How AI-powered personalization is reshaping airline loyalty

The travel and hospitality industry is resilient. Once facing the existential crisis of COVID-19, when travel ground to a near halt, airlines are in the midst of a historic turn-around. More people are traveling more miles than at any point since the pandemic, and the industry is set to skyrocket in 2025. 

But in this climate, airline marketers are faced with a worrying trend: loyalty programs have become stagnant. With so many ways to book trips, brands face a possible dip in on-site booking. Some companies are also de-prioritizing financial incentives like airline miles, further eroding loyalty.

This is leading many marketers to find new, technology-driven solutions to the age old question of customer fidelity. Artificial intelligence is at the forefront of new travel and hospitality innovations. While travelers are leaning on AI for trip planning, marketers are using new AI tools to build real-world 1:1 personalization. 

Here are three ways marketers can build better relationships with customers through meaningful personalization:

AI-powered personalized recommendation campaigns

As the Baby Boomer cohort ages, marketers are focusing their efforts on digital native generations like Gen Z and Millennials. This demographic expects every brand experience to be personalized to their specific desires. Research backs the need for 1:1 personalization across the marketing lifecycle. More than 70 percent of consumers expect personalization and 76 will seek out different companies if they receive un-personalized communications.

Marketers can leverage zero- and first-party data to build better relationships with loyalty customers and create impactful interactions. With AI, brands can analyze customer data such as budget, interests, and past behaviors to help consumers plan their next trip. Marketers can create curated pre-purchase campaigns based on that data to help encourage early booking and keep consumers from shopping different brands.

For example, a customer takes their family on a trip for spring break every year. They are in a cold weather climate and tend to book vacations to warmer parts of the country like Florida and Arizona. Airline marketers can create 1:1 campaigns showing flights to popular family spring break destinations. Email and mobile campaigns can display images of tropical weather with language specific to escaping the cold. They can then find flights with enough room to fit the whole family on the same row. 

When brands tailor their marketing to the unique needs of every customer, marketers build the kind of emotional investment that stops customers from researching every site. Because they’re getting the exact information they need from their favorite brand, they’re getting what they want on the same page where they can directly book their trip.

Personalizing abandoned carts

One of the most successful tools in a marketers arsenal, abandoned cart campaigns keep the momentum and excitement of initially booking a trip going. Consumers abandon carts for many reasons, especially in the travel industry where plenty of people shop around and go back and forth on their decision to book a trip.

AI helps marketers go beyond the basic abandoned cart campaign, offering personalization that drives action. For example, a football fan adds a flight to Dallas to see their beloved Cowboys play but abandons their cart while searching for different options. Marketers can create an automated abandon cart campaign using loyalty and search data to populate images of Cowboys stadium and local Dallas tourist fixtures that could entice the customer to book that flight. The goal is to appeal to the exact desires of the traveler, showing customers that their favorite hotel or airline understands their needs.

Personalized welcome emails

People have different reasons for traveling – parents visit their adult children, a couple goes on their honeymoon, a business traveler extends their stay to enjoy some rest and relaxation. Even if the reasons are too many to count, marketers can make everyone’s stay a bit more adventurous with personalized welcome emails filled with tailored recommendations.

Artificial intelligence can help create 1:1 trip recommendations by analyzing customer data to understand traveler interest, then build suggested itineraries for every customer based on their preferences. After arriving at their destination, marketers can display suggested trip plans that display restaurants, surf or ski recommendations, and even the best parks for travelers to enjoy a beautiful sunset.

As travel and hospitality loyalty programs evolve, experience-driven 1:1 personalization appeals directly to younger consumers, 77 percent of whom want high-quality digital interactions with travel brands. Many of this same cohort look to online sources for travel inspiration. By personalizing welcome emails with unique recommendations, marketers can continue building loyalty.

Conclusion

The modern consumer is either a digital native or has spent the majority of their lives online, where they have come to expect personalized marketing, algorithmic recommendations based on their data, and brands that respond to their individual desires. 

But as data and third-party tools create new complexities, marketers need a way of not only understanding customer behavior, but quickly acting on that data with predictive personalization. Travel and hospitality brands such as LATAM Airlines already leverage OfferFit’s AI decisioning to personalize their communication with customers.

AI decisioning can help marketers revolutionize their lifecycle marketing campaigns with 1:1 personalization. Motivations for travel are growing more complex, and segmentation alone can no longer predict customer behavior. The best way to capitalize on consumers’ booming interest is to meet every customer with 1:1 personalization at all the touchpoints of their journey.

For more on the state of Travel and Hospitality personalization, download 1:1 Personalization for Travel Marketers today!