Travel sector deserves recognition for technological progress

A prominent figure in the travel industry recently suggested, right here, that the sector is behind the technological curve. But based on my experience at Feefo, working with more than 1,000 travel businesses, I would respectfully disagree.

 

The travel sector’s customer base has always demanded more of customer experience than almost any other industry – and the brands that have risen to that challenge are now among the most sophisticated operators of feedback and insight technology anywhere.

 

At Feefo, we work with more than 6,500 businesses across a wide range of sectors. We’re a UK tech company and our platform sits at the heart of a value exchange: consumers get the verified information they need to make confident purchase decisions, and businesses get the honest insight they need to improve.

 

Over 16 years in market, working with businesses including Dertour, BA Holidays, easyJet holidays and Awaze Group, what we’ve noticed is that our travel clients regularly push that value exchange further than anyone else.

 

Booking a holiday is one of the most emotionally loaded purchases a consumer makes. The anticipation alone – months of planning, significant spend, high expectations – means that the experience had better match what was promised. Smart travel brands recognise that customer service is a genuine differentiator – and the ones pulling ahead are those embracing the technology that helps them deliver it.

 

Integrity is key

 

Before we get to what good looks like, it’s worth addressing what undermines it. Open review platforms attract volume, but volume without integrity isn’t insight – it’s noise.

 

Fake reviews, whether inflated five-stars or malicious one-stars, erode consumer trust and corrupt the data that businesses rely on to make decisions. Every review on Feefo is traceable to a verified purchase. More than just a trust signal to consumers, it means the data is genuinely something agents, airlines, hotels and operators can depend on for insight.

 

There’s a broader principle here too. Negative feedback is valuable – and the instinct to suppress or sidestep it is one of the most common mistakes I see businesses make. Without friction, there is no pearl.

 

Negative reviews, handled well, are a product improvement brief, a service training tool, and a demonstration to future customers that you take their experience seriously. A considered, human response to a difficult review often does more for a brand’s reputation than a page of five-star reviews.

 

Collecting feedback is only half the job. When a customer leaves a review, they’re opening a conversation. Most of us know how it feels to send a message and hear nothing back – a review is no different. That acknowledgement is what turns a transaction into a relationship – and relationships, in travel more than almost anywhere, are what drive loyalty and lifetime value.

 

Travel’s refined customer journey

 

What makes travel brands’ approach to feedback so advanced is the journey their customers take. A retail customer makes a purchase and receives a product. The feedback window is relatively contained. A travel customer goes through weeks or months of distinct emotional stages – researching, booking, anticipating, experiencing and reflecting – each of which offers a different insight opportunity and demands a different question.

 

Modern, progressive travel companies now demand more than just a few stars on a website. The brands doing this well have moved well beyond a single “How was it?” post-holiday email. They’re mapping feedback to each stage of the journey: capturing sentiment at the point of booking, checking in during the experience itself and gathering the longer-term reflection once the customer has had time to process what they felt. That kind of longitudinal view of customer sentiment is genuinely rare – and genuinely powerful.

 

Dertour Group is a good example of that ambition in practice. As part of Feefo’s WhatsApp beta programme, they were among the first travel brands to explore conversational feedback collection at scale – recognising early that meeting customers on the platforms they actually use would yield richer responses and stronger engagement. That kind of willingness to pilot new technology, rather than wait for it to become standard, is characteristic of the travel businesses leading this space. 

 

Connecting with customers where they are

 

Channel selection is a big part of why email remains the backbone of most feedback strategies, but travel customers live across platforms, and the most effective brands are meeting them there. SMS works well for quick, time-sensitive requests – a post-transfer satisfaction check, for example. WhatsApp is increasingly powerful for richer, more conversational feedback, and tends to generate responses with real depth.

 

But even the unprompted can add value if you have the tools to find it. A guest’s photo of their villa at sunset – the kind of content Feefo Social is built to surface – carries more persuasive weight than almost any brand-produced asset.

 

Leading the way

 

What’s exciting is that the tools to do this are more accessible than ever. The travel brands doing this well are among the most sophisticated CX operators in any sector. They’ve built feedback strategies complex enough to match their customers’ journeys, and they’re continuing to push further.

 

Feefo is one part of that picture. The travel brands leading this space are drawing on a wide range of technology – from AI-driven personalisation to dynamic pricing and predictive analytics – to build customer relationships that are more informed, more responsive and more durable than ever before. The continual refinement of AI and ML will only accelerate that progress – delivering more innovation and more personalised experiences for holidaymakers.

 

I say ignore the critics, and let’s celebrate the progress, technological adoption and great talent on show in travel. We’ve progressed beyond relying on one-size-fits-all “from” prices to a level of technology-centric business and commercial marketing excellence we can, and should, all be proud of.