‘Hyper-personalisation key to fostering customer loyalty’, say experts

“Hyper-personalisation” continues to be a key factor for brands when fostering loyalty among high-net-worth clients, according to luxury travel experts.

Speaking at Aspire’s annual Leaders of Luxury conference, senior executives from luxury travel brands said building “close relationships”, delivering “magic service” and understanding “the value of time” were essential to ensuring a client kept returning.

Dino Michael, senior vice-president and global head of Hilton Luxury Brands, said the group considered three pillars when thinking about loyalty: value, trust and relationships.

He said: “Customers want to know that the experience will be tailored to their particular needs and that the staff really know them.

“You’re designing [the customer experience] for the behaviours that need hyper-personalisation.”

Anna Nash, chief commercial officer of Aman, agreed, adding that “consistency” and “the value of time” were other important factors.

She said: “For affluent clients, money is their disposable factor, but time is not. We have to understand what they’re giving to us in terms of the trust of their time and get the experience right time after time.”

Jimmy Carroll, co-founder of luxury experiential tour operator Pelorus, said brands must go the “extra-mile” when getting to know their clients.

He said: “We invest time in getting to know them better than even their wealth manager or doctor because we are dealing with all elements of their life.”

With multi-generational family trips accounting for a large proportion of the operator’s bookings, Carroll said it was important to understand the “different dynamics between the family and feed that into the trip”.

He recounted a story about a time Pelorus had pitched a client an itinerary to visit the best coastlines in the world after noticing coastal-themed artwork in their home.

“The client said to us, ‘No-one has ever thought of me like that,’” he said, adding that high levels of personalisation had earned the six-year-old operator a 66% repeat client base that was “growing 100% year on year”.

Nash agreed a repeat client base was critical to a brand’s success. Regularly returning Aman guests are colloquially named ‘Aman junkies’ – a term Nash said is worn as “a badge of honour”.

She added: “We have a really close relationship with all of our customers, so we really know when they come to stay, how many times they’ve stayed, what they love, what they dislike.”

When asked how the brand determines which markets to expand into to retain its loyal following, Nash said: “I think it’s really important as a brand as we carefully grow into new markets that we feed the addiction of our existing clients, but also reach out to new customers.”

To reward customers for their loyalty, luxury tour operator Abercrombie & Kent is implementing plans to expand its consumer and trade loyalty programmes.

Carley Ayres, A&K Travel Group’s global partnerships manager, said: “Something we’re working on is really getting to know that customer more and more and rewarding them, as we feel that if you’ve travelled once with us, you deserve loyalty in return.”