Between 2020 and 2025, travel and dining brands faced a structural shift. Rising costs, service disruptions, and changing consumer expectations triggered a quiet loyalty reshuffle—led by digital-first innovators who redefined service and personalization. Their early investments in customer journey optimization and AI-driven recovery are now translating into material gains in loyalty share.
Julie Hoffmann, Global GM, Industry Strategy, Travel, Hospitality, Dining & Loyalty, Adobe
Jagdish Ghanshani, Managing Partner, Travel & Hospitality, Publicis Sapient
The trend is no longer subtle. Consumers are defecting after just 2.4 negative experiences, and brands failing to meet heightened expectations are losing ground. Meanwhile, those with embedded service intelligence are realizing up to 63% higher retention—gains that are compounding.
This dynamic is reshaping acquisition economics. From 2022 to 2025, acquisition costs rose 35%, while customer lifetime value grew just 4.5%. Brands are overspending to attract customers unlikely to stay—driven by poor personalization, fragmented data, and outdated targeting strategies. Alarmingly, 77% continue to target existing loyalty members via paid media, eroding ROI.
With macroeconomic pressure mounting, cost discipline and agility are paramount. Leaders are responding with targeted investments in cloud platforms, predictive analytics, generative AI, and content supply chains.
In this environment, loyalty, service, and identity strategy are no longer optional—they are foundational to profitable growth.
Our research with travel industry professionals reveals a stark reality: traditional customer strategies are reaching their breaking point. As acquisition costs soar while customer value growth stagnates, travel brands urgently need to reimagine their approaches in a time of increased macro uncertainty. The industry suffers from disconnected marketing channels, missed opportunities with younger travelers, and ineffective personalization.
Meanwhile, service disruptions that could build loyalty often damage it instead. This research provides a perspective on how brands can strengthen customer relationships in today's complex marketplace.
The report is structured into three standalone sections, allowing you to dive into any section independently:
Travel and hospitality firms face a dramatic economic imbalance that threatens industry profitability. Customer acquisition costs (CAC) have surged across all sectors while lifetime value growth remains minimal. This growing disparity between rising investments and stagnant returns creates an unsustainable business model that demands urgent attention.
The numbers tell a troubling story: acquisition costs have skyrocketed while customer value barely increases. Conversion rates remain persistently low, and most first-time customers never return for a second purchase.
Hotel and airline sectors face particularly severe challenges with high-consideration purchases requiring substantial acquisition investments that increasingly outpace customer returns. This fundamental imbalance undermines profitability across the entire industry.
Multiple factors drive this crisis. Digital advertising platforms command ever-higher prices while marketing channels fragment, making cohesive customer journeys increasingly difficult to deliver. Simultaneously, price-sensitive travelers compare options across multiple channels, commoditizing travel products and services.
Without addressing these root causes, the gap between acquisition costs and customer value will continue widening, requiring firms to fundamentally reimagine their approaches to customer relationships—emphasizing efficiency, precision, and compelling experiences that drive meaningful loyalty.
Firms recognize the importance of seamless omnichannel customer experiences, yet continue to operate with fragmented media strategies that undermine efficiency. There is a significant integration gap, with only 9% of firms having fully integrated their paid and owned media approaches with shared KPIs. The majority (46%) maintain partial integration, while 45% have either limited or no integration between these critical channels.
This disconnect prevents consistent messaging across touchpoints, limits customer recognition across channels, and hinders the application of insights from owned channels to improve paid media targeting.
Only 15% of firms employ sophisticated segmentation techniques between paid and owned channels, meaning most miss crucial opportunities to tailor their approach based on customer relationship status. Without advanced segmentation, firms struggle to differentiate messaging between prospects and existing customers, leading to inefficient spending and missed engagement opportunities.
As the digital funnel evolves, cohesive cross-channel strategies become even more critical. Firms that successfully integrate paid and owned media strategies, implementing sophisticated segmentation and consistent messaging across touchpoints, will be better positioned to guide customers through increasingly complex and non-linear purchase journeys.
A startling inefficiency plagues travel marketing efforts: firms are unknowingly spending significant portions of their acquisition budgets targeting customers they already have. This widespread problem not only wastes valuable marketing resources but also represents a missed opportunity to focus on truly new customer acquisition.
Research reveals that 77% of firms unknowingly targeted their own loyalty program members through paid media in 2024, essentially paying to acquire existing customers. This inefficiency stems from inadequate identity resolution capabilities that prevent brands from recognizing existing customers across channels and devices.
The financial impact is substantial, with an estimated 27% of digital customer acquisition budgets wasted on targeting existing customers. This translates to millions in ineffective spending that could be directed toward new customer segments or enhancing experiences for existing ones.
The root causes include fragmented data systems, siloed organizational structures, and the decline of third-party cookies. Despite the clear economic imperative, only 36% of firms have identity resolution capabilities in place. Firms that successfully address this challenge can not only reduce wasted spending but also deliver more personalized experiences that drive conversion and loyalty.
Effective identity resolution presents a dual opportunity to cut costs and enhance customer experiences. Personalized offers delivered the highest ROI as a retention tactic for 75% of firms, highlighting the vital importance of tailored customer engagement.
However, the capability to implement sophisticated personalization remains limited across the industry, creating a significant gap between acknowledged importance and practical implementation.
Only 15% of firms can conduct sophisticated customer segmentation between paid and owned media channels, hindering their ability to deliver truly personalized experiences across touchpoints. This segmentation capability varies significantly by sector, with OTAs (33%) demonstrating greater capabilities than airlines (17%), hotels (9%), and dining establishments (4%). This disparity reflects different levels of digital maturity and data infrastructure across industry segments.
With perfect identity resolution, firms could reduce customer acquisition costs by an estimated 23% industry-wide, representing potential savings of $14 per customer on average. These savings would be most significant for hotels (27% reduction) and dining establishments (31% reduction). While 72% of firms are collecting more first-party data, implementation of advanced strategies varies widely. This creates an opportunity for forward-thinking travel brands to gain competitive advantage through more sophisticated data infrastructure.
Travel & Hospitality leaders are pressured to maximize marketing effectiveness and precisely demonstrate the value of each investment in a changing omnichannel landscape. Modern measurement means breaking down silos—using unified guest data, journey analytics, and advanced attribution—for a full-funnel, outcome-oriented analysis.
53% of marketers at $1B+ companies say revitalizing customer acquisition efforts is a top priority to drive growth.
In the age of AI, brands can now measure campaign efficacy, deliver business signals for optimization, define audience targets collaboratively with partners and publishers, and plan media investments for incremental gains. This allows marketing organizations to prove the value of their acquisition strategies, and set up a modern measurement foundation to better understand the impact upper funnel tactics are having on driving customers through other stages of the lifecycle.
A key indicator of a poor customer acquisition model is a disconnect between predicted and actual business results. If your model predicts certain outcomes that aren’t materializing, it’s a sign that it needs refinement. Regular communication between marketing and data teams is essential to ensure alignment and accuracy.
Regular reevaluation of the customer acquisition model is essential. As customer behavior and market conditions change, your model should adapt accordingly. Additionally, keeping an eye on CAC and ensuring your data management systems are robust will help maintain the effectiveness of your acquisition efforts.
Brands are struggling to connect meaningfully with Gen Z, the next generation of travelers who represent both an immediate opportunity and long-term necessity for industry growth. Currently, Gen Z represents just 14% of loyalty program members across the industry—a significant underrepresentation that signals engagement challenges.
This generational gap is particularly pronounced in hotels and airlines, where Gen Z comprises only 9% and 11% of loyalty program members respectively, compared to 28% in dining establishments.
82% of firms have either no generational strategy or only ad hoc efforts. Only 37% of firms believe they meet the digital expectations of Gen Z customers, with dining establishments (54%) and OTAs (51%) reporting greater confidence compared to hotels (23%) and airlines (31%). This disconnect is especially apparent in key engagement areas where firms recognize importance but lack execution effectiveness—while 95% acknowledge mobile-first experiences as vital, only 55% consider themselves effective.
The consequences of failing to engage Gen Z effectively extend beyond immediate revenue implications. As this digital-native generation gains purchasing power and becomes the core customer base over the next decade, firms that cannot meet their expectations risk long-term market share erosion. Addressing this generational gap requires fundamentally rethinking digital experiences, communication approaches, and value propositions to align with Gen Z preferences for authenticity, social engagement, and frictionless experiences.
The traditional digital funnel is undergoing a transformation driven by emerging technologies and changing consumer behaviors. Most notably, LLM-based search is expected to grow dramatically from just 1% of traffic in 2024 to 7% by 2026, while traditional search channels (both organic and paid) are projected to decline from a combined 36% to 28% of traffic. This shift will require travel brands to completely rethink their discovery strategies as AI increasingly mediates the customer journey.
The rise of LLM-based search represents a paradigm shift from keyword-focused discovery to conversational, intent-driven interactions. Travel firms must adapt by developing content that addresses complex travel questions and scenarios rather than simply targeting search terms. This transformation demands new approaches to content creation, with greater emphasis on comprehensive, authoritative information that can serve as the basis for AI-generated responses. Firms that fail to optimize for this new search paradigm risk becoming increasingly invisible in the evolving digital landscape.
As third-party cookies continue to decline, the importance of first-party data strategies accelerates dramatically. Firms that effectively collect, unify, and activate their own customer data will gain significant advantages in targeting efficiency and personalization capabilities. This trend is driving increased investment in customer data platforms (currently implemented by 39% of firms), authentication strategies (25%), and data clean rooms (16%) as travel and dining brands seek to maintain personalization capabilities in a more privacy-centric digital environment.
Service disruptions represent unavoidable challenges in the travel and hospitality industry, but they also create unique opportunities to build stronger customer relationships when handled effectively. 34% of customers experienced a service disruption in 2024, with significant variation across sectors—from 42.6% for airlines to 14.8% for dining establishments.
These moments of service failure become critical touchpoints that can either damage customer relationships or, with the right recovery approach, strengthen loyalty beyond pre-disruption levels.
Firms that execute effective service recovery strategies (incorporating timely response, right resolution, and empathy) see an average 63% uplift in customer retention compared to those with ineffective recovery. This “service recovery paradox” demonstrates that well-handled service failures can actually create stronger emotional connections than uninterrupted experiences. However, many firms fail to capitalize on this opportunity.
While 52% of firms differentiate their service recovery based on customer segments, 86% are focused primarily on loyalty tier status rather than more nuanced factors like customer personas or specific disruption contexts. This one-dimensional approach limits effectiveness and misses opportunities for more personalized resolution. Furthermore, only 6% are leveraging AI to personalize service recovery—representing a significant untapped opportunity to enhance recovery effectiveness through more tailored responses.
Artificial intelligence presents transformative opportunities to enhance personalization across the customer journey, yet adoption remains in its early stages across the industry. Research reveals that while some firms have begun implementing AI in customer-facing channels like chatbots (14%) and mobile apps (11%), more sophisticated applications that could drive significant business impact remain largely unexplored. Only 8% have implemented AI for offers and promotions, 7% for loyalty programs, and a mere 5% for CRM—all areas where AI-driven personalization could substantially improve business outcomes.
Implementation rates vary meaningfully across industry sectors, reflecting different levels of digital maturity and strategic prioritization. OTAs generally lead in AI adoption, with higher implementation rates across most application areas, likely due to their digital-native business models and more advanced data capabilities. Conversely, dining establishments show the lowest adoption rates, with significant opportunities to leverage AI for personalization as they digitize more of their customer interactions.
The gap between current implementation and potential impact is particularly notable given that 75% of firms report personalized offers as delivering the highest ROI among retention tactics. This disconnect suggests that many travel brands recognize the value of personalization but have yet to leverage AI as a critical enabler. Beyond obvious applications like chatbots, significant opportunities exist for dynamic pricing, personalized recommendations, predictive service recovery, and real-time experience personalization.
Incisiv is a peer-to-peer executive network and industry insights firm for consumer industry executives navigating digital disruption. Incisiv offers curated executive learning, digital maturity benchmarks, and prescriptive transformation insights to clients across the consumer and technology industry spectrum. incisiv.com
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Publicis Sapient is a digital business transformation company. We partner with global organizations to help them create and sustain competitive advantage in a world that is increasingly digital. We operate through our expert SPEED—Strategy, Product, Experience, Engineering and Data and AI—capabilities which, combined with our culture of curiosity and deep industry knowledge, enables us to deliver meaningful impact to our clients’ businesses through reimagining the products and experiences their customers truly value.
Our agile, data-driven approach equips our clients’ businesses for change, making digital the core of how they think and what they do. Publicis Sapient is the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe with 20,000 people and over 50 offices worldwide. For more information, visit publicissapient.com