In today’s hyper-competitive tourism landscape, where every customer’s experience can impact loyalty and future bookings, travel brands face new pressures. According to Mower’s Making Fierce Friends® proprietary research, brands that build relationships rooted in trust, relevance and affection can cultivate loyalty that transcends traditional customer-brand interactions. Let’s explore how hospitality specialists in marketing and sales can apply these principles to forge deeper emotional, experiential and authentic connections with people.
Trust: The brand foundation.
Brand trust is where customer loyalty begins. Yet, as the research reveals, brands often overestimate how much customers trust them. While 90% of business leaders think they’re trusted, only 30% of customers agree.
This gap presents a clear opportunity for brands to earn trust by being transparent and delivering consistently. For travel brands, this could mean keeping promises around booking policies, cleanliness standards and clear communication during travel disruptions.
Travel Industry Considerations: Are your guests confident that their needs will be met, from booking to check-out? To bridge the trust gap, a travel brand must communicate transparently and ensure reliability at every touchpoint. Hotels, for example, might ensure guests receive real-time updates on booking confirmations, cancellation and health protocols, instilling confidence, and reliability from the start.
Relevance: The brand bridge.
Brand relevance goes beyond personalizing emails or addressing customers by name. Our research shows that consumers who are satisfied by a brand that feels relevant to their needs and desires are 2.5 times more likely than the average buyer to be a repeat buyer of the brand and 2 times more likely to go to the brand first when they have new needs.
For the travel industry, relevance might mean offering tailored experiences based on past bookings, providing local recommendations that align with guest interests, or offering exclusive perks for repeat guests.
Travel Industry Considerations: Are you using customer data to create experiences that resonate personally with each guest? Relevance requires understanding each guest’s preferences and anticipating their needs. Airlines might implement this by offering upgrades or discounts based on loyalty status, while resorts could suggest activities that align with family versus solo travel. This level of relevance not only enhances the guest experience but strengthens the bond with the brand.
Affection: The brand connection.
Brand affection is the most difficult yet rewarding to achieve. Our research indicates that brands able to foster genuine emotional connection with guests are 3.5 times more likely to be viewed as partners rather than mere service providers.
For a hotel or resort, this might mean going beyond service standards to create memorable moments, like personalizing a welcome gift or arranging a surprise celebration for a returning guest’s milestone.
Travel Industry Considerations: Do your guests feel valued and seen? Developing affection requires going the extra mile and humanizing the brand experience. Whether it’s a hotel manager checking in during a guest’s stay, a concierge going above and beyond with local recommendations, or a flight attendant remembering frequent fliers by name, these moments create a lasting bond. This emotional connection encourages loyalty, word-of-mouth promotion, and willingness to choose your brand even when prices rise, or new options appear.
The Fierce Friend® Advantage in Travel
Mower’s research makes it clear: brands that combine trust, relevance and affection can cultivate fierce friendships with their customers. In travel, where loyalty is often fleeting, brands that achieve this will enjoy higher guest retention, increased spending, and invaluable word-of-mouth recommendations. The time is ripe to invest in these elements, training teams to deliver experiences that go beyond transactions and focusing on the long-term value of customer relationships. The more trusted, relevant and emotionally engaging a brand becomes, the more it will stand out in the crowed travel landscape.
Creating Deeper Emotional Connections
Travel brands must focus on fostering loyalty beyond transactions, building emotional bonds that make customers feel valued and appreciated:
- Personalization at Scale: Leverage data to craft tailored experiences that make guests feel understood.
- Immersive Storytelling: Highlight the life-enriching aspects of travel through stories that resonate deeply with customers’ aspirations.
- Purpose-driven Experiences:Align with travelers’ values, whether through sustainability initiatives or community-focused activations.
- Genuine Care: Train teams to treat every interaction as an opportunity to build trust and affection.
When trust, relevance and affection align, brands can transform customers into fierce friends—travelers who not only return time and again but also advocate for your brand at every opportunity. Embrace the friendship factors. Your guests—and your bottom line—will thank you.