AWS Travel and Hospitality Partner Conversations: Tealium

JT: Many companies across travel and hospitality have been managing through a period of unprecedented disruption. What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced during this recent period and how have you helped clients managed through them?

HB: I think one of the biggest challenges we saw, when it comes to the work we do with our Travel and Hospitality customers, was the ability to move quickly with customer messaging. Every industry has taken a turn during the COVID-19 pandemic, but travel changed the most and probably the fastest during the early phases of the pandemic. Because in-person travel was greatly restricted, the ways in which customer service and communication were delivered to travelers had to change to a digital-first approach.

While no one could’ve predicted what happened this year, situations like this show that a real-time data foundation is more than a nice-to-have feature, but a must-have requirement for urgent, accurate outreach. For one of our customers this meant their marketing team, without IT help, was able to create and engage audiences of travelers headed to COVID-19 hot spots in less than one day. These audiences were able to be used across technologies and engagement venues in their stack. This audience creation agility was the basis for proactive customer experience action.

JT: It’s been an incredibly difficult time for travel and hospitality companies, but we’ve seen many companies investing for the long run. With all the uncertainty, why has your company chosen to invest in travel and hospitality at this time?

HB: We truly love working with and learning from our travel and hospitality customers. It’s an industry that has consistently been focused on delivering outstanding digital experiences for their customers (even when the occasional bag is lost). That leads to a ton of innovation that typically informs additional industries around it on new ways to drive customer acquisition and loyalty. We’ve invested in travel and hospitality because we share that same customer-centric philosophy.

JT: In the face of the current disruption to the travel and hospitality industry, we’ve observed incredible innovations coming from across the industry. How has your company innovated through these challenging times on behalf of your customers and what are you most proud of?

HB: As I mentioned earlier, our mission is to help companies better understand and engage their customers through data. Data is incredibly powerful, but it unlocks superpowers when machine learning can be applied to predict customer outcomes allowing businesses to anticipate and deliver on customer needs. This year we launched Tealium Predict ML, a new feature of our Customer Data Platform that allows marketers to generate predictive insights about their customers without the heavy data science legwork.

As a travel or hospitality company, think for a minute how powerful it would be if you could proactively identify customers who were likely to sign up for a new loyalty program, or customers likely to churn and choose a new provider. Would your marketing and experiences change? Your messaging? Probably! It’s a brand-new product and we’re incredibly excited to see more ML-powered use cases come to life.

JT: The travel and hospitality industry is incredibly resilient. How do you see technology enhancing the customer experience and improving operational efficiency?

HB: Outside of health and safety advancements, I do think customer data is going to help drive a safe new normal for recovery. As a traveler, I now need more information and personalized communication from the travel and hospitality brands that I choose. It’s no longer enough to know when boarding starts for my flight. With health and safety precautions, perhaps I now need to schedule a security check-in through an app, or even understand the current health status of the city or state that I’m traveling to ahead of my booking a trip or hotel. That service and experience is going to be powered by data since much of it will happen via web or app. Again, this makes a real-time customer data foundation more than a nice-to-have feature, but a must-have requirement for accurate outreach.

JT: What makes you excited for the future of travel and hospitality? As a traveler or guest, where are you looking forward to visiting next?

HB: It’s been an incredibly tough year for this industry, but our travel and hospitality customers have been so incredibly resilient and I remain really optimistic. The biggest innovations are typically born out of disruption and I think it will ultimately improve the way we fly, stay and experience our world in the future. We’re excited to support our travel and hospitality customers as that takes shape. As for my next travel location, it is Paris, France.

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Heidi Bullock is the CMO at Tealium. Prior to Tealium, Heidi was the Chief Marketing Officer at Engagio and Group Vice President of Global Marketing at Marketo where she built out the award-winning demand generation function globally that helped lead to a successful IPO and later, an acquisition.

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