Are you making the most of every opportunity to engage with your passengers? The customer journey doesn’t start and end with the trip itself – it begins with a single touchpoint and evolves into a lifetime of opportunities. For airports and cruise ports, each interaction is a chance to build trust, foster customer loyalty, and unlock new revenue streams. Yet, many travel hubs miss the mark, leaving valuable data and potential income on the table.
From advanced email marketing strategies to actionable business intelligence, harnessing the right tools and strategies can uncover untapped potential and create a seamless journey for customers. In this article, we’ll explore how leveraging cutting-edge marketing practices can transform the customer lifecycle into a powerful engine for growth.
The customer lifecycle begins when prospects enter the “active evaluation” stage, researching and comparing options for their next journey. This is the critical moment when your airport or cruise port can establish trust, stand out from competitors, and lay the groundwork for passenger loyalty. With 90% of travellers preferring brands that personalise their marketing and recommendations, strategic acquisition marketing becomes a non-negotiable priority for fostering lasting connections.
To make an impact, adopt a multi-channel approach spanning SEO, PPC campaigns, and social media engagement. These strategies ensure visibility at the right moments while offering opportunities to collect data on prospects’ behaviours. Track campaign performance and identify high-performing channels to continuously optimise your marketing strategies and spend.
Direct prospects to high-performing, intuitive landing pages that minimise friction and highlight key value propositions of booking with your travel hub. These pages are crucial for building trust and converting visitors into leads. Include clear calls to action, simple navigation, and smart forms to collect emails, giving you permission to build a strong, compliant database for future marketing campaigns that foster customer loyalty.
Once emails are captured, segment audiences based on browsing behaviour and preferences, for highly relevant, hyper-targeted campaigns. A/B testing can refine messaging, ensuring your travel marketing emails drive clicks and conversions.
Effective acquisition marketing goes beyond visibility 0 it requires understanding audience motivations. Use Marketing BI insights to analyse which keywords, campaigns, and channels drive engagement, then optimise your strategies in real time, focusing on what works.
By prioritising strategic acquisition marketing and pairing it with actionable data insights, your airport or cruise port can connect with prospects earlier, build trust, and inspire customer loyalty beyond the booking stage. Position your travel hub as the go-to choice when customers are ready to book their next journey.
The “moment of purchase” is a pivotal point in the customer lifecycle where trust meets action. For airports and cruise ports, this stage isn’t just about sealing the deal – it’s an opportunity to optimise conversions, increase customer loyalty, and enhance customer lifetime value.
Your travel hub’s ecommerce platform should be designed with conversion in mind. Make it clear to customers what actions to take and ensure they can easily complete their booking. Minimise friction by having clear calls to action, a mobile-friendly design, and a simplified checkout process. Features like progress indicators, autofill, and customer-preferred payment options can enhance the booking experience.
Regularly analyse your website data to identify pain points in your booking system. Slow load times or complex forms can lead to cart abandonment, so addressing these issues will improve the checkout process and increase conversions.
Upselling and cross-selling are effective ways to boost revenue and enhance the customer experience. During checkout, recommend additional services like premium parking, lounge access, fast track security passes, or pre-order food and beverage. Use algorithms to tailor offers to each customer, making them more relevant and likely to convert.
Despite your best efforts, some customers will abandon their carts. Automated cart recovery emails are a proven way to re-engage them. Personalised messages with clear calls to action, along with limited-time offers, can nudge them back. For example, “Complete your booking within 24 hours for 10% off airport parking” is a great incentive.
Confirmation emails also provide an opportunity to reinforce loyalty and increase spend, offering tailored recommendations or additional services.
Utilise tools like heatmaps, session recordings, and analytics dashboards to understand how customers navigate your site. Pinpoint areas where they drop off, and implement iterative improvements to ensure an increasingly frictionless journey.
By focusing on a conversion-optimised ecommerce platform, identifying upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and using data to refine the booking process, your airport or cruise port can uncover valuable opportunities to enhance customer lifetime value. Every interaction is a chance to build trust and transform one-time transactions into long-term, loyal relationships.
Once the purchase is made, it’s important to continue building the relationship. The time between booking and departure is a critical window to reinforce customer loyalty and maximise customer lifetime value. For airports and cruise ports, this period isn’t just about preparing for the journey; it’s about keeping customers engaged and identifying opportunities to increase their spend and deliver a personalised travel experience.
Your customers’ booking data is a goldmine for uncovering untapped opportunities, enabling you to identify gaps in their itineraries and re-engage them in the sales funnel. This strategy not only drives incremental revenue but also positions your brand as a partner in enhancing their travel experience through personalised service offerings.
By leveraging booking data and integrating it with your CRM, you can pinpoint opportunities for additional sales. For example:
These tailored recommendations foster a sense of personalisation and attentiveness, enhancing customer loyalty while driving significant ancillary revenue growth.
The ‘countdown’ stage offers a critical opportunity to not only boost sales but also to build trust and deepen customer relationships. By leveraging advanced automation tools, you can deliver personalised, timely communications that transcend mere transactional messaging. Offering exclusive incentives, such as upgrades to premium services or providing value-added reminders, ensures customers feel informed and supported. SMS notifications for last-minute offers or important travel updates keep them engaged and reassured throughout their journey.
Strategically using booking data to tailor messaging creates a seamless experience that fosters loyalty, enhances your reputation as a trusted partner, and drives long-term growth. By making customers feel valued and cared for, you set the stage for repeat business, ensuring sustained success for your travel hub.
Once passengers arrive at your airport or cruise port, their expectations pivot toward seamless convenience and real-time responsiveness. By leveraging smart technology and actionable insights, you can transform all touchpoints into moments that build passenger loyalty and enhance customer lifetime value
Revolutionise the passenger experience by offering pay by phone solutions for services like parking, security fast track, and lounge access. While enhancing convenience, this seamless payment method encourages spontaneous purchases and provides an additional touchpoint to engage passengers with tailored offers.
Leverage real-time push notifications to share personalised, timely offers and vouchers with passengers while they’re within the terminal. Whether it’s exclusive discounts at retail or food and beverage outlets or limited-time promotions for services like lounge access, these targeted messages drive immediate engagement and increase in-terminal spend.
Stop missing opportunities. Capture valuable customer data (even when passengers haven’t booked through your website) with free Wi-Fi access. By suggesting passengers share their marketing permissions when they connect to your Wi-Fi, scan QR codes for fast track ticket purchases, or provide feedback, you can grow your travel hub’s email marketing database and begin engaging new customers. This data enables you to stay connected with passengers throughout their journey, nurturing relationships and driving additional sales.
By integrating these technologies, you can not only drive additional revenue but also enhance the overall passenger experience, building lasting loyalty through seamless, personalised service at every touchpoint. Watch our Marketplace video to learn more.
Remember, the customer journey doesn’t conclude at departure gates. By strategically reaching out after passengers return, you create opportunities to re-engage, increase spend, and build long-term passenger loyalty.
Automate personalised emails to be sent within 48 hours of a passenger’s return, maintaining a connection and showing appreciation. Use this opportunity to invite feedback, making customers feel valued while gaining insights into their experience. Include tailored offers for future travel, such as discounted parking or exclusive early-bird promotions on lounge passes. Promote loyalty scheme enrolment, highlighting the immediate benefits that encourage repeat business. By keeping the conversation going, you turn one-time travelers into repeat customers.
For airports and cruise ports, passenger loyalty is essential for sustained growth. Customer retention has a higher ROI than acquisition marketing, and just a 5% increase in your customer retention rate can increase profits by 25-95%. However, a successful loyalty loop requires strategic marketing, data-driven insights, and timely engagement.
Leverage targeted marketing to re-engage passengers at key moments, offering personalised promotions for services like parking, fast-track security, and lounges based on their previous choices. Tracking and analysing customer behaviours, trends, and demands, will lead to continuous improvement across services, along with optimised offerings and increased spend.
Incentivise and reward passenger loyalty
Tiered loyalty schemes are essential for rewarding frequent travellers and incentivising spending, and stats show they influence 83% of consumers to make repeat purchases. By offering escalating benefits, such as discounts, priority services, or exclusive access, you encourage repeat business and foster long-term loyalty. It’s crucial to monitor the effectiveness of your travel hub’s loyalty scheme, adjusting strategies based on passenger response to maximise engagement.
By combining personalised marketing, data insights, and a compelling loyalty programme, you create a seamless customer journey that keeps passengers loyal, drives repeat bookings, and boosts ancillary revenue. This approach ensures your travel hub remains the first choice for future trips.
Rezcomm’s innovative marketplace solution empowers airports and cruise ports to optimise the entire customer lifecycle. From hyper-personalised marketing campaigns to advanced business intelligence, our industry-leading technology and expertise will uncover new opportunities, strengthen customer loyalty, and unlock additional value for your travel hub.
Leverage data-driven engagement to craft seamless, tailored experiences that encourage repeat visits and increased spending, all while refining strategies for continuous improvement. With Rezcomm, you can maximise customer lifetime value and maintain a competitive edge.
Download our Marketplace brochure and meet with our team to explore how Rezcomm can help you realise the full potential of your travel hub and transform every passenger interaction into lasting business growth.
Orchestrating digital strategy, Victoria Wallace is Rezcomm’s Chief Digital Officer. With specialisations ranging from digital marketing and CRM to UX design and ecommerce, she is an expert in integrating innovation and technology to deliver outstanding results in sectors like travel, parking, and airports.