Closing the Personalization Gap: Data Readiness as the Foundation for Travel Industry Growth
Travel brands operate at a critical intersection of rising customer expectations and complex data realities. Travelers now anticipate instant recognition, personalized service, and relevant offers at every touchpoint. While the ambition for delivering such individualized experiences is nearly universal across the travel industry, the ability to execute at scale remains a significant challenge.
Skift and Amperity’s recent research, “Bridging Ambition and Execution in Travel Data Strategy,” conducted in August 2025, highlights that this gap is not due to a lack of awareness, but a fundamental issue of data readiness. By examining the perspectives of 384 senior travel leaders across the United States and United Kingdom, the study reveals that unifying first-party customer data is the essential prerequisite for achieving competitive advantage, fostering loyalty, and delivering measurable return on investment (ROI).
The Evolving Landscape of Traveler Expectations
The travel industry faces a new baseline where personalization is no longer a differentiator but a fundamental expectation. This shift is driven by travelers who demand seamless, curated experiences, and are increasingly willing to share data in exchange for tangible value.
Personalization has become a core expectation, influencing booking decisions and overall satisfaction. According to Accenture, 95% of boutique hotel guests indicate that personalization would make them more likely to book a stay. Furthermore, 83% of consumers are willing to share data if it leads to better experiences. This underscores that generic, one-size-fits-all interactions no longer suffice. For senior marketing and CX leaders, this means a strategic imperative to move beyond surface-level personalization and embed it deeply into the operational fabric of their organizations.
Loyalty drivers have also undergone a notable transformation. Travelers are enrolling in loyalty programs primarily for practical value rather than brand allegiance. The Skift and Amperity research indicates that seeking discounted travel opportunities (21%), exclusive access to premium services (18%), and ease of earning and redeeming points (18%) are the top motivators for joining loyalty programs. In contrast, “brand loyalty” itself accounts for only 9% of sign-up drivers. This transactional focus means brands must leverage real-time personalization to deliver utility-driven benefits. For example, a telecommunications provider could offer personalized upgrades or data top-ups based on real-time usage patterns, directly enhancing perceived value .
Personalization is also a critical lever for driving profitable direct bookings. Direct booking remains the most profitable channel for travel companies, with 93% having launched direct booking initiatives in the past four years. Travelers opt for direct bookings when they perceive greater value and convenience compared to online travel agency (OTA) alternatives. Better prices or exclusive deals (20%), easier booking management (14%), and more flexible cancellation policies (13%) are primary motivators. First-party data enables brands to target travelers with tailored offers, build trust through consistent service, and simplify the booking process, turning direct booking initiatives into a sustainable competitive advantage.
What this means: CX and marketing leaders must acknowledge that personalization is not an optional enhancement but a strategic imperative that directly impacts customer acquisition, retention, and profitability. The focus must shift from if to how to execute personalization at scale, leveraging data for practical value and direct engagement.
Bridging the Data Readiness and Execution Gap
Despite widespread recognition of customer data’s importance, the travel industry faces significant challenges in executing a unified data strategy, creating a substantial gap between ambition and current capabilities.
Travel leaders overwhelmingly recognize customer data as essential for growth and seamless experiences. The research shows that 92% of travel leaders consider customer data critical to their growth strategy, 90% prioritize seamless customer experiences, and 88% deem customer data essential for delivering these experiences. Furthermore, 79% anticipate first-party data will become even more important in the next two years, especially as third-party cookies are phased out. However, this recognition often outpaces actual data readiness.
A significant “optimism gap” exists, where executives understand the strategic value of data but underestimate the complexity involved in unifying and activating it across the enterprise. While 85% of travel leaders expect their customer data capabilities to improve within the next two years, only 41% currently consider these capabilities scalable, and a mere 14% report their customer data is fully integrated across teams. Alarmingly, 80% agree their organization has the customer data foundation for personalized experiences, yet 55% simultaneously admit their capabilities are limited by a lack of unified customer data. This disconnect masks underlying structural challenges and slows progress.
Over-reliance on loyalty program data creates significant blind spots, hindering comprehensive personalization. Travel leaders are confident in their ability to activate data for loyalty program members (91%), but this confidence drops to 75% for non-loyalty members. With nearly half of U.S. travelers not enrolled in any loyalty program, and active members often engaging inconsistently, a loyalty-centric data approach means brands miss opportunities to personalize for a substantial portion of their customer base. As Matthew Biboud-Lubeck, VP EMEA at Amperity, notes, “Loyalty programs remain a great way to build intimate relationships with an engaged and enthusiastic group, yet too narrow a focus on this strategy leaves out too many potential customers.”
The enthusiasm for artificial intelligence (AI) in the travel sector also collides with this data reality. Travel leaders view AI as a powerful tool for addressing data complexity and achieving personalization at scale. AI adoption is accelerating, with 70% of travel brands planning to use AI in the coming years, 72% considering AI use cases when structuring customer data, and 79% believing their customer data will be better structured for AI within two years. However, this ambition is premature without a robust data foundation, as only 10% of travel leaders rate their organization’s AI readiness as mature. Without unified, high-quality data, AI initiatives will fall short, widening the gap between brand promises and traveler experiences.
What to avoid:
- Over-relying on siloed data: Assuming existing data systems are sufficient for scalable personalization.
- Underestimating integration complexity: Failing to allocate adequate resources for cross-functional data unification efforts.
- Loyalty-only focus: Neglecting the personalization needs and potential of non-loyalty customers.
- Premature AI investments: Implementing AI solutions without a unified, high-quality data foundation.
Strategies for Unified Traveler Data and Measurable ROI
Closing the readiness gap begins with a strategic commitment to unifying traveler data. A single, comprehensive customer profile, combining all historical and real-time behavioral data, is the fundamental requirement for impactful personalization, operational efficiency, and measurable ROI.
“Brands are investing heavily in customer data, but fragmentation keeps them from seeing a return. Customer data is a major asset — and a costly one — but it only pays off when it’s unified and kept current. When companies bring that data together and power Real-Time Profiles, they start to see their Return on Customer Data grow, and AI, personalization, and loyalty finally work the way they should.”
– Tony Owens, CEO of Amperity
First-party data serves as the only durable foundation for personalization at scale. As third-party data dwindles and privacy regulations tighten, building direct relationships with travelers through first-party data collection becomes paramount. This data must be unified, privacy-safe, and actionable to provide a competitive advantage. Brands that consolidate all customer signals into a single, real-time traveler profile can move beyond reactive responses to predictive engagement, fostering deeper relationships with their customers.
Case studies illustrate the transformative power of unified customer data:
- Virgin Atlantic leveraged unified data across booking and ticketing systems to resolve customer identity at scale. This enabled them to recognize travelers even without a loyalty number, expanding personalization capabilities for both loyalty and non-loyalty customers based on contextual insights (e.g., trip purpose, travel companions). The initiative also facilitated new loyalty innovations, such as “unlimited availability” for points redemption, and enabled precise measurement of loyalty impact, tracking conversions and behavior changes post-enrollment (Skift and Amperity, 2025, p. 26).
- Alaska Airlines unified siloed guest data into a single view, which allowed for smarter segmentation and personalized pre-trip communications. This led to a 198% increase in loyalty program sign-ups, a 61% increase in email open rates, and 30% cost savings on online advertising. These metrics demonstrate direct ROI from data unification efforts .
- Wyndham built a single source of truth from unified customer profiles spanning both loyalty and non-loyalty members. This foundation enabled them to segment and personalize communications at scale, uncover new audience opportunities, and significantly improve marketing efficiency. As a result, 60% of their stays were represented by newly identified guests, showcasing substantial growth from a broader customer view.
These examples highlight how unified traveler profiles drive impact across the entire enterprise—not just marketing, but loyalty and technology as well. For marketing, it means efficiency, growth, and measurable ROI. For loyalty, it delivers relevant, value-driven engagement that builds long-term relationships. For technology, it ensures a privacy-first architecture that scales with evolving regulations and technological advancements.
Immediate priorities (first 90 days):
- Conduct a data audit: Inventory all customer data sources (CRM, loyalty platforms, booking systems, website analytics, contact center interactions) and assess their quality, accessibility, and current state of integration.
- Define a unified customer profile schema: Establish a cross-functional working group (including IT, marketing, CX, legal) to define the attributes and data points necessary for a single, holistic view of the traveler, ensuring privacy-by-design principles are embedded.
- Pilot data unification for a specific use case: Select a high-impact, measurable personalization scenario (e.g., personalized onboarding for new loyalty members, targeted re-engagement campaigns for recently inactive customers) and focus initial data unification efforts there.
- Establish data governance and consent policies: Formalize processes for data collection, usage, retention, and deletion, ensuring compliance with relevant privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA). Implement clear consent management platforms.
What ‘good’ looks like:
- Real-time customer recognition: Any customer-facing system (call center CRM, booking website, mobile app, check-in desk) can instantly identify the traveler and access their comprehensive profile and preferences.
- Proactive, relevant service: The organization can anticipate traveler needs and deliver personalized offers, communications, and support before they are explicitly requested (e.g., proactively offering alternative flight options before a delay is announced, suggesting relevant upgrades at check-in).
- Consistent experience across channels: Personalization efforts are harmonized across all touchpoints, eliminating frustrating inconsistencies.
- Measurable business outcomes: Demonstrated improvements in key metrics such as loyalty program enrollment (e.g., 50%+ increase), customer satisfaction (e.g., 10+ point increase in NPS), direct booking conversion rates (e.g., 5%+ increase), and marketing cost efficiency (e.g., 15%+ reduction in CPA).
- Scalable AI adoption: AI initiatives can be deployed effectively because they are fueled by accurate, unified, and real-time customer data.
Summary
The travel industry stands at a pivotal moment where personalization is a non-negotiable expectation for travelers. While ambition for delivering these experiences is high, execution is often hampered by fragmented data systems and an overestimation of current capabilities. The path to bridging this gap and realizing measurable ROI lies in building a robust, unified first-party data foundation. As Derek Slager, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Amperity, succinctly states, “It’s easy to talk about personalization, but much harder to deliver. The real work is building the unified customer data foundation that makes everything else possible.” By prioritizing data readiness, travel brands can move from fragmented approaches to a cohesive strategy, enabling truly personalized experiences that drive growth, loyalty, and competitive advantage in the AI-driven future.
Source: Skift and Amperity. (2025). The Personalization Gap: Bridging Ambition and Execution in Travel Data Strategy
