You come to me – where next for personalised content? Open Destinations' CEO discusses the importance of personalisation in the travel sector. The presentation covers some of the practicalities of implementing personalisation and tips for implementing personalisation into a travel business.

1. #TTESHOW
You come to me –
where next for
personalised
content?
Kevin O’Sullivan
CEO, Open Destinations

2. #TTESHOW
You come to me – where next for
personalised content?
Kevin O’Sullivan
CEO, Open Destinations

3. #TTESHOW
About Open Destinations
• 2015 & 2016 – ranked as one of the fastest
growing companies in the UK by the Sunday Times
BT Business SME Export Track 100
• Provide reservation systems for tour operators,
wholesalers & DMC’s
• 10,000+ users per day using our software in over
30 countries
• Growing at rate of over 20% per year for the last 5
years
• Team of 400+ spread between London and Goa
offices

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Clients in over 30 countries
across six continents

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Why does personalisation matter?
Improved customer service = customer loyalty
• According to a study by Janrain, nearly 3/4 (74%) of online consumers get frustrated
with websites when content appears that has nothing to do with their interests
Accelerate purchasing decisions
• Save your customers save time and energy
• Segmenting your visitors according to highly relevant criteria
• Contextual and behavioural specifics, acquisition channels, different devices, browsing
history
Increase Revenue
• Save costs – bringing in personalisation at the early stages of travel inspiration
(predictive personalisation)
• Growth of ancillary product sales - Hotels and airlines already doing this
• Tour ops and OTA’s are looking for opportunities ‘in market’ – when on holiday
• OTA’s are now buying ancillary revenue companies – ie. Tripadvisor acquiring Viator
Customer conversion
• Easyjet reported 67-1 ROI after introducing personalisation
• Inclusion of personalised airports doubled engagement and increased conversion by
60%
Personalisation is the use of
behavioural, demographic or even
anonymous user data to create
dynamic and customized website/UX
content for each user

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Travellers are willing to share data in the interest of personalisation
• 2014 Amadeus report – 4 in 10 travellers
• 2016 Expedia Millennial Traveller Report
• Baby boomers – 57%
• Generation X – 69%
• Millennials 77%
• 2016 Sabre study - Personalisation & the UK Traveller
• 49% prefer personalisation, but only if companies send ‘offers and
services that are relevant to my interests or situation.’
Millennial generation is expecting personalisation
• 2016 American Express study - 48% of millennials expect personalisation
• Source: Cracking the Millennial Travel Mindset: Surprising Insights on
Attitudes and Behaviors 2016 - Expedia Millennial Traveller Report
Customers are expecting personalisation
• 2016 - Expedia Millennial Traveller Report
• Millennials expect personalisation from their travel brands of choice
• Millennials are more brand-loyal than any other age group surveyed - 62% of Millennials tend to only ever buy a preferred
brand, compared to just 54% of the wider population

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Travel industry still has a long way to go
• Travel industry lags behind
retail when it comes to
personalisation
• Phocuswright 2016
conference theme was
‘Funnel Revolution’
• Phocuswright’s research
team believes that the sales
funnel for online travel is in
turmoil and that change is
brewing
• Particularly when it comes
to personalisation and
utilizing new marketing and
engagement tools such as
artificial intelligence (AI) and
virtual reality
Source: Personalisation & the UK Traveller, Sabre & Envision,
2016

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What do you need from the back end to deliver
personalisation?
Storing the data - trigger the personalisation
• Ability to store configurable customer data related to the preferences of your
customers
• Ability to create profiles based on past behaviour
Integration Layer
• A system that provides high levels of integration via web services so you can
query the data
• Different ways of accessing and updating the data
Intelligent
rules engine
Customer &
product data
store
Customer
makes purchase
of selected
products
Intelligence
• Systems that can respond to understanding who the customer is and making intelligent decisions
about products
• Ability to engage in predictive personalisation – linking suitable excursions for example to packages
• Flexibility leads to better customer service – i.e. cancellation policies, easy invoicing, payment
options in multiple currencies
• Adapt your offers based on customer experience – what products are commonly sold with others
Performance
• Your systems need to be able be high performing and capable of making decisions and serving data
with sub-second responses

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How you can make personalisation
happen?
• Engage your software vendor or internal teams or find a new
vendor who can help you
• Need a mixed team of IT capability, design and product insight
• Work out what changes are needed to your systems
• Bring in third party vendors to help you supplement your products
• Design your sales flows
• At what point can you identify the customers or predict the product
flow
• What is the customer product matrix you will be using
• What rules will govern the behaviour of the personalisation journeys

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How you can make personalisation
happen?
• Build the links between your products
• If Customer A returns and looked at Kenya
before then show Kenya and other adventure
style products
• If Customer B is buying a package to Rome do
they also need activities and restaurants
• Look at the data you store about customers
• Historical data
• Intelligent ID
• Real-time transactional and behavioural data
• Work out how you will measure success
• Understand your current booking patterns and
the volumes of sales of the different products
you offer

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Visit us at Stand T4
@opendest