Travel and Hospitality Digital Services: Reimagining the Customer Experience Through Hyperpersonalization

The travel and hospitality industry today is driven by contactless technologies, challenges posed by the pandemic, and the emergence of new customer segments. There is an increasing demand for faster services and customized offerings. Travel and hospitality companies are expanding integration of digital technologies in their offerings and also exploring new technology areas such as the omniverse to disrupt this space and deliver an enhanced level of customer experience. However, all of this requires investment and seamless orchestration of multiple technologies.

These emerging trends, and others, are covered in Avasant’s Travel and Hospitality Digital Services 2022–2023 RadarView™ . The report is a comprehensive study of travel and hospitality digital service providers, including top trends, analysis, and recommendations. It takes a close look at the leaders, innovators, disruptors, and challengers in this market.

Avasant evaluated 33 providers using three dimensions: practice maturity, partner ecosystem, and investments and innovation. Of the 33 providers, we recognized 20 that brought the most value to the market during the past 12 months.

The report recognizes service providers in four categories:

• • Leaders: Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, HCL, and TCS
  • Innovators: Coforge, IBM, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, and Wipro
  • Disruptors: Atos, DXC, Kyndryl, Mindtree, Mphasis, and Softtek
  • Challengers: CGI, Genpact, Hexaware, and NTT DATA

Figure 1 below from the full report illustrates these categories:

“The industry is recovering. However, changes in customer behavior and current global macroeconomic conditions, have changed travel patterns.,” said Carlos Hernandez, Avasant partner. “Companies in this industry need to rapidly adjust their operating models and build resilience to changing travel demands.”

The full report provides a number of findings and recommendations, including the following:

1. 1. Create a contactless experience across the customer value chain: Increase the integration of self-service technologies, contactless payments, contactless check-ins and checkouts, voice assistants, and robotics to deliver faster service response times and provide a contactless experience across the customer journey.
   2. Adopt a customer-centric strategy by focusing on hyperpersonalization and expanding offerings: Harness the power of data analytics and artificial intelligence for customer profiling, delivering a digitized omnichannel experience, creating personalized marketing campaigns, and recalling lapsing customers.
   3. Define sustainability objectives and a road map to achieve them: Prioritize sustainability themes and identify key performance indicators corresponding to each theme. Report on progress corresponding to enterprise environmental, social, and governance goals.

“Travel customers are more demanding than ever,” said Parinita Singh, principal analyst at Avasant. “There is a critical need to speed up the delivery of services with minimal touchpoints through the integration of digital technologies.”

The full report also features detailed profiles of 20 service providers, along with their solutions, offerings, and experience in assisting travel and hospitality companies in digital transformation.

This Research Byte is a brief overview of the Avasant’s Travel and Hospitality Digital Services 2022–2023 RadarView™ (click for pricing).