Outstanding customer service is fundamental to a positive travel experience because customers anticipate recognition of their identity and preferences, aspiring for VIP treatment. This expectation underscores the need for enhanced personalization in communications and experiences, emphasizing the importance of a seamlessly integrated approach across marketing, sales, and customer service.
That’s why there is always a pressing need for agile solutions that can cater to personalized planning, bookings, and customer service.
Salesforce serves as a pivotal technology in the travel and hospitality domain, providing a dynamic CRM platform tailored to the unique demands of the travel industry.
With features like sales and marketing automation and data-driven analytics and almost infinite feature customization, Salesforce can improve operational efficiency, customer engagement, and foster innovation, creating memorable experiences thus offering travel agencies a competitive edge.
In this blog post, we’ll highlight key advantages of Salesforce for the travel and hospitality domain and solutions that can be built on top of the Salesforce platform to strengthen relationships with travel agents, tour operators, clients, partners, and suppliers.
Travel agents grappling with dispersed customer data, real-time information gaps, and fragmented communication channels can find solutions to their challenges in Salesforce CRM.
Salesforce is an all-in-one platform that combines customer management, marketing automation, and data analysis in one place.
Top travel and hospitality companies like Hotel Tonight, Cleartrip, Caesars Entertainment, Anantara Vacation Club, Intrepid Group, and others have already supercharged different aspects of their business with the string of Salesforce products like Salesforce Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Experience Cloud, and CRM Analytics.
Salesforce’s core solution – Sales Cloud– helps centralize data storage, customer requirement & preference tracking, and management and organization of bookings, enhances real-time client information access leading to personalized marketing, tailored offers, and targeted communication, and enables data analysis for business performance.
In addition, Salesforce CRM offers multi-user access controls that ensure secure collaboration and information access as well as quick retrieval of information, boosting productivity.
Explore key challenges below and how Salesforce Sales Cloud helps travel and hospitality agents overcome them:
| Salesforce CRM for travel agents can store detailed customer profiles, including preferences and past interactions, allowing agents to tailor services and communication for each guest, enhancing personalization. | |
| | With robust data management capabilities, Salesforce Sales Cloud can consolidate customer information from various sources into a centralized database, ensuring accuracy and accessibility. |
| Automation tools within Salesforce for travel industry can streamline booking processes, guest communications, and other operational tasks, reducing manual workload and improving efficiency. | |
| Salesforce Sales Cloud offer integrated communication tools (e.g., email, SMS, social media) enabling timely and personalized guest interactions before, during, and after their stay. | |
| Analytics and reporting tools in Salesforce can provide insights into booking trends, guest spending habits, and market dynamics, supporting dynamic pricing strategies and revenue optimization. | |
| Integration capabilities of Salesforce CRM for hospitality allow to synchronize data across various booking channels, preventing overbookings and ensuring consistent pricing and availability information as well as integrate it with financial, accounting, event management and other software. | |
| Flexible and scalable Salesforce solutions for travel and hospitality experts enable quick adaptation to changing market conditions, customer expectations, and technological advancements, keeping businesses competitive. |
Salesforce also provides a suite of other tools that cater to the travel sector’s challenges and improves different business aspects:
Salesforce Service Cloud enables a deeper understanding of customer interactions, delivering experiences that surpass traveler expectations. Automated request management helps the travel and hospitality industry make customer support more effective, faster, and personalized which will lead to increased customer retention and satisfaction rates.
For example, the implementation of Service Cloud helped Anantara Vacation Club’s, a vacation ownership company, cope with the increasing volume of queries, improving response times and customer satisfaction rates across multiple languages and communication channels. The rapid growth of Anantara Vacation Club’s customer base exposed inefficiencies in their manual email-based customer service system.
This transition to SF Service Cloud resulted in a 200% growth in their Club Points Owner base, significantly reduced response times, and consistently high customer satisfaction scores, even in markets known for stringent standards.
“ The best thing about Service Cloud is that our employees now have a clear understanding of everyone they are talking to, and an essential view of all their previous interactions with us ”
Salesforce’s Partner Relationship Management (PRM) system together with partner portals powered by Experience Cloud help travel professionals bolster collaboration with partners and affiliates, enhancing communication and driving mutual success.
For example, Pernod Ricard, a beverage giant, enhanced collaboration with external partners and consumers through SF Experience Cloud which facilitated more effective interactions with distributors and enabled the creation of customer and consumer communities across various brands.
“ Experience Cloud will make effective collaboration with our distributors easier. All of our brands can build communities with customers and consumers. It’s up to us with our creative spirit to bring these communities in our new digital ecosystem to life, while respecting the authenticity and heritage of our brands. ”
Salesforce Experience Cloud allows travel and hospitality businesses to create custom web portals where their clients can conveniently manage and track their reservations, check real-time availability, and process booking cancellations and modifications directly from the platform.
Salesforce’s sophisticated marketing automation tools like Marketing Cloud and Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (rebranded from Pardot) allow travel agencies for the execution of targeted campaigns and personalized guest engagement across multiple channels, promoting customer loyalty and encouraging repeat business.
For example, Intrepid Travel, an adventure travel company, enhanced its customer engagement by utilizing Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud. They now provide timely, relevant communications and personalized journeys, greatly improving interactions before trips like their Antarctic tours. The use of Einstein Email Recommendations and Google Analytics integration allows for customized trip suggestions, resulting in open rates significantly above average.
For trips like our tours to the Antarctic, customers may book up to two years in advance. There’s a lot they want to learn during that time about the trip and how to prepare, but we weren’t engaging with them as often as we should have, and this is one area where Salesforce has made a big difference. We’ve set up personalized journeys where we can trigger a series of communications to help customers get ready and really excited about their trips.
Learn More: Pardot vs. SF Marketing Cloud: Which to Choose?
With advanced analytics capabilities available in CRM Analytics tool (formerly known as Einstein Analytics and Tableau CRM), travel businesses can get data-driven insights for informed decision-making, identifying trends, forecasting demand, and formulating intelligent investment and marketing strategies. It also helps identify guest behavior patterns, optimize pricing strategies, and craft targeted loyalty programs, ultimately improving investment returns and predicting future trends.
The whole Salesforce product family has other common advantages over traditional CRM for the travel industry:
We have a development team to help you customize Salesforce, configure and integrate it with other systems.
Customization is crucial for tailoring Salesforce for travel and hospitality organizations. The platform’s vast flexibility allows companies to mirror real-life workflows and address challenges with innovative, personalized functionalities.
Must-Have Salesforce CRM Customizations for Improved Travel Management | Ascendix
Here are a few examples of CRM for travel industry areas where customization can maximize the platform’s potential:
If you feel that your Salesforce for hospitality solution doesn’t reflect your business processes, you may need an expert touch of Salesforce consultants. They will help with CRM reboot to meet maximum needs with available functionality, platform optimization, and customization.
But all consultancies are different so are their service offerings. Ascendix is a double Crest Salesforce Partner (both in consulting and AppExchange product development domains) with a long track record of delivering custom Salesforce solutions of various levels of complexity.
As your trusted Salesforce consulting partner, we help you create your individual implementation roadmap and customization strategy which considers all your workflow intricacies and system requirements.
By leveraging our in-depth knowledge and experience from within the travel industry, we’re adept at tackling complex business and technology challenges. Our approach allows us to concentrate our efforts on key areas such as marketing, sales, service, data & analytics, as well as architecture and integration.
If you need professional guidance in the digital transformation of your travel or hospitality organization, contact us and we’ll find the best solution to your unique requirements.
Beyond the customizations and integrations previously mentioned, an advanced web portal is a crucial addition to any travel company’s technology toolkit. Salesforce’s Experience Cloud, with its extensive customization capabilities, offers the tools necessary for building a custom web portal that integrates seamlessly with Salesforce CRM.
It is worthwhile to further delve into the array of solutions that can be created on top of this platform.
We will help you create a completely custom web portal for your travel or hospitality powered by Salesforce without overpaying for unnecessary functionality.
The travel industry, a crucial component of the global economy, increasingly relies on advanced technology for a competitive edge.
Salesforce Experience Cloud, formerly known as Community Cloud, offers a versatile platform for creating connected digital experiences for the travel and hospitality industry.
It enables travel businesses to build customized portals, websites, and applications that enhance customer, partner, and employee engagement.
Custom web travel portals on top of Salesforce will benefit all the parties involved in the travel business: Customers by providing personalized digital experiences that make travel planning and management easier; travel agents and partners by streamlining booking processes, enhancing collaboration, and improving the ability to sell and promote travel experiences.
Hospitality staff and management can better communicate, manage tasks, and improve service delivery.
Here’s what can be developed on Salesforce Experience Cloud to cover the needs of each segment:
| Personalized Travel Portals, Self-Service Support Centers | Travelers can enjoy tailored travel planning and management, access support and travel advisories easily. |
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| | Agent and Partner Portals | Travel agents can streamline booking processes. Partners can get more visibility into their revenue share and reservation number. |
| Internal Collaboration Platforms, Training Platform | Improve task management and access real-time business insights. Also, employees can improve their skills and knowledge with resources available in a single place. |
Ascendix will help you build a full-fledged customized self-service portal to empower your customers with 24/7 access to their distinct profiles, accessible from any location which will safeguard their personalized data, including travel itineraries, historical travel information, and payment details.
Our team will create an integrated web platform powered by secure and customizable Salesforce Experience Cloud so you can deliver smooth and secure experiences within the Travel & Hospitality Industry and offer unparalleled support throughout every phase of the journey, delivering travel guidance that ensures travelers’ safety and confidence in their arrival.
In addition, we can develop custom Salesforce-powered booking portals, apps, and online platforms for independent travel management, enhancing customer, travel agents, and partner access to services and integrate these custom solutions with various business systems for smooth information flow, communication, payment processing, or inventory management.
Need expert advice on refining your Salesforce CRM or developing a custom web portal to suit your travel management operations? Book a free consulting call.
A CRM system for the travel industry is designed to manage and improve customer relationships specifically within travel-related businesses. It helps companies better organize customer data, booking details, and communication histories in one central place to enhance the travel experience for clients and drive business growth by better understanding and meeting unique traveler needs.
In tourism, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management and refers to the strategies, technologies, and tools that travel companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle. CRM systems help tourism businesses streamline processes, manage customer information, plan and track marketing campaigns, and deliver personalized travel experiences.
Anzhelika is a seasoned B2B content marketing strategist with extensive experience in elevating corporate profiles through compelling content. At Ascendix, she offers a wealth of knowledge in Salesforce consulting, providing valuable tips, tricks, and comprehensive guides. Additionally, Anzhelika stays at the forefront of the industry, delivering expert analysis on the latest Salesforce tools and emerging technology trends.
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