The travel industry is undergoing a significant transformation. Every sector, from airlines to accommodation and even multi-day travel, is evolving in step with changing customer behaviors and innovative technology. This positive evolution improves efficiencies and increases revenues, elevates the role of employees to more strategic stakeholders, and gives consumers more choice and control over their purchases.
But it begs the question: How can tour operators make the most of their own digital transformation?
It helps to take a step back: The pandemic fundamentally reshaped traveler preferences. With a 56% increase in traveler requests (Deloitte, 2023; Recosense Labs, 2022) for trip customization and higher spending on add-ons, personalization is key to meeting modern traveler expectations and capitalizing on the premium travel segment. Operators that used the downtime during the pandemic wisely to upgrade their back-end tech stack have had an easier time absorbing and benefiting from the recent international travel surge.
However, those still depending on legacy tech to manage sales, marketing, payments, and operations find themselves inundated with manual tasks paired with a decrease in overall employee productivity and, likely, workplace satisfaction. Many of these operators were caught flat-footed, unable to serve the surging demand.
The demand for travel has never been greater.
In fact, all data points illustrate a strong resurgence of travel in 2024 and beyond, surpassing pre-pandemic levels and showing positive growth across all industry sectors. International tourism is expected to rise by 15% in 2024 from the previous year, exceeding 2019 levels by 2%, as per data shared by the United Nations World Tourism Organization.
All of this suggests that tour operators would be wise to focus on efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction to provide exceptional service and deliver memorable experiences. The challenge lies in achieving consistency while scaling up personalization and customization for travelers.
Increasing Productivity Across All Business Areas
Tour operators should look to focus their efforts on increasing productivity in several key areas:
🏆 Sales: Automate Lead Management
Tour operators can significantly improve sales productivity through automation and better data management. By integrating Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems with sales processes, operators can streamline lead management, follow-ups, and conversions. Automated workflows ensure every lead is attended to, therefore, improving conversion rates and reducing manual workload.
🎯 Marketing: Data-Driven Strategies & Campaigns
In marketing, productivity gains come from data-driven strategies and automation tools. Marketing automation platforms can manage email campaigns, social media posts, and other marketing activities, which allow operators to reach a wider audience with less effort. They can also collect data on what’s working to test and adjust their approach. Similarly, personalization tools enable targeted marketing to make sure the right message reaches the right customer at the right time.
🏝️ Product Development: Dynamic Packages & Agile Innovation
A modern tour operator tech stack should enable the creation of more dynamic and flexible travel packages as part of an agile product development strategy. Dynamic packaging means something different to each operator, from the ability to seamlessly sell transfers and pre/post accommodation to premium upgrades like a cruise cabin with a balcony. Operators can quickly adapt to market changes and customer preferences by leveraging data analytics and feedback mechanisms, all from within a unified sales and operational workspace.
🖇️ Operations: Seamless Process Integration
Operational productivity is enhanced through process automation and integration. Modern platforms unify various aspects of tour operations, including sales, marketing, and operations. This integration eliminates silos across the business, integrating efforts across multiple teams and reducing administrative overhead to ensure that all departments work cohesively toward delivering a seamless travel experience.
A mid-size cruise operator specializing in small ship adventure tours struggled with mundane, cumbersome back-end processes, like bookings, payments, and reconciliations. By adopting both Kaptio Travel core platform and the Kaptio Pay module, the company was able to integrate bookings, inventory, customer relationship management, and a variety of payment options into a single system. These real-time integrations and new channels resulted in their reservations and finance teams seeing a 50% increase in productivity through streamlined processes and greater visibility into the entire sales journey.
👀 Customer Service: Enhanced Self-Service Experience
Self-service portals and automated support systems improve customer service productivity. Travelers increasingly prefer to manage their bookings, payments, and itinerary changes online, especially for younger Millennials and Gen Z travelers.
In late 2022, Julie Kyse, former VP of Global Air Partnerships for Expedia Group, highlighted the significant uptake of self-service tools and customer appreciation for quick and effective self-service experiences.
Similarly, a Salesforce report, “State of the Connected Customer Report,” found that 63% of respondents rated instant, on-demand engagement as very important, indicating a preference for real-time self-service options. Providing robust self-service options meets this demand and reduces the burden on customer service teams, allowing them to focus on more complex queries.
Tech is the foundation for achieving each of these productivity enhancements. Today, it’s possible to build a tech stack that empowers a multi-day tour provider to operate more efficiently and make informed decisions by automating routine tasks, such as collecting payment installments.
How Kaptio Enhances Productivity
Kaptio — a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that provides a comprehensive, enterprise-grade solution to manage and streamline multi-day travel operations — is at the forefront of this technological revolution. It offers a suite of modules designed to boost productivity across all areas of tour operations.
Here’s how Kaptio’s key modules contribute to increased efficiency:
Kaptio Travel
Kaptio’s core product, a travel-focused, customizable CRM and CRS, built on Salesforce, unifies all customer data, providing a 360-degree view of each traveler. This holistic approach to customer-first operations empowers personalized marketing, efficient lead management, and superior customer service. By centralizing customer interactions, the Kaptio core platform, with key CRM and CRS modules, helps operators deliver consistent and high-quality service throughout the customer journey.
Kaptio Book
Kaptio Book (formerly, Kaptio Commerce, for our old school friends) simplifies sales by providing a comprehensive booking engine that supports dynamic packaging, flexible pricing, and real-time inventory management. This module ensures that operators can quickly respond to market changes and customer preferences so they can easily offer personalized, dynamic travel packages.
Kaptio Pay
Kaptio Pay streamlines the payment process by integrating various payment options, including digital wallets and international transactions. This flexibility ensures smooth financial transactions, reduces the administrative burden, and enhances the customer experience. Learn more about the Kaptio Pay module in our blog from this spring.
As the travel industry navigates the new landscape, productivity enhancements are key to remaining competitive and meeting customer expectations. By leveraging technology, tour, and cruise operators can streamline operations, offer personalized, dynamic travel packages, and improve employee efficiency.
Let’s conquer the complexity of multi-day travel together. Set up a demo today.
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