Post Booking Engagement: A Deep Dive Into The Travel Industry’s Newest Penchant

What is Post Booking Engagement?

Post Booking Engagement refers to experience enhancement and retention marketing efforts that you put forward to keep the customer engaged after they have booked a flight, a hotel room, or any travel-related property through your mobile app or website. This translates to promotional properties like emailers, WhatsApp, web and pop-ups, push notifications, in-app communication, SMS, and more that may carry a multitude of useful messages for the traveler.

Set your business apart with Post Booking Engagement in travel and hospitality

It is no longer enough to provide a platform for bookings, it has merely become a launchpad, a starting point for designing a journey comprising a string of experiences exclusively for your customer. The modern digital customer is worldly-wise and appreciates when brands go the extra mile to ensure a smooth, hassle-free, and exclusive experience for them. A hotel recommendation message at the right time, a reminder on the day of your flight’s departure, or creating a no-miss list of tourist attractions may set you apart in the eyes of the customer, thereby promoting retention, positive feedback, and brand advocacy.
OYO, does this brilliantly.

Post Booking Engagement for Online Travel Aggregators (OTA)

Picture this. A customer books a flight to Jaipur for their friend’s destination wedding using the MakeMyTrip (MMT) app. Immediately, they get a message with ticket details, PNR status, and so on. But this is an opportunity to do more. MMT now sends him a warm “Hi Vishal” greeting with a list of recommendations on seats with extra legroom, the option to book in-flight movies and entertainment, and a menu for recording his meal preferences.

WebEngage’s automated marketing tools work on collected customer data collected from multiple touchpoints. By analyzing feedback and other interactions, we at WebEngage can completely automate omnichannel hyper-personalized and contextual messaging, so that the right message reaches the right customer at the right time.

Use Cases on How to Execute Post Booking Engagement for OTAs

1. 1. Tailored Touchpoints After Reserving Your Experience:This process is easier with WebEngage’s Customer Data Platform which will gather and analyze customer data which will help you send contextual, geo-centric messaging to the customer at opportune moments throughout the entire trip.
   2. Elevating Post-Booking Experience with Hyperpersonalized Offers:As a case in point, while working with Goibibo, we created hyper-personalized emails with some basic and detailed tactics and let the Journey Designer take over.

      

      As recorded by the Journey Designer, 55,000 users booked their tickets within the first 30 minutes of searching for a flight, and 6,000 abandoners were reached and converted by hyper-personalized emails. This intervention led to an 11% increase in Goibibo’s conversion rate.

      

      

      

      

   3. Unveiling Treasures and Tips in Post-Booking Messages:Now you too can ace your post landing messaging with WebEngage. Ditch the speculation and try WebEngage’s customer retention marketing tools that take the load off your hands with omnichannel communications delivered to your audience.
   4. Crafting Brilliance through Reviews and Feedback in Post-Booking Engagements:One of the main indicators of customer behavior post-consumption of your service is their responses to feedback forms and the reviews they give on platforms like MakeMyTrip.

Feedback forms on multiple channels are major touchpoints to collect pointers for the customer’s state of mind. These kinds of data are unified by WebEngage’s Customer Data Platform (CDP) to be analyzed and used for retention marketing activities.

Benefits of Post-Booking Engagement for OTAs:

Enhanced Customer Satisfaction: Retention marketing tools backed by data analytics and AI/ML simplify the process of reaching out to your customers with seamless, omnichannel customizations.

Increased Cross-Selling Opportunities: Well-timed and relevant offers can be seamlessly integrated into the user journey, maximizing the potential for additional sales.

Brand Loyalty: Consistent and meaningful post-booking interactions with customers may build a sense of familiarity and loyalty towards your brand.

Data-driven decision-making: With the use of the latest AI/ML-assisted data scanning techniques, we can now analyze customer behavior data accurately and put out targeted messaging that assures results and ROI.

Post-Booking Engagement in Airlines

Someone books a flight from Indigo Airlines’ app. While doing so, they enter their name, email ID, phone number, and gender, and also mention that they are flying with two elderly family members – it is also their first-ever flying experience. The date of traveling also happens to be the customer’s birthday. After the payment is successful, they get details like flight, PNR Number, web check-in details, etc, on their phone. But the buck doesn’t stop here. The rudimentary activity of booking the flight is the first of many touchpoints to enhance your customer’s travel experience with post-booking interactions. Indigo responds by greeting the user with their first name sending them emergency healthcare numbers and assuring them that the crew is trained to handle elderly members.

We, at WebEngage have perfected the art of creating and sending curated personalized content to your users through omnichannel communications.

Use Cases on How to Execute Post-Booking Engagement for Airlines

1. 1. Elevating Experiences with Mid-Air Marvels in Post-Booking Engagements:From seat assigning, meal preferences, in-flight entertainment, and shopping opportunities to crew interactions, these can be successfully curated to serve the traveler’s preference.
      Indigo made INR 762 Cr of revenue just from mid-air Food and Beverages, compared to INR 70,000 Cr of their total revenue. This can be attributed to the airlines pairing up with AI-backed automation that was able to deliver appropriate responses for each flyer. WebEngage can help you in this regard with its in-depth data analytics tools that deeply analyze customer interaction data and help curate exclusive experiences for them.
   2. Crafting Hyper-Personalized Post-Booking Deals Aligned with Unique Preferences:Who doesn’t like to be surprised with deals curated especially for them?Take Vistara Airlines for example. Vistara has India’s Fastest Rewarding Frequent Flyer Program. Club Vistara members can earn points on every flight which can be redeemed later. If you too want to ace the hyper-personalization game in offering deals, take advantage of our powerful marketing tools for data analysis by us.
   3. Navigating Beyond the Skies with Customized Post-Booking Landing Care:Post-landing is a huge opening for targeting customers with engagement messages. While embarking on a journey or vacation, mingle with the customer’s feeling of joy and awe by guiding them to exclusive hotels, tourist circuits, car rentals, and much more.
   4. Crew Communication:

1. Creating Post-Booking Bliss through Captivating Crew Communications:Being the face of your brand, the cabin crew should be trained to be polite, concise, and relatable. With the help of WebEngage the announcement of emergencies, weather updates, festival greetings, and more can be a breeze. With Omnichannel communication at its best, crew and in-flight communication can be optimized for exceeding customer expectations.

Benefits of Post-Booking Engagement for Airlines

In-Flight Service Optimization: Using AI-backed interactions with us, it is possible to make customizations while the customer is on the flight like upgrades, rewards, mealtime deals, and so on.

Customer Retention:Our retention marketing tools delve into key customer interaction metrics to automate omnichannel messaging to customers.

Operational efficiency:From on-boarding to off-boarding, every flight is a breeze with us – where all systems flow like clockwork and important junctures are targeted to deliver appropriate messaging, upgrades, deals, and rewards.

Brand advocacy:With us, your customer engagement strategies are data-backed, accurate, and customer-sensitive, you can expect to build a treasured base of brand loyalists who will willingly play as positive brand advocates at every opportunity offered.

Post-Booking Engagement in Hotels

It is Sarah’s honeymoon and they want to spend it in Taj Hotels. They explore the rooms on their property and finally settle on a double room when they find that they cannot afford the honeymoon suite room. Because they have entered ‘honeymoon’ as the ‘occasion’, Taj sends them a warm congratulatory email with an emailer on all the special offers that are ongoing at the time of their stay. On arriving, Sarah finds out that they have been upgraded to the honeymoon suite that they have been eyeing at no extra charge.

It is common practice now for hotels to send mailers with special offers like complimentary breakfast or long-stay deals to retain customers.

With us at WebEngage, you get exclusive access to personalized communication that drives customer retention and results in better conversions.

Use Cases on How to Execute Post-Booking Engagement for Hotels

1. Review Solicitation for improving Post Booking engagements:Post-stay reviews and feedback are valuable tools for you as a hotel operator. It is based on such interaction indices that we, at WebEngage can create a unified CDP and run omnichannel communication to its optimum efficiency.
2. Enhancing Stays with an Irresistible Post-Booking Room Ascension:Room upgrades are one of the most popular post-booking engagements that the hospitality industry has adopted to exceed customer expectations and make a lasting impression on them.
3. Post-Booking Thrills with Last-Minute Deals:As a hotel to retain a customer post booking, last-minute deals and offers add extra delight to the customer’s travel plans. An upgrade, a discount, free stays, and so on are effective strategies to hook customers and convert them into loyalists.
4. Unleashing the Magic of Post-Booking Loyalty Adventures:A Loyalty program is a great way to reward customers for their loyalty. Marriott International’s loyalty program called Mariott Bonvoy is an effective tool for customer retention. The program offers attractive schemes like easy booking via mobile check-ins, free night stays, and separate front desk lines. To curate and deliver stunning loyalty programs, don’t forget to use WebEngage’s intelligent omnichannel messaging.

Benefits of Post-Booking Engagement for Hotels:

• • Enhanced Guest Experience:Guest arrival, stay, and departure provide ample possibilities to exploit and create brand goodwill. Today, you can use WebEngage to analyze customer interaction datasets and use omnichannel messaging to get ahead in the customer retention race.
  • Increased Revenue Opportunities:Through consistent post-booking interaction efforts, organic opportunities emerge for more revenue streams, such as package deals for honeymoon stays, private car pick-up and drop services, bundle deals with popular adventure spots, and much more.
  • Brand Loyalty:Brand loyalty builds out of accurate and customer-sensitive interaction. Hyper-personalized services refer to offerings such as room decor and complimentary champagne for anniversaries and so on. For precise and targeted post-booking interaction, look no further than our automated marketing tools to generate omnichannel communications.
  • Positive Reviews and Reputation:This helps the customers express their feelings about your brand and helps you make customer interaction-based decisions for taking customer retention to the next level.

Conclusion

Post Booking Engagement for the travel and hospitality industry is gaining in power and importance as the world gets more and more digitized. With a sound Post Booking Engagement strategy, you can take advantage of each and all consumer touchpoints after the first transaction and present them with targeted communication that delights and exceeds their expectations. To build a relationship that goes beyond a transaction and has a lasting impression on your customer, book a free demo today!