How Covid-19 Has Redefined the Ideal Traveler

Uncertainty has been the one constant during the pandemic. It isn’t enough for travel and hospitality companies to know a customer’s demographic details; they have to know the customer much more completely. Heading into the holiday season, travelers are booking later than ever and acting in ways that hotels, airlines, car rental companies and cruise lines didn’t anticipate. Business travel is still a weak reflection of what it was in 2019, and casual travelers aren’t always seeking the cheapest option. “Everybody's snow globe has gotten shaken,” said Carolyn Corda, CMO and CCO at consumer intelligence firm Adara. “What historically has been true for travel is not true. We need to think differently.” In this murky travel environment, companies need to know when a person is traveling, where they’re going, what airline they usually fly, what seats they buy, what hotels they stay at, what rooms they book, and where they eat and go out for entertainment once they put their bags down. Celebrity Cruises Is Turning Ships Into Luxury Destinations Adara and marketing tech provider Zeta Global each have pieces of that data. The companies have combined their assets into what they're calling the Traveler Data Cloud, which claims to offer marketers a complete profile of their ideal guest or passenger. Getting to know you Earlier this month, Zeta and Adara announced a multi-year deal to share their collective data. The partnership combines Zeta’s Identity Graph, featuring data from 225 million U.S. travelers, and Adara’s data collected from more than 300 global brands. According to Maury Lundahl, vp of marketing and ecommerce at Extended Stay America, the mix of website, customer and search data has already allowed her agency, WMX, to narrow its marketing and improve the hospitality chain’s returns. That’s going to come in handy as holiday travelers start booking. According to Adara’s data, leisure travel for families has roughly doubled since June. Meanwhile, last-minute hotel bookings made less than 15 days in advance for business travel have nearly doubled since the beginning of the year. Eric Bamberger, svp of travel and hospitality at Zeta Global, found that Adara’s data could catch customers right at the beginning of the booking process. As consumers embraced digital booking options amid Covid-19, Adara saw if they were doing travel searches, when they were pulling the trigger on bookings, what they were booking, and how long they were staying. Corda noted that Adara’s data also specifies actions such as dining reservations, buying concert tickets and visiting museums. Zeta, meanwhile, analyzes consumer intent and tries to make it easier for travel companies to target specific consumers on Google, Facebook, Tripadvisor and elsewhere. Those potential customers can then book directly through a Zeta partner instead of an online travel agency. Capital One Opens Airport Lounges for Travelers Ready to Spend Changing values Before the pandemic, Corda noted, Adara tracked customers with value scores. Ideal travelers were typically frequent flyers who booked luxury rooms. Starting in April, however, Corda noticed that customers that Adara considered “novice travelers”—those who typically used online travel agencies, sought deals and didn’t sign up for loyalty programs—were spending $300 to $400 on a room in places like Honolulu and Las Vegas. The frugal vacationers of 2019 used the money they saved by staying home in 2020 to become the big spenders of 2021. With business travel down 76% last year and just 35% of U.S. companies allowing business travel this year, according to the U.S. Travel Association, elite travelers are still on the shelf. Yet both Bamberger and Corda noted that resilient travelers, those who’ve still gotten around during the pandemic, have taken on added value to companies. The Travel Association predicts that those pandemic-era customers will bring leisure travel back to 99% of its 2019 capacity by next year. If that’s the case, Zeta and Adara’s massive cloud of data can tell companies if someone’s been searching and traveling during Covid-19, and how to get them to book even a little earlier through added flexibility or deals. “For a lot of the brands I work with, the buzzword’s been ‘book a little bit further out and save,” Bamberger said. “They're offering the ability to get a better rate if you wanted to actually book that trip 30 to 60 days out, and they want the ability to know when someone's searching and if they’ve been traveling during Covid.” Forget Business or Leisure: It’s All About Essential Travelers