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The pandemic forced travel brands to get smarter by using their loyalty programs to engage with consumers even when those customers aren’t traveling. That new skillset will have a lasting impact even after the pandemic eventually fades.
Being savvier at engaging customers at all times was one of the four takeaways from Skift Live’s Loyalty and Subscription Summit, which took place as a virtual event on April 21. Other takeaways included revamping loyalty programs to cope with the loss of traditional corporate travel, experimenting with subscription models, and adapting to “responsible tourism.”
More travel executives get their mission-critical industry news from Skift than any other source on the planet.Tell me more
Tripadvisor believes its new subscription product could become a new business line generating more than $1 billion a year. But that will likely only happen if the company can make the program about more than just a mechanism for consumers to get discounts on hotels, experiences, and other travel offerings.
That was the word from Brad Soroca, Tripadvisor’s vice president of marketing and business development and general manager of direct to consumer, when speaking about the effort on Wednesday at Skift Live’s Loyalty and Subscription Summit.
Can today s do-it-yourself vacation planner be converted to tomorrow s loyal travel advisor client?
Tripadvisor, the premier consumer user-review site in travel, thinks so, and it hopes to profit from a platform it has dubbed Reco, which can connect its hundreds of millions of users to an appropriate trip-planning specialist.
A vetted group of 300 advisors, or trip designers, as Tripadvisor calls them, who have road-tested the concept see promise for profit, as well.
Reco is essentially a lead-generation program. Travelers answer questions about the kind of travel they are interested in, preferred destinations, their budget and their travel style, and in response they are served a list of advisors who best match their criteria. They can contact the advisors through the Reco platform and, after an initial discussion, engage an advisor s services for a $199 trip-planning fee.