With countries opening up again, it's time for tourism companies to figure out what has changed and what has stayed the same. It's a good thing that it's not as hard to engage with our customers as we used to.
Consumer behavior has undoubtedly evolved.
We want to avoid being sold to, but we do extensive research (especially for large purchases) across a variety of platforms and sources to ensure we make the best investment decisions. We also want a personalized experience without divulging too much personal information. Finally, and most importantly, we trust recommendations from people we know and trust much more than advertisements.
If we go back 15 years, when the internet was just getting started, the buying process for any investment required little to no research and actually traveling somewhere to look for and acquire the item. When we first encountered a good or service, it was on a shelf. When engaging with customers, businesses had a transactional orientation; connections and engagement before a purchase were uncommon.
In ways that were not even imaginable 15 years ago, shoppers can now connect with brands early in their purchase process. In order to influence their inevitable buying decisions very early in the purchase path, travel firms need to have a thorough understanding of their clients.
How does this alter the way we promote travel companies?
From the standpoint of tourism marketing, locations and tourism-related enterprises need to be very clear about who their greatest guests are (not necessarily those who are presently coming, but those you'd want to have more of) and then engage them throughout their trip purchasing process.
You must do two actions in order to operationalize this:
1. Create a profile of your ideal visitors or guests.
2. Map their travels with your travel brand.
A SME tourism business will typically aim to draw in one or two Customer Personas, whereas a destination may have up to three. It's best to attempt and keep the number of Personas to a minimum because, in order to effectively engage each Persona, a distinct strategy must be used.
After you have profiled your personas, the following step is to map their path toward making a travel purchase. This technique is known as journey mapping.
The creation of journey maps for your personas
The process of upgrading your personas' detail and coming up with additional prescriptive information about them is called journey mapping. By using this technique, you'll be able to identify the specific marketing media you should invest in as well as the type of content and messaging you should develop and distribute in order to keep your Personas interested throughout the whole buying process.
Asking yourself a series of questions about your persona and their travel journey is the literal process of journey mapping.
1. What are your visitors' objectives?
Knowing what your Personas' objectives are at each stage of their trip is essential to designing a path map for them. As a result, we may begin to understand them better and what they are trying to accomplish at each stage.
2. What queries do guests pose to themselves?
The next stage's aim is to really get inside the thoughts of our Personas and start speculating on the kinds of inquiries they would have while making a purchase. Understanding the answers to these questions will provide fantastic insight into the information that customers will need to move on with their journeys, giving tourist brands a solid foundation from which to create content across rich media, such as photographs, videos, and articles.
3. Where will they look for the solutions to these problems?
The platforms that are most appropriate for tourism companies will be determined by an understanding of the touch points that each Persona mentions throughout each stage of travel. This enables marketers to focus their efforts and resources on the appropriate marketing channels (and or what we need to ignore and say no to).
The physical value you are providing your clients would most certainly come to mind while thinking about the guest experience. You might be surprised to learn that the emotional experience your customers have with your brand makes up the majority of their interaction with it and only accounts for 50% of the total customer experience.
Because of this, it's crucial that we comprehend not only their travel requirements and motives, but also their questions and the places they wish to find the answers to them. We also need to be aware of how they are feeling when they are travelling.
By discussing the various highs and lows that their Personas might experience during their purchasing journey, travel businesses can create an emotional journey map. Destinations might act similarly but from a higher vantage point.
The Importance of Emotional Journey Mapping
Understanding the emotional journey that our Personas take with our brands enables us to guarantee that we offer the proper hospitality and communication as well as that we generate and publish material that is sensitive to the emotions of our audience through marketing efforts.
This is especially important as we navigate the always shifting COVID landscape and take into account all the delicate issues that surround organizing and making travel arrangements.
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