In the crowded travel space, direct bookings are an increasingly important driver of revenue. The challenge is to put in place a marketing ecosystem for your organization which stands out amongst the competition. Personalized video provides you with the collateral to engage your visitors at a high level, create a memorable experience, and drive both brand awareness and conversions.
A Personalized Service For More Direct Bookings and Reservations
Every tourism-related business wants more direct bookings. It’s a profit margins game. For example, hospitality margins vary by property and pricing structure. According to CSI Market research, the average gross margins for the hotel and tourism industry businesses was 38% for Q1 in 2018, although this changes when speaking about the net margins (12%-16%).
The reason why your prospects are coming to your site or even to your offline branch rather than using other online travel agency or similar sites is that your organization has something unique to offer – a personalized service.
They need to feel that they are being heard, their needs understood, and that you are showing them the same kind of attention to them that hope to experience when they spend their vacation time or business trip with you. Personalized video reassures and meets their needs for excellence.
Let’s stop here for a moment. Take a look at the following marketing automation workflow that shows when a personalized video is created:
Just imagine for a second that you are Mattias and Cristine, this young couple that is planning their anniversary and is in love with Zanzibar. They just requested information about this dreamed trip and suddenly they just get a personalized message from the travel consultant that just spoke with them…
A personalized service also translates into a shorter sales cycle. Buyers are more engaged with your service and can even spend more, faster because their experience is positive.
Atmosphere and Immediacy
Prospects are sold on their hospitality experience not by facts and figures, but by the emotional experience that your travel company or hotel can provide. If your competitors offer a generic picture and a price tag, and you offer a virtual reality tour, customized to their needs and requirements, which one will leave the bigger impression? Not only will they see exactly what to expect, but they will leave the experience having taken in some of the atmosphere and attention to detail that your organization provides, and which stands out among the competition. All that can be delivered with no waiting via personalized video.
Follow Up and Re-Engagement
Personalized video as part of the total experience does not begin and end with a single website video or stage of the process. You can set up your system to follow up, suggest new destinations, or re-engage with customers at a later date. Take charge of the entire customer journey with the attention to detail that your travel company puts into every aspect of the experience.
Virtual Reality
Full demonstrations of the spaces customers will experience, through virtual-reality, 360 degree and immersive videos will do the work that even a gallery of photographs simply can’t do. The engagement levels generated through these types of custom, online virtual “tours” have consistently shown themselves to go above and beyond the standard success metrics of the typical hospitality industry websites.
How can virtual reality and personalized tours be used in your organization to rocket up your engagement and conversion rates? You might be surprised at how simple it can be. It all starts with your business goals.
Do you have questions or ideas to share? Go ahead :-). This is what we do/love.
