The Travel Industry Needs a New Journey Map

It's a Future-Focused Transformation

Perhaps there is no industry that is more aware that their customers are on a journey, than travel. Right? The traveler literally goes on a journey. And the journey, hopefully, is a meaningful experience. For the past two years in the Experience Strategy Collaboratives, we’ve been focused on travel journeys.

But not the way that you might be thinking.

Instead of focusing on removing friction from the travel or staging meaningful moments, our crack team has been focused on how travel can transform the individual. In many ways focusing on travel as transformation takes tourism back to its origins. When Thomas Cook started organized his first tour of Egypt and Palestine, he did so in part to get people out of the British pubs to do something that would change their worldview. Thomas Cook was a teetotaler! His intent in organizing his tours was to save the salubrious soul. 

Like Thomas Cook, we think that travel can help the person to become something more. But we don’t think that the travel journey map is designed to help.  We call travel experiences that change people for the better, ‘transformative experiences.’ And to assess the transformative value of the experience, we look at how people value their time while traveling. If they are having a transformative experience, then they will see the experience as time well invested. If they don’t value the time they are spending, then they will see the experience as time wasted.  

Check out our most recent poll regarding the value of people’s time in travel experiences.

The companies that score the highest on Time Well Invested are Vail, Miraval Resorts, Virgin Voyages, Disney Vacation Club, and Alterra Mountain. Many of these are experiences designed for families and involve sharing skills and providing guidance- a key part of transformation.

Oddly, at least one brand that sells itself as a transformational experience, Canyon Ranch, scored low on our survey. We were surprised. But, in a recent study of transformational experiences with travel industry professionals, we found that only 16% of destinations make an effort to help travelers integrate change into their lives post-trip.

It's one thing to promise transformations. It’s another to deliver them. And here’s where a new approach to journey design comes into play.

Three Ways You Can Increase the Likelihood that Your Experience will be Time Well Invested

1.        Listen to the customer data that matters most: Most travel operators fall into the trap of assumption. They think they know what their customer wants and needs to achieve through travel, but without data directly from their customer about their goals and how they measure that success, the destinations and operators are set up to fail. As a provider of transformational experiences, you must ask your customer what they want to achieve and how they will know they’ve been successful. In doing so, you are able to tailor your offerings to provide infinitely more value for the customer. Examples:

   - A luxury safari company can survey clients upfront about their specific interests (e.g., photography, wildlife viewing, cultural immersion) and desired outcomes from the trip. This feedback can help tailor the itinerary and guide assignments to deliver a highly personalized and meaningful experience.

   - A adventure travel company can collect data on customers' fitness levels, outdoor experience, and specific bucket-list goals (e.g., summit a particular mountain) to build the right trip logistics and support structure.

2.        Listen and adapt: Guiding transformation isn’t about getting it right every time. It’s about listening to your customer, understanding how their needs are changing, and responsively adapting your guidance based on what they need in the mode they’re in.

- A guided tour company can solicit daily feedback from participants and make real-time adjustments to the itinerary, pacing, or activities based on the group's evolving interests or needs.

   - A spiritual retreat organizer can have informal check-ins with attendees throughout the program and adapt the curriculum, meditation practices, or group discussions to better resonate with where people are in their personal journeys.

3.        Be proactive: By anticipating issues that may arise for your customer as they work toward their goals, you’re ensuring that they time they spend with you is time well invested. You’re making them savvier, more confident, more capable, and in doing so, making it more likely that they’ll achieve their goals. Examples:

   - A cultural tour operator can provide pre-trip resources (e.g., language guides, cultural etiquette tips) to help travelers prepare for and get the most out of immersive local experiences.

   - A hiking/trekking company can proactively share training regimens, gear checklists, and altitude acclimatization advice to increase chances of successful summit attempts.