Sounding Off: Personalization can be a great equalizer

Each Friday, PhocusWire dissects and debates an industry trend or new development covered on our site that week.

It's good to champion the minnows in the travel industry - they, after all, do not have billions (or even millions) to spend on marketing and technology investment.

They often rely on the goodwill of repeat customers, word-of-mouth, a bit of luck with search engine placement and the historic strength of their respective brands.

Thousands of businesses have operated in this way for years - many even longer, before the digital age gave them headaches over things such as search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising.

And, yet, given the types of companies that talk about personalization, whether they are big intermediaries or the tech vendors that help them, many would presume that the technique is the preserve of only those with money to make it work.

This doesn't have to be the case at all.

Travel companies, big and small, in every corner of the industry, collect information about their customers.

Being able to spot trends within their customer's data does not take a huge amount of expertise, nor does it take huge amounts of investment.

Once armed with those behaviorial signals (room preferences, types of things to do in a destination, etc.), companies can begin to establish different methods to capitalize on the data.

Customer relationship management is one area, especially in the field of email marketing.

Or, perhaps communication about relevant products (based on customer history) or, even better, discounts on those same products.

Start small, is what many in this field suggest. Then watch as the data gets better over time, so that broader patterns can be spotted and acted upon.

Wouldn't it be terrific for the top heavy ecosystem that the industry finds itself in that personalization could potentially trigger some kind of leveler to help out The Little Folk.

In fact, even just a bit of assistance would likely make a big difference.