If a regular client stops rebooking, don’t just watch them walk away

What is the most powerful way a consumer can show a travel brand that their product or service isn’t up to scratch?

I would suggest that it’s the oldest and perhaps most crude tactic of all: they vote with their feet. Leaving the brand silently, never complaining, never explaining and never returning is as sure a sign as any that the product falls short. 

And, worryingly, it seems to me that the vast majority of travel brands, travel leaders and marketers are completely oblivious to this.  

As a marketing director, and then a marketing agency boss, I have learnt many things in my time. However, the most important thing I’ve learnt is not to ask the question, ‘How did we do?’, which seems to be the automatic email one gets after an interaction with any brand these days. 

Instead, a far more meaningful question is, ‘Why have you not come back?’

Repeat customers are the holy grail for marketers. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself why every travel brand seems to have a loyalty programme. Why would a company bother with all that if repeat business didn’t matter?

Statistically, across all the metrics, repeat business is easier to service than winning new customers, with all the advertising, sales promotion and PR involved in that. 

So, I think it’s fair to say we can take it as read that every travel brand wants your repeat business. 

But ask yourself this: how many brands, when you didn’t go back to them again, followed you up and asked why you hadn’t come back? I suspect it would be less than a handful. 

Lazy marketing

The myth in travel marketing and customer service is that all we have to do is ask is how we did. But that’s just lazy marketing aimed at making PowerPoint presentations so board members look good. People responding to that question – and many do not – might give a low rating, but they rarely qualify it. 

And many travel brands walk around thinking all is well in their customer base, when maybe it isn’t.

Let me give you an example. I was a regular cruiser with a well-known cruise line – a market leader. I had reached the second-from-top tier of their loyalty scheme, a clear indicator that I had spent heavily with the brand over the years. Five years ago, I got fed up with the brand and switched to a rival cruise line that now gets all my patronage. 

Lack of concern

I would have thought that somewhere within their loyalty database or marketing team, my name might have been flagged up – a customer who sailed with us three times a year in a suite or balcony cabin, for many years, now doesn’t sail with us at all. Did they contact me to ask why? No. I never heard a word.  

Business must be so good that a customer who would have a lifetime value to them well into six figures just evaporated, and they don’t know why or don’t seem remotely concerned. 

And, as I said earlier, this business of asking the wrong question by travel brands is endemic across the sector. 

Every Christmas for the past few years I have stayed at the same resort for the festive season. This year, after several years of unbroken stays, I decided the product wasn’t what it once was and didn’t book as usual. Again, I thought perhaps this would be flagged up to customer service or the loyalty team. Did they contact me to find out why I hadn’t come back? Sadly, the answer is no.

For some brands, these ‘missing loyalists’ could represent a huge lost opportunity.

So, stop asking how we did, and start asking if the customer will return – and if not, why not? It may well change your marketing or business strategy, rekindle those missing loyalists and help you grow your business.