The official end of summer is near, but that does not mean you have to stop adventuring—especially if you have a stash of miles and points to pay the way. In fact, come fall, airlines, hotels and credit card companies are eager to woo new business after the summer rush, offering special offers and promotions that can refill your loyalty program account in a jiffy. Plus, seasonal perks and benefits often pack extra value into the journey. Here is everything you need to know to make the most of September's best loyalty rewards program deals.
Hilton Uncovers a Lot More About Blended Travelers After Student Competition
25.08.2023 - 14:39 / skift.com / Matthew Parsons
Hilton is finding out new ways to tap into one of the fast-growing segments of hospitality — thanks to a student competition.
The hotel group has just finished hosting an analytics challenge with Adobe Analytics. It asked students to identify the differences between business and leisure travelers, while keeping an eye on the emergence of the blended traveler.
Students were able to analyze live data from Hilton before pitching their “engagement strategies” targeted towards different traveler segments.
The hunt for new ways to target customers was prompted by the pandemic, according to Jess Petitt, senior vice president of commercial strategy, insights and analytics at Hilton. “We get much of the same travel patterns as we have in the past, but then you don’t get all of things back,” he said. “You get some segments of our business back, but you’ve also created new types.”
While “bleisure” has been discussed for a while, the hotel group was now focusing on so-called workcations.
“We’ve really seen that start to emerge in our business, but we want to understand it better, and understand how we can support that through hospitality service, and technology,” Petitt added. “You can start with stay patterns, you’ve got the type of hotel, there’ll be customer-modeling components that will come up in the future that are non-creepy ways of identifying the intent of a customer stay.”
Three students, I-Ju Lin, Chu-Hsuan Tsao and Yiling Kang, from the University of Maryland in the U.S. took home the top prize of $35,000. They examined the cross-device customer journey of those booking travel with Hilton and used anonymized data from a portfolio of 18 brands and 7,000 properties worldwide to understand how consumers are making purchase decisions digitally across devices.
Other finalists came from the University of Chicago, Utah State University, the University of California at Davis, Brigham Young University — all in the U.S. — and Universite d’Angers in France.
Overall there were many trends around the overlaps, and importance of conversions, based on the students’ results.
“A lot of brands will look and categorize or segment groups, and use those segments statically for a long time,” said Nate Smith, experience cloud director, product marketing at Adobe.
“There’s a business traveler, and they’re going to be a business traveler forever. And that’s not the case. Even in business traveler mode, they’re thinking bleisure to a certain extent, or what’s next for the family trip,” he added. “Being able to statistically identify similarities or differences, and what those overlaps are, if I can identify this is someone who belongs to more than one group, that was an interesting finding.”
The results also showed how dynamic
The website maxtravelz.com is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
Top Autors
Popular Topics
euronews.com
05.09.2023 / 18:31
Benidorm tourists warned about fish attacks after 15 people a day injured by bites
Tourists in Benidorm have been warned about “piranha-style” fish after a number of attacks in Alicante.
insider.com
05.09.2023 / 15:01
A United Airlines passenger's mom went viral complaining about their travel chaos. Now he's using his platform to demand more accountability.
Jack Ieronimo was one of the people on a United Airlines flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Rome, Italy, that made headlines after passengers said they were stuck onboard for seven hours without taking off.
euronews.com
05.09.2023 / 07:39
More Germans would travel by train but it's too expensive, some residents say
Erik Stiegemann’s love of trains started young when he worked at a model train store in Berlin. Now as a railway engineer, he’s choosing trains to go across the continent.
euronews.com
28.08.2023 / 13:55
Italy suspends ‘golden visas’ for Russians and Belarusians more than a year after EU recommendation
Italy has suspended its golden visa programme for Russian and Belarusian citizens, the country’s Business Ministry has announced on its website.
skift.com
25.08.2023 / 14:40
Disney Cutting Business Travel and Meetings-Related Travel After Belt Tightening
The first tremors of economic slowdown are beginning to be felt in the travel industry: even though Disney Parks had a record quarter, the overall parent company had a disappointing quarter in its other businesses and is now planning a hiring freeze, job cuts and other expense cuts. As part of that, CNBC reports that in a memo sent by Disney CEO Bob Chapek today, the company is cutting back on business travel as well as travel for events and internal meetings.
skift.com
25.08.2023 / 14:38
New Marriott Apartment Brand Bets on Blended Travel's Growth
Marriott International is debuting an extended-stay brand offering serviced apartment stays in the U.S. and Canada. The Apartments by Marriott Bonvoy product will play in the premium and luxury segments, syncing with Marriott’s overall portfolio — which is in the upper half of lodging categories.
skift.com
25.08.2023 / 14:35
Delta to Invest More in the Traveler Experience at the Airport
Delta Air Lines has been directing more investment at enhancing what its customers experience at airports, and it relies on customer sentiment surveys to guide its progress.
skift.com
25.08.2023 / 14:26
Middle East Travel Players Warm to Collaboration as Competition Heats Up
In some ways the Middle East is a victim of its own success: It weathered the pandemic relatively well, and the luxury market proved resilient. But now as tourism to the region swiftly recovers, the challenge is how do brands operating there stand out when inter-regional competition is so fierce?
skift.com
25.08.2023 / 14:24
Marriott and Curator Hotel's Insider Tips on Hosting Blended Travelers
Skift unveiled the 2023 edition of its annual Megatrends this week and in the mix, as you’d expect, is the phenomenon of the blended traveler.
skift.com
25.08.2023 / 14:21
Blended Travel Comes of Age
The pandemic has led to a permanent change in how we live our lives between work and the personal. No longer just a trite category called “bleisure,” the idea of blended traveling is front and center for every major travel company now. How new strategies focused on the blended traveler will emerge more clearly in 2023, as the industry recognizes the whole traveler holistically.
skift.com
25.08.2023 / 14:18
Marriott Execs Say Blended Travel Here to Stay With New Product Opportunities
Top executives at Marriott International said they believe the pandemic surge in travelers having blended trip purposes of both business and leisure will have a long-term impact on the hotel sector. The growing trend will affect everything from data collection to the types of properties developers want to fund.