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Going green is the latest trend in the world and hospitality is no di erent

Using the services of travel agents once involved calling an acquaintance or someone recommended by your friends/family and asking them to book you a ticket or a holiday package. If they managed to do it, that’s basically what gaining customer trust and loyalty were limited to, then. However, the rise of online travel agents (OTAs) in the early 2000s led to a tectonic shift in the travel industry, taking almost everything online and changing the way customers approach their travel planning. This brought several more options to choose from, reviews out in the open, and extremely competitive prices.

Today, almost two decades later, this landscape has undergone a massive transformation once again, with technological innovations impacting both consumer behaviour and the ever-rising competition. Now, loyalty means more than just word-of-mouth. It’s what you give back to your customers to make them feel like they are valued for the business they are giving you. But, it also means doing this better than your counterparts in the industry by paying special attention to the main offering, as well as the supplementary products.

MUTUAL BENEFITS

By partnering with enterprises who have already established their expertise and developed an effective framework for rewards programmes, OTAs get access to a layer of programmes which are ready to plug and play, as per the customer base. It gives them a better understanding of what is happening in the overall market, which can be used to find a good fit for the business.

Using the programme platform helps OTAs like Cleartrip to leverage scientific rewards to drive loyalty and the flexibility to tailor it according to accurate insights on customer behaviour, thereby helping them shape the perfect offering. Through these tie-ups, OTAs can also co-create programmes which they can also use to tap into new customers on the partner’s platform, who may not have previously transacted with them. So, this acts as a sort of customer outreach program where the OTA can engage with, and add more value to the partner’s customer base.

GIFT CARDS

Several large MNCs have rewards and recognition programmes, a part of which are catalogues for their employees. OTAs can tap into this by creating a technologybacked gift card product, which can help them partner with multiple companies who will provide these to their employee base. This increases the scope/incentive for this customer segment to leverage their points via the OTAbranded card.

The rise of OTAs has led to a tectonic shift in the travel industry

ONSITE EXPERIENCE

Here, OTAs work with partners or coalition programmes to design loyalty programmes that reward customers for on-site activity such as booking flight tickets or hotels or lets them use their points for the same. Through this collaboration, OTAs can also continuously analyse customer behaviour and preferences, which helps them alter or shape offerings that are more relevant to their audiences.

Many new-age companies today are leveraging the incentive of travel to gratify their customers or add a product extension. For example, cab services who are already in the business of travel now that a large portion of their high-value customers will be going to the airport. Hence, the logical extension to offer them would be based on air travel, by exploring strategic alliances with existing players in the space.