Problem

The UK travel market had seen established legacy brands go into administration and others in danger of collapse. Profit margins were being squeezed by rising competition for both domestic and international tourism, which had put downward pressure on prices.

To keep up with customer demands, brands were compelled to invest in “experiences” over just "staying”.

But in reality, Hoburne were stuck managing business today – with insufficient time and head space to focus on the things that would help to transform their business in future. A fractured customer experience with poor data collection, outdated processes and legacy systems were all diluting the sales process.

Insights

300+ hours of research

People start planning their trip on average 84 days before their departure

Younger people have an unquenchable thirst for travel experiences

There’s a need to help travellers plan and share their journeys

Planning a holidays can be overwhelming because of all the possibilities

Too complex - there’s no one particular way to search and research things

Precious time off from work allowing for important mental detox

Outdated customer experience, expensive call centre overhead, lack of any data insights

Solution

Creating the new CX strategy started with a key stakeholder Experience Definition Workshop to map all the current steps, touch points and decisions a customer takes throughout their holiday experience.

The exploring phase allowed us to step into the customers shoes and understand why they make the choices they make from a series of customer focus groups, UX website and analytics audit and from a competitor analysis both in and out of sector.

It helped identify any gaps, conflicts, silo’s and overlaps, underperforming communication chains, or unintended consequences that had a negative impact in an emotionally charged complex journey.

Once Hoburne understood where their current CX fell short, the new experience vision was defined translating customer insight, aligning business strategy, technology, people, data and processes to deliver seamless, personalised experiences.