Hong Kong will adopt new tourism boosting strategy 

Agencies in the industry will focus on personalized data in order to boost travel experiences for tourists worldwide

Personal data and preferences will be used to create a travel experience based on personalized features amenities: from room style to food and drinks, travel agencies in Hong Kong will surprise their guests in the most pleasant way possible.

The pioneer of this strategy is Marriott International hotel chain, which already uses digitally collected data on their guests in order to make their accommodation experience an unforgettable one.

“Through data analytics, we can provide customers with more efficient ways to search and book our hotels because we understand their needs and interests. We aspire to personalize the travel experience by appealing to their taste through food and beverage offerings and the room set-up, down to details such as welcome amenities,” commented the senior director of customer experience at Marriott International, Jun Lu, as the company selects data from smartphone apps, web browsing and history so that it can easily identify customers’ preferences.

Competition on the market has triggered travel agencies in Hong Kong to follow the same personalization routine, by using virtual data tracking patterns predicting their clients behavior.

Despite technologically resources in Hong Kong are not as developed as in Singapore, Japan and other countries, the momentum is used to boost the local hospitality industry and customer retention.

“You’ve got huge momentum with travel and hospitality trying to really reinvigorate customer loyalty. Maybe not by attracting more [tourists] because that’s a harder longer play, but to serve better and to get more out of customers they have through loyalty – all of that relies on having big data. Our challenge is that it’s quite a diverse market, you have a lot of transient customers, so really kind of getting your head around what you need to do with that data to make it valuable is the challenge,” declared Scott Likens from PricewaterhouseCoopers tech department.

The new strategy has been adopted thanks to an increase in tourist numbers annually visiting the city and the main industry players’ desire to reconsider their customer loyalty policy.