data strategy is key for digital initiatives and needs to be prioritized along with security, reliability, and performance. Capturing customer insights isn’t easy, and clients share frustrations when trying to integrate diverse systems and data sources.
Leveraging modern IT platforms that provide flexibility and speed to market can allow the business to drive innovation and truly unlock the value of this data. I’ve seen MuleSoft customers in particular drive success in revenue generation and cost reduction initiatives through secure, flexible, and scalable API strategies.
How does technical architecture help businesses create personalized experiences?
To deliver the personalized experiences that customers expect, a well-designed technical architecture is essential. This involves the integration of various data sources, APIs, and external systems to create a cohesive and responsive environment that can adapt to the needs of travelers in real time. Let’s explore how technical architecture plays a critical role in this transformation.
1. Tailor experiences by harnessing real-time customer data
- Event-driven architecture (EDA): Implement an event-driven architecture that captures and processes real-time data from various sources, such as flight status updates, weather conditions, and customer preferences. This can be done using tools like Apache Kafka or AWS EventBridge to stream data into the system as events occur.
- API gateways: Use an API gateway to manage and route requests from different services. This allows for the seamless integration of travel disruptions with customer-facing systems, ensuring that alerts, updates, and offers are delivered instantly.
- API-based microservices: Deploy APIs to handle specific tasks such as updating rental car reservations, notifying hotels of late arrivals, or applying discounts for delayed flights. These services can be scaled independently to meet varying demands.
A regional airline in Europe introduced API-led connectivity using MuleSoft and enabled sales teams to create joint offers with other airlines based on just-in-time information. Not only did the airline deliver a more seamless experience, but they also boosted revenue by over €5 million and achieved profitability for the first time in 20 years.
2. Engage with External Partners to Create More Memorable Experiences
- Add an integration layer: Establish an integration layer using an API-led connectivity approach like MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform. This layer enables the seamless exchange of data between airlines, hotels, and rental car services.
- Federate your data: Implement data federation techniques to unify disparate data sources, enabling a single view of the customer across all partners. This allows for the creation of personalized offers and packages by leveraging data from multiple entities.
- Use a secure API management center: Use API management tools to ensure secure, scalable, and governed access to APIs by external partners. This includes setting up API policies, authentication mechanisms, and rate limiting to protect sensitive customer data.
By collaborating across the travel ecosystem, airlines, hotels, and rental cars have an unclaimed opportunity to deliver more personalization. Tools like MuleSoft facilitate the seamless integration with external partners, enabling businesses to offer comprehensive and personalized travel packages and offers. You needn’t be a premium passenger to enjoy a premium experience. When it comes to enhancing customer loyalty programs, innovation is key.
Some of the most recognizable travel brands like Marriott, Avis, and Duty-Free shops are driving incremental revenue with targeted advertising. Post-COVID, travelers are overwhelmingly willing to pay for premium services; they just have to be offered the right ones at the right time.
An Italian airline leveraged MuleSoft to unify data across marketing, commerce, and service consoles to streamline communications and create more personalized marketing campaigns. With minimal IT development effort, they quickly implemented solutions that allowed them to offer a wide variety of accrual and redemption options, including connections with partners.
3. Scalability and flexibility for personalized services
- Cloud-native infrastructure: Move to a cloud-native infrastructure that supports the dynamic scaling of services. By using containers, you can ensure that services are always available and can scale up or down based on demand.
- API reusability: Design APIs with reusability in mind. A modular approach allows for the creation of building blocks that can be quickly assembled to deliver new features, reducing time-to-market and increasing ROI.
- Service mesh: Implement a service mesh to manage and secure the communication between microservices. This provides visibility, security, and control over service-to-service communications, which is crucial for maintaining a consistent customer experience.
The travel and hospitality industry has bravely responded to changing buying patterns and fluctuating demand by exploring rapidly evolving generative AI technology. To remain competitive and agile, the travel and hospitality industry must replace the legacy integration approach.
Another major commercial airline broke down barriers between siloed technologies using MuleSoft to support an API-led integration strategy. They integrated over 55 disparate systems efficiently, addressing key business challenges and delivering a more consistent and cohesive experience for their customers. More importantly, through strategic governance, they made this game-changing move to deliver multiple features while reusing 54% of their APIs to further drive ROI.
How to get started with creating better personalization
All of this sounds good, but where do we begin?
1. Start with governance
Secure and compliant data management isn’t just a necessity – it’s the foundation for delivering personalized experiences that truly resonate. It is also crucial to ensure that data and systems are resilient and can be quickly restored in case of disruptions, maintaining operational continuity and safeguarding the customer experience.
The travel and hospitality industry must replace the legacy integration approach so systems can be restored quickly and maintain operational continuity while safeguarding customer experiences. But a robust data governance model can also make enterprises more cost-effective in personalization goals.
Data governance and an API strategy, combined with a customer data platform product like Data Cloud, allows companies to harmonize data and unlock even more customer insights.
2. Invest in experiences
Invest in initiatives that truly make a significant impact to either elevating or alleviating experiences. A staggering 2.9 million passengers take to the skies each day globally, but only about 15% of these travelers experience premium services. By enabling an API strategy that allows for rapid development to connect data and applications across the enterprise and external partners, you can experiment and scale.
Just a decade ago, it was unheard of for contact centers to generate revenue. Today, more than 25% generate revenue with upwards of 60% in some industries. The main ingredient was sales sharing more customer data with customer care. Higher levels of personalization correlate to how memorable the experiences are, so invest smartly in both experiences and in the usability of your customer data.
3. Measure success with ROI and smart pilots
ROI is the most important currency. Rapidly changing technology can intimidate, but as a top performer, be brave with your pilots – and we’re not talking about flight officers! Your pilot or proofs of concept should strike the right balance between proposed features with adoption, then refine your baseline.
The shiniest new feature may be cool to have, but may be impractical or not reach intended customers. Travelers are expecting seamless travel across the entirety of their trip and across all of their chosen brands. Higher levels of personalization correlate to how memorable the experiences are.
Making personalization a reality
Customers are already seeing progress with their innovation roadmaps with the use of emerging tools and approaches to unlock revenue generating and cost reducing opportunities. By leveraging modern tools such as MuleSoft and AI to drive tailored customer experiences, they are setting a future-ready foundation that will continue to adapt to behaviors and preferences of their travelers.
As the industry continues to evolve, those who leverage the advantages of MuleSoft will be well-positioned to deliver exceptional, personalized experiences that keep customers coming back.
Editor’s note: This article was written in collaboration between Ramya Veerubhottla and Raymond Juarez, Salesforce Practice Leader at Slalom.
