Truth Behind Travel

Does the "Ideal Customer" still exist in the Tourism Industry?

December 24, 2021 Dolores Semeraro Season 2 Episode 44
Truth Behind Travel
Does the "Ideal Customer" still exist in the Tourism Industry?
Show Notes Transcript

Taking the time to observe 'Who is Your ACTUAL Customer?' in the tourism industry today can potentially save you from making the wrong marketing budget assumptions next year.
 
What if, in the tourism industry, the "Ideal Customer" has become a sort of a myth in a post-covid world?
 - your most desired hotel guest has changed
 - your returning travel agency client is booking elsewhere
 - your loyal airline passenger is driving instead
 
They are all supposed to be aligned with your brand values, style, service standards, tone of voice. 

BUT what if, we look into who is actually:

 - staying in your hotels
 - buying your tickets
 - booking your holiday packages

and discover WHY that they DON'T resemble your Ideal Client anymore. In today's episode, we are going to dive deep into the difference between an ideal customer and an actual customer for the tourism industry and why the difference might just be what you need to know to save you big-budget dollars on your next marketing strategy. 

There’s power in observing these micro shifts in travel behavior, because you can tweak your strategy before it has even began to unfold and you can hit the ground running!


Here is the list of downloads mentioned during today's episode:

REPORT: Top 10 Travel Behaviour Trends in 2022: https://thetravelrecoverymethod.com/trends
Blog Post: Post-pandemic tourism marketing strategies: the power of acknowledging fears of travel: https://www.doloressemeraro.com/post-pandemic-tourism-marketing-strategies/



 About Dolores Semeraro

Hello! I am a Hospitality and Tourism Communication Expert and Speaker with 15 years of industry experience.

For the past 20 months, I have helped tourism organizations and travel professionals restore travel confidence and restart their tourism business. 

I focus on tourism marketing strategies, hospitality digital marketing and communication, and tourism innovation in every keynote, training, or coaching session I deliver across the industry.

You can learn more about me by listening to my travel recovery podcast called ‘Truth Behind Travel’ where I interview tourism industry leaders and travel experts on th

Dolores Semeraro is an internationally recognized tourism keynote speaker and trainer who has inspired thousands of people in the tourism industry to build a stronger, more sustainable, and more resilient future of travel.

In her keynotes, Dolores shares with her audience how to develop sustainable marketing thinking through her action-oriented thought process, which observes the interconnectivity of the stages in the travel product life cycle.

By applying this process, operators in the tourism, travel, and hospitality sectors can visibly enhance the longevity of their marketing strategies, effectively rendering them more sustainable in the long term for the well-being of all stakeholders involved.

Dolores is a passionate advocate for responsible travel, sustainability, and innovation. With her signature Mediterranean warmth and straightforwardness, she encourages audiences to challenge their "Business As Usual" status and strive for the improvement of the tourism industry and the well-being of all stakeholders.

Through her decades-long experience in the industry, she has motivated hoteliers and tourism professionals to take action, enhance their communication, and create a purposeful and innovative tourism ecosystem.

She also advocates for slow travel, exemplified by her extensive travels with her husband and beloved dog in their campervan. When not chronicling ...

The never-ending question of "Who is your Ideal Customer" populates the first chapter of any tourism marketing bible.
 
BUT taking the time to observe 'Who is Your ACTUAL Customer?' can potentially save you from making the wrong marketing budget assumptions next year.

What if, in the tourism industry, the "Ideal Customer" has become a sort of a myth in a post-covid world?
 - your most desired hotel guest has changed
 - your returning travel agency client is booking elsewhere
 - your loyal airline passenger is driving instead
 

They are all supposed to be aligned with your brand values, style, service standards, tone of voice. BUT what if, we look into who is actually:
 - staying in your hotels
 - buying your tickets
 - booking your holiday packages

and discover WHY that they DON'T resemble your Ideal Client anymore. 

In today's episode, we are going to dive deep into the difference between an ideal customer and an actual customer for the tourism industry and why the difference might just be what you need to know to save you big-budget dollars on your next marketing strategy. 

 

Speaking of diving deep,  

During my days as Marketing and PR Manager in hospitality, at this time of the year, we would usually look back at the past months, summarize the work done, the achievements, what went well and what didn’t go so well. 

We would look at which event or campaign generated more revenue and engagement, what worked well, and what we could foresee to be just as successful for the year to come. 

 

Story: A few (quite a few) years back I was working in the beautiful Maldives as an Events and PR Manager. No need to describe the Maldives here, a true paradise, above and below the water. And who doesn’t love some pampering time on a beautiful tropical island? At least for a few days? Before heading to the sea, snorkeling, or diving… 

 So while assessing what kind of event would bring more people to an island resort, that wouldn’t involve the usual sun, sand, and loads of great food, I suggested – did I suggest it? Not sure, it was a team work – why not create a whole Festival dedicated to the Underwater World of the Maldives? A whole week dedicated to scuba diving, free-diving, snorkeling, breath-hold, and yoga, plus evening talks not just with anybody but the likes of freediving world champions, National Geographic underwater photographers, and yoga masters. This was the recipe for The Underwater Festival of the resort. 

 And the budget that went into it! 

Flying everybody in, accommodation and meals for all, the boats for the diving sessions, the gears, the entertainment… you get the picture – not cheap. 

Was it successful? Yes

How so? Great PR Stories, Great PRESS Coverage, Amazing social media returns. 

BUT.. you know that there was a but coming, 

 Only a few dedicated and passionate guests actually joined the Festival Activities – which I spent hours planning carefully to the minute – Only a few bookings came in Because of the Festival. 

It was widely appreciated, and surely an iconic event – nobody had invited world-class freediving champions to the island before – but for some reason, all that hype did not speak to the actual ‘ideal clients’ of the festival. 

 What is my point here?

 A tropical resort located just at the core of a world-class diving destination, with plenty to discover just below the surface, One would have thought – ok, my ideal client to such a place loves diving, snorkeling, being in the water altogether. 

 But the truth was WE would expect the guests to jump right into such activities when instead, all they wanted to do was to snooze on the beach and delight themselves with great food and drinks.

Building a whole event around the projection of an expectation is like building on sand. The projection is like the building – we see it clearly, we know what it is, we think it can’t fail. The expectation is like the sand – seems solid at first, but crumbles down very quickly when things start to move. 

I miss my diving days, and I will cherish my time in the Maldives forever, but I learned my lesson there. The ideal client I thought wouldn’t miss the event for the world and would book a room right away was very different from the actual client of the resort that instead – preferred to enjoy a relaxing beach time. 

 Ideal VS Actual

 Fast forward into a pandemic-era of travel expectations and the example of the underwater festival came back to my mind recently when discussing the travel behaviors trends we foresee for 2022. The report I shared – which you can still download with the link in the show notes – touched on three key segments:

-       the need to find others

-       the need to find ourselves

-       the need to find a purpose

that’s why looking closely into what is ahead for the tourism industry, starts with looking at what’s happening right now. 

 And right now, people’s priorities are being tested, re-shuffled, and re-organized and they are all based on a set of fears that are dictating the way the plan ahead. 

I shared the travel behavior trends report with you because if we don’t acknowledge the change that has happened in travel priorities and the fears that are affecting these travel choices, we are going to miss out and we are going to plan our budgets based on who we expect to travel to our destinations, our hotels and we are not going to see who is actually traveling instead. 

On my blog, I shared an article just about how powerful is to acknowledge the fear of travel and what are the benefits derived from it. 

The four segments affected by fear of travel are: 

Health

Relationships

Finances

Safety

And how does this impact the Ideal Vs Actual traveler at the end of 2021 as we project our tourism marketing strategies into 2022? 

Here is the point:

Traditionally a family-friendly hotel has all that is needed for a family to have a great time during their holidays:

A fantastic kids club with plenty of activities

Kids meals all around and at the kids-friendly eating time (you know when you must feed your kid early and the buffet only opens at 7 pm?, right ok)

Spacious rooms where the extra bed does not cram the space

 So 

 if your ideal client is a family and you target exactly that, 

let’s take a step back and notice what has changed in the family travel sphere before you target them like you used to:

 I want to go back to the four segments I mentioned earlier: 

  • Health
  • Relationships
  • Finances
  • Safety

And with that in mind look into how family travel – in this instance – has changed so that we can adjust what family travel IDEALLY looks like into what ACTUALLY looks like. 

Number 1 – health

Protecting the health of the ones we love has become paramount. Particularly this past 2 years. But taking care of someone’s health has evolved to a whole different level today. People have taken in an enormous amount of information over the past few months – making them extremely knowledgeable about what is or isn’t good for their physical and mental wellbeing. So they know what they want and don’t want to eat and they will ask for it when sitting at the restaurant of your hotel.

They know what they want or do not want to talk about, and they will mention it when your next guest relations officer approaches them for a welcome chat. 

The Ideal Family indulges, the Actual Family demands to know how the food is being prepared, what are the alternatives, perhaps they are raising their kids with a vegan diet already… and when it comes to Mental Health, 

The Ideal Family gets lazy and wants to relax, the Actual family now more than ever feels that life is short and precious so packs up all the possible activities and does as much as possible. 

 So the ACTUAL family holiday today – from a fear for their health perspective – suddenly looks a bit different right?

 Number 2 – relationships

 Let’s go back to our Ideal Family – an avatar let’s call it like that – a family of 3 or 4 on a 15 days standards period type of holiday.

Fast forward 20 + months of a pandemic where people were separated, away from their most direct relatives parents for the adults and grandparents for the children...

So, as travel rebounds, the Actual Family is instead a group of 6 to 8 persons – meaning the extended family – now traveling together to make up for the time they spent apart. 

 Number 3 – Finances

We all looked into the past few months, right? Whether you travel or not. Some saved a lot, some others lost a lot. But one thing remains in common for all – the perception of money well spent. And with a WHOLE different outlook on life and what to do with it now, money become the vehicle for people to buy more time, time together, time on holidays. 

 The ideal family would most traditionally spend 2 weeks holidays abroad and one week domestic or short-haul, now we see the actual family pushing it to 3 weeks altogether or more abroad with the intention to make the most of it. 

 Number 4 – Safety

Not an easy topic to cover when it comes to travel and tourism – where we all want our destinations to be perceived as of the utmost safety for travelers. 

But truth is, we are all coming out of a deep crisis, across all jobs, many were lost and more unemployment means more chances of an unsafe environment when guests venture outside the hotels. 

The ideal family would blissfully plan their itinerary across the destination, but the actual family is painfully aware of the reality of things today and would restrain from booking outside activities if they don’t come across as completely safe. 

 So, let’s take it all in for a moment. 

  • Health
  • Relationships
  • Finances
  • Safety 

 4 segments are now part of a whole new tourism outlook and are making a huge difference for the Actual Travellers. 

Basically filling the gap between the ideal and the actual traveler's ID of today. 

You can read more about these four segments and the impact they have on today’s tourism recovery in my blog on my website – as always, you will find the link to the blog in the show notes – and for a piece of article I do recommend you head over to the blog, not just because it will make me very see you there, 

But because every month I curate a key tourism marketing topic for my readers and I go deep into what digital marketing is done well can do for tourism and travel recovery. 

 Now, imagine laying out your next tourism marketing strategy with all the perks directed to your ideal customer – your tours, your packages, your services. 

Now rewind and take a second listen to today’s episode and go on and visit my blog to know more about the four segments of travel change, then come back to me and tell me – does it look different? I do hope it does! 

And for more intel on these changes, download the behavior trends report – that’s the main link I will drop for you in the show notes, 

 There’s power in observing these micro shifts in travel behavior because you can tweak your strategy before it has even begun to unfold and you can hit the ground running, while others are still scratching their heads wondering what the heck has happened to the world of tourism.  

 The trend report link is in the show notes, can’t miss it. 

Thank you for joining me today on the podcast!