Valtech_Suite at Adobe Summit 2017

abril 03, 2017

At Valtech, we feel like engagement at every touch-point is where the travel and hospitality industry is going. Through the Valtech_Suite experience we are figuring out how to make this customer journey as fluid as possible.

Our Insights into Travel and Hospitality

Valtech has been global sponsors of the many Adobe Summits for about half of a decade now. And each year presents it’s own challenge. At the beginning of each Summit season, we try to think through the right way to create the most engaging experience. Valtech is always trying to exceed expectations that clients might have, and disrupt the way that we communicate to customers.

So, this year we decided to take it to the next level. We made the decision to not only have a booth within the exhibit hall, but also book a suite and create an immersive experience through different technologies and thought leadership that we have around travel and hospitality.

We know that people who are here to attend the Summit are here to learn about how Adobe can make their business more effective and their jobs easier. It was our goal to help them understand that Valtech understands the challenges of doing business today in the ever-changing digital climate.

At Valtech, we channel our energy into understanding specific verticals. Travel and hospitality is one of the dynamic verticals that we are particularly interested in. You see, with a travel brand, the customer journey is quite literally a journey in and of itself! Together with Adobe, we looked at what parts of that journey need a bit more attention, and what we found was that there was a big void within how customers interact with brands when they’re travelling. From that insight, we built some POCs and created some pilots leveraging Adobe technologies and we set them all up in the Valtech_Suite so that we can take our customers through a real world experience.

The Development of the Valtech_Suite

At first, the desktop and app development that was done initially within travel and hospitality industry was focused on the booking path. After that, we focused on loyalty and customer retention. This process was accomplished through a hotel brand or travel brand booking a hotel room, checking the status of that reservation and then afterwards checking that you got points and credits within your loyalty program.

But what we realized this process was seriously lacking was a convincing way to engage the customer during their actual stay, when the traveler actually is in the middle of their journey.

With this need to get better engagement during the trip itself, there was a heavy emphasis on the physical experience you have when you actually arrive on a property. Currently, there’s not enough merging between the physical and digital within the travel and hospitality space.

Engagement when you're in your journey is a way to help bring digital in a seamless way into that experience, and that provides the opportunity for rich personalization.

Understanding the Traveler

So for example, let’s say a customer is staying at a hotel in New York City on business. They’re only going to be at that hotel a small part of their journey because they’re spending the majority of their time elsewhere. If we're able to anticipate this type of customer, we might anticipate that our traveler has a special meeting that they’re going to want a new suit for. Being able to tie this travel data to a retail experience that helps prep retail purchases makes this travel journey more effective, and is an opportunity for third-party sharing across verticals.

Taking relevant information about what a traveler is planning to do, where they're going, the amount of time they're going to be there, the time of year they're going to be there, might help us present either a business traveler or a leisure traveler. There's a period of time (especially when you're booking a vacation) where you’re really excited and motivated to learn more about what that trip is. At this point, the customer might have a higher level of discretionary spending in the retail space.

When thinking about travel and hospitality in general, we have to be sure to remember the happiness and excitement that comes as part of planning a get-away. This feeling inspires customers to potentially spend additional money but inside of a retail segment to prep for that trip and that period of time for 3 or 4 or 5 months before the trip begins. This is a window of opportunity to inject a third party-relationship with a retailer into that travel journey and then the same can happen in return.

The Valtech_Suite is an answer to how we pull Adobe solutions into the mix, and Valtech’s ability to deliver on those solutions, to have another layer of interaction between the customer’s journey.

Our Goal

At Valtech, we feel like engagement at every touch-point is where the travel industry is going. How do we get more engaged with customers when they're in their travel experience? Through the Valtech_Suite experience we are figuring out how to make this customer journey as fluid as possible.