TUI Drives Loyalty Through New Connected Trip Tours

25.08.2023 - 14:00 / skift.com / Selene Brophy

Experiences play an integral role in the so-called connected trip, where travelers want to seamlessly plan, book, and manage in real time all aspects of their trip in one place. And TUI, the world’s largest tour operator, has just done a soft launch of what can best be described as its own flexible version of a connected trip with TUITours.com.

The company announced the group and individual tours platform would “provide fast and accurate itinerary development, with real-time pricing and availability, in a modern drag & drop system, simplifying the previously complex process of building tours.”

For now, it’s only available in Belgium to travel advisors and direct to customers, but there is a planned wider international roll-out during 2023 and 2024.

However, the promise of the connected trip is part of a larger story.

Booking.com CEO Glen Fogel maintains the connected trip is about providing a better way to do travel. It’s about addressing bottlenecks and queues by allowing travelers to seamlessly plan, book, and manage all aspects of their trip in one place — including flights, accommodation, rental cars, and activities – with personalized adaptability in real time, to travel alerts and booking updates.

Although Fogel, who spoke at Skift Global Forum towards the end of last year, admitted that experiences are about customer value rather than “absolute profit for the company.” He remained unconvinced that the company could make the same amount of money from attractions as from other verticals like accommodations. That certainly does point to a bigger part of the story. You can watch the full interview here.

Yet, here we are in 2023, and the idea of the connected trip seems far from what industry evangelists would have us believe.

TUI estimates the growing multi-day tours market is valued at $100 billion, with annual growth of 6 per cent — yet, as we know — largely offline and highly fragmented. And the company now plans to drive further growth with the TUI Tours platform.

From a business perspective, Nishank Gopalkrishnan, chief business officer for TUI Musement told Skift in a separate interview the company is focused on being an “enabler” of the Connected Trip promise.

TUI Musement’s business-to-business partnerships account for over half of its business, he said, with the company looking to grow its performance, specifically with online travel agency partnerships like Booking.com, Priceline and Lastminute.com.

While Booking’s Genius loyalty program is its flywheel to get its customers to book more accommodation, Gopalkrishnan believes adding attractions can be the essential connected trip value-add.

“And specifically with respect to experiences the reason why it’s so exciting is because