Travelers Frustration with Bookings Spurs Innovation in Hotel Search & Planning

This blog summarizes the latest developments in travel technology as it relates to hotel search, holiday planning and bookings. The key players in new personalization system are identified with links to relevant documents.

According to a recent PhoCusWright study, the biggest complaint expressed by travelers using the web in the UK and US was “being forced to sift through too much information”.

The reason for this is clearly that traditional search are not deliver a personal result, travelers are justifiably frustrated with the traditional search and booking systems. Searches for hotel by price and amenities is non specific and generic, especially as hotels tend to have many of the same amenities, which leaves price as the main differentiation.  The results of these booking searches are inadequate for today travelers.

Research Shows need for Innovation In Hotel Search and Planning

The same study found that over 30% of the travelers want better search. So just what is better search? reading between the lines it seems that the majority of travelers want a more personal experience when booking travel. In fact 86% consider, like or value personalized offers.  Source  https://www.slideshare.net/irclay/personaholidays

This travelers frustration with bookings is  leading to innovation in how we search for, find and book hotels. Hotel search, vacation planning and bookings are changing as also with the advent of Artificial intelligent, behavior modelling, inference engines and new ways to provide a more personal search and travel shopping experiences.

Amongst the chain hotels, Marriott hotels was one of the first to introduce a travel quiz that helped identify travelers emotional preferences. It relied on images that depict feeling and emotional response which travelers choose as their preference. The system is based on the principles of Traitify, a visual quiz that gets users to select a me or not me response to emotionally charged images. Accord goes with Travelsify. while others, such as airbnb,  are experimenting with their own version of personality matching.  Among destination marketing organization the Barbados Tourism was an early adopter with the  Barbados PersonaHolidays app matching travelers with hotels based on personality..

Personality Differences Determine Travel Preferences

Buzzfeed got into the act with a pick your colour quiz. Travelers could also  pick an animal and food options which could infer travel preferences. Some of these systems are mere games but there are series studies and research behind those leading the way.

The real professionals behind this are the psychologists and personality branding experts – These include Sally Hogshead branding expert and her fascination advantage. From that comes Fascinating travelers technology that applies personality branding to hotels.

Mariotts Traitify is a series of quizzes and interactive assessment that are quiet effective in profiling the traveler. However,  we do not believe travelers will take the time do do a complex quiz. An alternative solution by persona matching technology, by contrast, creates travel personas by inference.

AccordHotels has stepped into the ring with its version of personalized experiences based on Travelsify technology. This startup has over 2 Million EU $ in funding which is 2 Million $ vote of confidence in Mood Matching and the Matchmaker.Travel engine.  This sort of innovation has captured the attention of investors and several hundred thousand hotel have already signed-up.  These inference and behavior based personalized travel systems give travelers a better way to search for hotels without having to do a test. This is a better solution for frustrated travelers who really do not want to do an assessment quiz or wade through pages of options.

The Accord approach is in line with  Matchmaker for travel technology, which has the option of searching directly using its own emotional language. Where PersonaHolidays and the Matchmaker.Travel engine differ is in its personality and moods inference engine. The inference engine monitors and analyses ever visitor interaction to create a unique persona based on underlying motivation.