Report: Customer Experience Management in Travel and Tourism Sector

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of customer experience management within the travel and tourism sector, using Thomas Cook as a case study. It begins by exploring the needs and expectations of various market segments, categorized by demographics, geography, psychographics, and behavior. The report then delves into customer journey mapping, outlining key stages from exploration to post-service interactions and highlighting touchpoints to optimize the customer experience. It further examines the impact of technology, particularly CRM, on managing customer relationships and engagement. Finally, the report discusses customer service strategies, including language considerations, accessibility, and emotional drivers, to enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction. The report provides valuable insights for improving customer engagement and business opportunities within the industry.

MANAGING CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE IN TRAVEL
AND TOURISM SECTOR

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
1. The needs and expectations of market segments for the service industry...................................3
2. Customer experience map to create business opportunities and optimise customer touch points
..........................................................................................................................................................6
3. Impact of Technology used to manage the customer experience within travel and tourism
sector................................................................................................................................................9
4. Customer service strategies........................................................................................................11
Covered in poster..................................................................................................................11
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................12

INTRODUCTION
Customer experience is a product of an interaction between customer and organisation
over the duration of their relationship. Consumer experience is all about the perception of
customers about any brand or product. Good consumer experience management can be a strength
of company. (Adhikari and Bhattacharya, 2016).
Thomas Cook is a British travel company. Thomas group has owned many airlines and
number of tour operators in the United Kingdom. Organization is providing holiday packages,
cruise lines, hotels and resorts. Different factors that driver and influence customer engagement
will be also discussed ion this report along. In addition to this the way in which digital
technology is employed in managing the customer experience in industry will be also examined
in this study.
1. The needs and expectations of market segments for the service industry
Market segmentation can be divided into 5 categories-
Demographic segmentation- this type of segmentation divides market according to age,
gender income, occupation, marital status, family size, race, religion, and nationality. These are
then demographic variables which helps to measure the needs and expectations of different
market segmentation for the Thomas cook company. Company is mainly targeting the younger
generation form their different purpose. Demographic segmentation will hell to Thomas cook
company for target the customers according to above factors. According to these factors,
company can make new tour packages. (Franzoni, 2015). For an example- younger generation
mostly like to visit beach places they expect to travel in other country. So the company can make
a tourism package for the specific younger generation.
Geographic segmentation- this segmentation is included the potential marketing
according to their location. This segmentation has included different factors such as – population
density, natural resources etc. market will divide according to region because these variable can
differentiate customer from one phase to another phase. So all these variables should be
important for the Thomas cook company which can help to know about the needs and
expectations of the market segmentation for the company. Thomas cook company is targeting the
big markets where the density of people is very high. It will be helpful for the company to sell
their tour packages. For an example- there are many old people who like to visit natural places of

different countries they can expect these type of special holiday packages from Thomas cook
company.
Psycho-graphic segmentation- this type of market segment is divided according to
personal traits, values, interest and motives and life cycles. It is all about the psychology of the
customers so it will be very easy for the company to target their customers through this market
segmentation. Thomas cook company is also including the interest of the people in their tour
packages, this type of market segmentation will help to show the motive and personal traits of
the tourist and company can easily target the customers.
Behavioural segmentation- this type of market segmentation includes all the consumer
according to the buying behaviour. It is all about a behaviour based segmentation where
company can easily target its customers.
Needs, wants and preferences of different customer groups
There are mainly five types of customer groups Thomas cook company should follow the
segmentation of division customer (Freeman and Glazer, 2018).
Loyal customer- There is a few numbers of this kind of customers. These type of
customers are loyal about the brand because they are completely satisfied. These types of the
customer who are regular based customers. And they are loyal for the company. Needs and
wants of loyal customers are, they want individual attention, and services. They expect many
more thing from the company. These types of customers always keep in touch with the Thomas
cook company. And tourist follow the activities and offers of this company (Han and Hyun,
2015).
Discount customers – These types of customers are the person who are a visitors and
tourist of the Thomas cook company. These are those types of customers that see value in
company's product but won't purchase it at full price. The reason behind this is that they usually
look for some extra information on the exact conditions of the deal. This type of customers keeps
an expectation of discounts from the company.
Value and importance of needs and wants of different customers-
Thomas cook company promising about quality, reliability and services. Company is
assuring all the tourist that they will get best services of the company. Company is providing

many kinds of tour packages for the educational purpose. Thomas cook company is mainly
targeting younger generation for their educational tour packages. Company is also focusing on
the people for their business tour purpose.
It is very important for the company to understand the needs and wants of different
customers. It will be helpful for company to provide new travelling and tourism packages.
Company is also providing discounts and new services on different tour packages by targeting
different segmentations of the customers.
Key factors that influence the customer engagement:
Language- This is one of the most important factor among all the factors. Language
plays an important role in customer decision making process. Many customers does not given the
preference to that product which is not available in their language. This factor should be helpful
for the Thomas cook company to include a common language for the advertisement.
Accessibility- This factor is all about the comfort to find a particular product. According
to this factor all the services should be user friendly. Thomas cook company should provide the
customer friendly things. That should be easy to access by the customers. Page load speed also
affect the accessibility to access the web page of the Thomas cook company.
There are 4 types of clusters that drive the emotion of customers, and these are -
1. attention cluster
2. advocacy cluster
3. destroying cluster
4. recommendation cluster
Recommendation cluster- this type so cluster integrate trust, care focus, and safety of customers.
All these emotions are the basic foundation of customers loyalty. Recommendation cluster
include the trust ODF customers. Where Tomas cook company will focus on the needs and
expectations of the customers. Purpose of this cluster to make happy and pleased to their
customers by providing them valuable services.

2. Customer experience map to create business opportunities and optimise
customer touch points
Stage Explore
Itineraries
Book
Tour
packages.
Pre
booking
During
services
Post-Services
Customer experience
Touchpints Tour
information
or details.
-Pres sales
support
channel.
- Booking
tour
package
-Company
website
-Rooms
details and
prices.
-Supportive
service by
company
during the
tour.
Suggestions
Thinking
& Feelings
-Lack of
transportati
-Ineffective
process of
online
Tour
-No direct
way for
providing
receipt.
-Unable to
communica
te with
internationa
- happy to share experience.
llustration 1: Company Journey Map
(Source: What is customer Journey Map. 2018)

on channel booking -lack of
information
of sites.
l people
Recommendation
Ideas for
improveme
nt
-Adopt
various
tools and
technique
support
systematic.
-Adopt
normal
method of
tour
booking
process.
-
Provide
customer
care
services for
booking.
-Hire new
employees
for
providing
different
services
-provide complementary gifts
or services.
Purpose of customer journey map is all about what customer go through and improve the
quality of customer experience. These are some steps of customer journey map and these steps
are written below-1. The persona- This is the first stage where company has to decide the customer’s types
(Kaenzig, Rebetez and Serquet, 2016). In this stage company has to create distinct
personas. Each persona has various touch points during their life cycle with the company.
In this stage company need to understand about the category of the customers. Thomas
cook company will identify the types of customers. Thomas cook company can create
many persona's to understand their customers.2. Customer phases- Customer stages are generally founded by the journey maps. Each of
the stage shows a goal of customer to achieve journey. After you has described persona.
Company should identify the stages of the journey of customer. In this stage Thomas
cook company will identify the different phases from which tourist went through.3. The touch points of tourist- Touch points are the contact points of the customer.
Identification of touch points is an important thing to create a customer journey map and
make sure about the satisfaction level of the customer. Thomas cook company can also
include some touch point in their customer's experience map. Touch [points show the

specific time period of the customers touch points helps to recall the experience of a
journey.4. Conduct research- For the journey company should conduct the research. For each stage
of journey company need to identify the goals of the tourist. Company need to identify
the touch points of them customers. In this stage Thomas cook company will research
about the journey of customer company will also address some related thing in this phase.5. Determine points of friction- After understanding the goals of persona, company need to
understand about customer touch points.6. Customer touch points- It is the journey of a customer from its starting to end point.
Customer touch points are the source from where a company interact with the customers.
Touch points are the sources to know about the platform, where company can interact
with the customers. This is the main phase of any customer experience map.
Business opportunities of Thomas cook company-
Company can gain may business opportunities by collect the feedbacks of the customers.
Customer feedback will help to improve the business activities, tourism services and company
can develop to know about their products. Customer experience map helps to provide the review
of a specific journey. It will help to the company to know the perceptions of the customers.
Thomas cook company can also add some valuable thing for the future growth of the company.
There are some points through which company can easily interact with the customers.
Person to person relationship- This touch point is very important. Where Thomas Cook
can interact with the customers by personally meetings. Company can easily approach all the
customers by establishing the relationship with the customer.
Website interaction- Websites are the main sources to understand about the customer’s
wants and needs. Company can easily interact with the customers. This touch point is commonly
used by every person. Every person takes the help of websites. And customers can get the
information about Thomas Cook (Mariani, 2016).
Mobiles application- Thomas Cook can take the help of mobile application to interact
with then customers. Nowadays each and every company is using this source of interaction the
customers can interact with the company throughout the application.

Any other ways of communication- There are also many other ways to communicate
with the customers through the marketing, different channels. By promoting the brand, company
can interact with the customers.
Touch points are very necessary to know about the customer feedback. All the touch points
are the sources of customers. Company can improve the brand quality or brand image by
improving the feedbacks of the company. All these feedbacks helps to improve the image of the
company. Touch point helps to know about the perceptions of the person.
3. Impact of Technology used to manage the customer experience within
travel and tourism sector
CRM is strategy through which Thomas cooks company can establish good relationship with
their customers. It wii be also helpful to interact with the potential customers.
Operational CRM- this strategy is an integrated marketing strategy which includes several
activities such as- marketing, customer support activities and sales and automation. Marketing
automation will be helpful for Thomas cook to make it processes more effectively and
efficiently.
Analytical CRM- the role of this system to found out the various sources to collect the
customers' data. This system will be helpful for Thomas cook to identify the problems, needs and
exceptions of, analytics will improve the customer services by identifying small problems of
customers.
Travel and tourism company is adopting the way of technology company is started online
booking travel. Digital technologies like big data, cloud computing has made it easy for travel
companies to personalize offerings and packages based on consumer preference. Thomas Cook
can target the millennial traveller through preference data to provide said traveller with unique,
and effective travel option.
Becoming social- all the social media websites like Facebook and twitter and Instagram all are
travel review based websites. The most pro-founded impact that social media has had on the
tourism sector to date is democratization of online reviews. Nowadays, travellers visit online

websites to search their future travelling destination and accommodations. Therefore, Thomas
Cook may turned to operating social contests and campaigns to ensure that they get some credit
for their guests (Michailidou, Vlachokostas and Moussiopoulos, 2016).
Travel research- social media has changed the travel and tourism industry. Social media is very
helpful to research about the trips. Facebook recommendation allows all the users to ask their
friends form advise. It will be also helpful to find out the best destination places through
feedbacks of customers. There are many travellers how discover their experience about
destination places via social platforms. This thing is an essential to promote the brand awareness
in market. Social media has a big impact on the travel agencies, travellers are adopting the way
of social media for booking and research.
Going mobile- all the travellers are using mobile phones in their personal and professional lives.
Mobile phones can help to the customers in researching, purchasing and reviewing all the travel
detonations.
Integration of IoT- this is considered to be one of the most exciting emerging technology
trends, which includes internet based inter linking between everyday devices. This technology
helps to know more about the guests. IoT data tells them that how many customers has visited
the resort or any destination ever year. It will help to send the messages automatically tom the
customers if they want booking for this year as well.
Database- This is the source of integrated management system. Because in every organisation
data plays a big role in the hospitality and tourism industry. In the case of Thomas Cook they
will be able to use customer data.
Special holiday packages of the Thomas cook company 2018
Company has mostly 61% of holiday package of Turkey. There number of feeder
destinations has grown up to 30% so in present all the tourist can fly for 90 destinations across
the world. Package holiday booking for turkey is currently 84% and it is growing year to
year.49% of flights are booked for Bulgaria. According to a survey 1/3 of Brits thinks that hotel
is more important than destination. So the Casa cook hotels and Cooks clubs has created for the
design conscious travellers who are looking forward for the hotel life style rather than
destination.

4. Customer service strategies
Covered in poster
CONCLUSION
From the overall report it has been concluded that, customers are the key to travel and
tourism sector. Therefore, their experience matters a lot for the organisation as with the
increasing competition and much transparency in the age of online reviews and social media.
This means that generating positive and memorable feedback is necessary and important than
ever. The report described the needs of various divisional customers in the market and their
needs & expectations from the industry. Further, it described customer experience map for
Thomas Cook stores to develop business opportunities and optimise customer touch points.
Further, it examined how digital technology employed in managing the guests experience within
travel and tourism sector. Hence, company must adopt various strategies to attract more and
more customers and provide them services which guests like the most.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Adhikari, A. and Bhattacharya, S., 2016. Appraisal of literature on customer experience in
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Franzoni, S., 2015. Measuring the sustainability performance of the tourism sector. Tourism
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Han, H. and Hyun, S. S., 2015. Customer retention in the medical tourism industry: Impact of
quality, satisfaction, trust, and price reasonableness. Tourism Management, 46, pp.20-29.
Kaenzig, R., Rebetez, M. and Serquet, G., 2016. Climate change adaptation of the tourism sector
in the Bolivian Andes. Tourism Geographies. 18(2). pp.111-128.
Mariani, M. M., 2016. Coordination in inter-network co-opetitition: Evidence from the tourism
sector. Industrial Marketing Management. 53. pp.103-123.
Michailidou, A. V., Vlachokostas, C. and Moussiopoulos, Ν., 2016. Interactions between climate
change and the tourism sector: Multiple-criteria decision analysis to assess mitigation and
adaptation options in tourism areas. Tourism Management. 55. pp.1-12.
Orchiston, C., Prayag, G. and Brown, C., 2016. Organizational resilience in the tourism
sector. Annals of Tourism Research. 56. pp.145-148.
Scott, D., Hall, C. M. and Gössling, S., 2016. A review of the IPCC Fifth Assessment and
implications for tourism sector climate resilience and decarbonization. Journal of
Sustainable Tourism. 24(1). pp.8-30.
Tse, T. S. and Prideaux, B., 2017. Tourism planning requirements from a private sector
perspective: the case of Hong Kong. Current Issues in Tourism. 20(12). pp.1210-1214.
Online
Freeman, R. and Glazer, K., 2018. Customer Service. [Online]. Available on:
<https://opentextbc.ca/introtourism/chapter/chapter-9-customer-service/>.