There's a fine line between presenting relevant, timely information and services to travellers and freaking them out with how much you know about them.
A recent delve into sentiment from Boxever highlights how travellers, particularly business travellers, feel about being tracked and sharing their personal information.
The Grounded by Untargeted Marketing report offers advice to help travel companies get around the disconnect between travellers, particularly business travellers, wanting personalised offers but without the big brother feeling of being watched.
The report shows 66% of business travellers don't want brands tracking their location and 56% don't want to share personal information.
Yet, it seems 61% want offers targeted to where they are and what they're doing and 56% want them tailored to their interests and needs.
Interesting to note that Alaska Airlines has been testing check-in and boarding via fingerprint identification to help create what it dubs a "curb to seat" experience.
The airline partnered with biometric specialist CLEAR for the trial which has been in operation since April.
The study also reveals how frustrated travellers are with the volume of irrelevant communications coming their way from airlines and other travel companies.
The scale of the problem is also significant with more than 70% receiving multiple offers from travel companies each day - 25% say six or more.
The majority of travellers, 55%, say three-quarters of travel offers are irrelevant and unpersonalised, rising to 58% for business travellers.
What this means for travel companies is that customers are deleting apps, 23%, less likely to visit the brand's website, 28% and less likely to buy from that company in the future, 40%.
Millennials are even less patient with this stuff and are 10% more likely to delete an app after receiving unpersonalised offers and communications.
Scary stuff and Boxever believes the results are surprising given the amount of personal data available to travel companies.
Frequent travellers (those who travel several times a month) were asked to identify common mistakes from travel companies:
- 62% say they receive offers that are nothing to do with where they are or what they're doing
- 43% receive offers that are not tailored to their needs or interests
- 29% say the offers they receive make them feel the brand doesn't know them
Some potential remedies for airlines to improve the customer relationship after they have had a negative experience.
- 77% say coupons and discounts off future flights
- 60% say being offered a seat upgrade
- 39% say being offered a premium service for free such s wifi
- 23% say early-boarding privileges
The Boxever study also reveals that after price and discounts offers have most impact when they add value to something the consumer is already doing or plans to do.
When it comes to the propensity to book online, after price, schedule and loyalty schemes, the website's ease of use for search and booking was the most influential factor.
Offers that revisit something consumers have already shown interest in were the second most impactful.
One strategy the report advocates is one-to-one marketing which was also one of the themes of a recent Amadeus study on travellers of the future.
The Boxever study was conducted in April on 507 travellers of which about 20% were business travellers. The full report can be downloaded here.