Mario Tukša, CTIE
Introduction
In the competitive, never-stopping reality of the travel industry nowadays, businesses are in a constant race with the goal of differentiating themselves from the rest of the market. The ultimate goal is to build a loyal client base because clients are the greatest asset any business in this industry has. Traditional selling propositions like price point, location and amenities do not capture the clients’ attention as they used to in some other times. The travelers are questioning more today, and want different type of travel experiences. One of the most powerful differentiators a travel business can benefit from is the emotional intelligence. It can be used as a unique selling proposition in the process of creating personalized travel experiences, nurture strong client relationships and fuel the growth of business. This paper focuses on the role of emotional intelligence in enhancement of business strategies, travel product development, client acquisition and precise use of it within the digital era of mankind. A simple yet powerful conclusion is here to emphasize the critical importance of emotional intelligence as a resource for growth and differentiation within the travel industry.
Defining Emotional Intelligence
While emotional intelligence (1) has many different definitions, it comes down to one important thing. It is here to enable one to navigate social complexities and make informed decisions through a combination of other skills within us and emotional clues from the outside world and individuals. If we were to further analyze the emotional intelligence, we would be able to differentiate a few different components of it. In this context, there are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. All of these components come as valuable in the most important moments in the travel industry where interactions with clients can become quite emotional. In this wide range of emotions, the clients can be excited about planning their honeymoon or experience stress during travel situations, and emotional intelligence can have an important role in overcoming obstacles towards the delivery of outstanding service and lifelong memories.
The Role of Emotional Intelligence in Differently Sized Travel Businesses
No matter the size of a travel business, be it small or multinational, benefits of emotional intelligence can be applied universally and allow businesses to build relationships with clients on a deeper level. Despite the universality of emotional intelligence as a resource, challenges can be different for different businesses.
Big corporations, catering to the needs of thousands of travelers in a year, can have a hard time personalizing their products and services to each individual client and their specific expectations. If successful in the implementation of emotional intelligence into their processes and client interaction, the big businesses can help clients to feel heard and understood by making their client interactions more humane and allow a connection with the client along the way.
Unlike the above-mentioned businesses, small tour operators and boutique travel agencies first and foremost rely on their personalized services in order to stand out in the market and become more visible for their clients and prospects. What big businesses miss, small businesses use as their opening line towards the clients. By using emotional intelligence to address their clients’ pain points and emotional needs, smaller businesses can be more precise with designing their travel products. This kind of travel product becomes emotionally connected with the client, achieving deeper connections, better experiences and opening doors to repeat business, constantly growing on the foundations of positive word-of-mouth referrals.
Marketing with Emotional Intelligence
In one of the oldest and most meaningful means used to sell travel, popularly called marketing, understanding the other side is paramount. Making sure to understand the target audience and finding the best way to convey a message that will draw their attention is critical. In essence, it is necessary to find out what the audience’s triggers are because they are the foundation of the decision-making process in an emotions-based industry such as travel. Traditional triggers like beautiful destinations, exclusive deals and luxurious accommodations do not carry the weight they used to. They have become secondary for many travelers who are in search of more emotional experiences.
In a picture of a tropical beach, the nowadays discerning traveler does not see white sand and palm trees but serenity and digital detox, for example. In marketing efforts, a business could use this picture to communicate towards their prospects that they can help them reconnect with their loved ones, disconnect from work routines or just simply offer them a week focused on mindfulness. (2)
This would mean that the travel businesses can adjust their marketing and sales efforts with the needs and emotions of their target audience in order to resonate with them on a personal level, thus triggering the prospects into making the decision. The efforts can be divided according to emotional needs and profiles of various buyer personas and aim different market segments.
Sales Strategies Informed by Emotional Intelligence
Just as in marketing, emotional intelligence is as important in the sales stage of the process. Travel professionals possessing high emotional intelligence can be better prepared to understand their potential clients based on the emotional clues they receive throughout communication. Built on this, they can create a circle of trust and guide clients towards the decisions with the best outcome for all parties involved.
Not to forget, the component of emotional intelligence can also positively affect the entire client experience and not just the sales conversation. Clients involved in this type of interactions can have a positive experience even before the trip, being their main experience. As a result, the travel businesses can expect client loyalty, higher levels of satisfaction and greater potential of repeat business.
Besides elevating the client experience, emotional intelligence also allows the experience to start. Client acquisition, one of the more demanding challenges for travel businesses, can be highly influenced by using emotional intelligence to attract and retain new clients. With the entire travel industry being built upon personal connections and trust, it only makes sense that the same applies to the relationships with the respective clientele. Businesses that leverage emotional intelligence during their acquisition stage are more likely to succeed in their efforts, whatever they might be. It allows the businesses to dive deeper, beyond the surface of general information and focus more on the psychological and emotional triggers that influence travel decisions.
Building Connections
First impressions are often influenced by emotional factors, and if clients experience empathy and understanding from their travel business, it will most likely lead to a positive impact. Best ways to achieve this at early stages are personalized communication, attentive customer service, and a welcoming approach to client interactions.
Satisfied clients will return the favor and will be more likely to recommend the brand to their circles, helping the business with driving organic growth. By taking care of these relationships, businesses are creating brand ambassadors as a byproduct with a low-cost and a high-return.
Creating Travel Products with Emotional Intelligence
After achieving successful first impressions with their clients, businesses have the next obstacle on their path, being the creation of travel products that will resonate with clients. As in any other part of this process, emotional intelligence comes with great importance as it can help create an emotional experience for the traveler. Before anything, and in order to be successful at this stage, travel businesses have to understand the clients’ journey.
As opposed to the customer journey, based on tangible elements and metrics, this journey is an emotional one and once the final destination of that journey becomes visible to the business, it can then tailor its product around it.
All of the above comes under the term personalization, one travel industry tends to use and even overuse in the communication towards the clients in the modern day. Personalization has almost always been crucial for delivering experiences but in a peculiar way, it has also become an everyday word and thing for the majority of travel businesses. In the efforts of everyone trying to differentiate, many businesses circle back to being one of the many, a part of the masses. Then comes in the term hyper-personalization, (3) , the next level of personalization where travel products are being created based upon the traditional elements and metrics, along with added hints and clues that a travel business can pick up from any type of client interaction. Whether it be a previous trip, a leisure conversation on social media or a video call where nonverbal communication can be thoroughly analyzed, any signal coming from the client can be used in travel product creation. A birthday surprise, a walk down the memory lane, special songs playlist for a long drive or a bucket list item, are just some of the things travel business can show appreciation and understanding with.
The next level of service allowed by hyper-personalization would be the anticipation of client needs even before they have a chance to confirm it. Compared to listening and fulfilling clients’ requests, anticipating their needs is a demonstration of power where the travel business can unequivocally confirm their expertise in not just travel but human touch as well. This also allows the wow factor for the client, only adding to the positive experience that has already started long time ago, in the first conversation. Besides anticipation which might even be considered risky at certain level, for example with high-net-worth individuals, travel businesses can use these insights and data to offer solutions and recommendations to the client. It would be a safe bet, a welcome gesture and another low-key demonstration of expertise.
Important to note – this level of personalization and hyper-personalization is not just a competitive edge for travel businesses but a requirement expressed by potential clients. According to Statista, (4) around three-quarters of surveyed global customers in 2023 expressed their expectation for improved personalization when sharing more personal data with businesses. Moreover, 73 percent indicated their anticipation of a more personalized experience as technology advances, and 64 percent expected the same when increasing their spending.
In a reciprocal way, this implies that clients with higher budgets expect a more personalized approach and strengthens the position of boutique operators within the luxury market that rely on traditional networking, one-on-one relationships, exclusive access and almost no existence on social media or any other digital channel for that matter. These businesses are a strong and supporting evidence to this essay by using emotional intelligence as a unique selling proposition in travel industry with growth and quality as consequences.
Building Trust and Loyalty
Understanding, listening and empathy can equal loyalty and trust when it comes to relationships between travel businesses and clients, even business partners. When feeling as they are understood and connected to a business, clients will not think twice about where to ask about their next holiday.
Client retention as another important element for any business in the travel industry, can as well be amplified by using emotional intelligence.
Not just in the traditional way of keeping the clients satisfied through personalized services, prompt responses and matching travel products but also by recognizing any potential clues of client dissatisfaction. If recognized on time, there is still a chance for the business to retain the client by adjusting their strategy as they are using emotional intelligence.
As the end result of this process, the clients can even turn into brand advocates. It is one thing to have word-of-mouth working in the favor of the business, but another thing happens when satisfied clients are proactively connecting prospects from their network with the travel business they love so much.
Balancing Technology with Human Touch
In this instant generation of all things that matter, travel industry is no exception, unfortunately. With the advent of artificial intelligence and its many online forms, the industry has become saturated with even more similarities than it ever used to be. It was difficult to differentiate yourself in the earlier times, yet now it becomes even more challenging as there is a wave of businesses trying to expedite their processes in the race for the market. Along the way, it seems that more and more businesses come down to similar trigger words, look-alike websites and a general feeling of something already seen before. To stand a chance against the AI era in an industry based on human touch, businesses can rely on emotional intelligence. It can show the humans on the other end that the human connection is not lost, just more challenging to find. No technology, at least not yet, can replace a human being that uses emotional intelligence to navigate the waters of travel industry, client conversations and preparation of unique experiences.
Chatbots and automated systems might take the client to a certain level, but they will need to go hand in hand with a travel advisor equipped with expertise and emotional intelligence for the ultimate level of travel experiences. This is not a speech against the technology and its benefits for the industry, by all means. Still, important to notice is that an emotionally intelligent travel advisor or a business will know exactly where to draw the line between technology and human touch. A thin line in this context can be an advanced technology with integrated elements of emotional intelligence. This kind of a chatbot, for example, might be able to pick up on clues of frustration in the client’s correspondence and respond with understanding and empathy. Hopefully, the end result would be a successful travel business growing and expanding their client network.
Conclusion
Emotional intelligence, a powerful resource not yet recognized by the industry and it comes at great speeds with great potential to transform the way travel industry functions. As a guardian, it stands tall to protect the traditional values of travel businesses and what they bring to clients. Not everything has to happen instantly, nor should a computer be able to design a dream holiday under three minutes. Emotional intelligence can serve all travel businesses as a unique selling proposition and a differentiator. By leveraging emotional intelligence throughout all levels of operation, travel businesses can drive sustained growth, fueled by strong client relationships. From its early beginnings, the travel industry has been founded on emotional connections and trust. To stay competitive in the market and interesting for their clients and prospects, travel businesses will have to incorporate emotional intelligence and turn it into a bare minimum of service, instead of just a possibility to consider as a part of a wider strategy.
RESOURCES
1 – “We define emotional intelligence as the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions.“ Salovey, P., & Mayer, J. D. (1990). “Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 9“, 185–211.
2 – “Mindfulness is the cognitive skill, usually developed through meditation, of sustaining meta-attention on the contents of one’s own mind in the present moment.“ Baer, Ruth A. (2003). “Mindfulness Training as a Clinical Intervention: A Conceptual and Empirical Review”. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice. 10 (2): 125–143.
3 – “An advanced and real-time customization of offerings, content, and customer experience at an individual level. Designed to perfectly match a customer, hyper-personalization leverages Big Data to deliver such tailor-made solutions in real time.” Capgemini Consulting & ESSEC (2017.) „Hyper-personalization vs. Segmentation: Has Big Data made customer segmentation redundant?“
4 – “Circumstances under which customers expected better personalization worldwide in 2023“. Stephanie Chevalier (2023). – https://www.statista.com/statistics/1415837/customer-expectations-for-better-personalization-worldwide/#statisticContainer
