How Three of the World’s Leading Travel Companies Are Building More Resilient Customer Experiences
The holiday season—or at least the holiday travel booking season—is firmly upon us. For many people, this time of year conjures up associations with family, celebration, and renewal—but also snowstorms, crowded airports, and curveballs in travel plans.
You may recall what happened last December, as unprecedented delays and cancellations created logistical nightmares for many families across the U.S. Travel companies can’t control the weather, but they can prepare for heavy demand amidst uncertainty. In these critical moments, an organization’s operational resilience is tested. No less than the preservation of revenue and reputation is at stake.
For these brands, investing in their operational infrastructure isn’t optional.
With the PagerDuty Operations Cloud, some of the world’s leading travel companies not only prevent travel disruptions, but also orchestrate and accelerate responses if issues do arise. They’re leveraging the power of automation and AI within PagerDuty to detect and diagnose disruptive events, mobilize responders, and streamline workflows at machine speed.
Let’s hear from three travel leaders investing in their operational infrastructure to mitigate risk, provide reliable customer experiences, and ultimately win and protect revenue.
A Surge in Bookings for TUI
As the world’s largest integrated tourism organization, TUI provides end-to-end travel experiences with a network of 400 hotels, 130 aircraft, and 16 cruise ships across the globe. Customers turn to TUI so they can focus on their holiday, instead of the process of planning it.
With PagerDuty, TUI was able to consolidate its tools for end-to-end, event-driven incident management. By streamlining its existing stack, the TUI team now has all the right information in one place. And PagerDuty AIOps and Event Orchestration have enabled TUI to automate scripts to recover from a service disruption.
If there is a service disruption, TUI knows how to respond, with the help of PagerDuty. “The organization has become very agile and cost-effective,” says Yasin Quareshy, Head of Technology at TUI. “Not only is the service downtime reduced, we do see a higher booking rate from our customers.”
For TUI, the business impact is in the millions of dollars saved. “The PagerDuty Operations Cloud is critical for TUI,” says Quareshy. “This is what is actually going to help us grow as a business when it comes to making sure that we provide quality services for our customers. We want to create trust with our customers and PagerDuty allows us to build that trust.”
Hear more from Yasin Quareshy at TUI
Carnival’s Reduction in Operating Costs
As the world’s largest experience enterprise, Carnival Corporation has become synonymous with the cruise line business. The brand takes pride in democratizing a premium vacation experience to all, with the guest experience as core to everything they do.
With PagerDuty, Carnival replaced its traditional ticketing system for managing incidents with real-time operations. So instead of a long queue of tickets to react to, Carnival is able to proactively respond to issues before the guest is impacted. “We look to PagerDuty to integrate with the old world while moving us to a new world,” says John Padgett, Chief Experience and Innovation Officer at Carnival Corporation.
In this new world, Carnival can prioritize the guest experience to ensure customer satisfaction remains as high as possible. “PagerDuty is very critical because we have to have that 24x7x365 complete reliability—the technology has to work all the time,” Padgett says. “It allows us to reduce costs while improving guest service.”
Hear more from John Padgett at Carnival
How Priceline Protects Revenue
If you’ve ever been on the prowl for the best travel deal online, you know that things can change on a dime. And so when the moment is right, it’s incredibly important for a platform like Priceline to meet and exceed your expectations. “Our job is to make sure that the site is functioning quickly, accurately, and intuitively so that customers can find the deals they’re looking for,” says Will Holmes, Senior Director for Site Operations at Priceline. “The customer experience is incredibly important.”
The Priceline team is able to effectively monitor their digital operations in real time. “The operations center’s use of the PagerDuty Visibility Console has reduced our visual clutter and noise, and provided clarity,” says Eric Foxhall, Director of Site Reliability Operations.
Holmes says that issues with Priceline’s site—even for short periods of time—could cost the company hundreds of offers. “Reducing the time of those incidents is the biggest business value we can ask for,” he says. “PagerDuty has given us the ability to save money.”
Priceline’s partnership with PagerDuty has led to more than just tactical benefits for the team. “It’s created a lot more visibility into what is happening—it’s created a culture of support,” says Holmes.
Hear more from Will Homes at Priceline
Moving the Travel Industry Forward
Customer expectations are continually on the rise, especially for digital excellence in service and experience. As these three leaders illustrate, travel remains an industry where the customer experience is the brand. Without it, everything else falls apart.
It starts with the team itself: Empowering the organization to work better together—with the help of a platform powered by automation and AI—leads to more reliable and seamless experiences that keep customers coming back for more.
Whether you’re addressing a single incident or the operational backbone of your enterprise, it’s imperative to be proactive and “audible-ready.” TUI, Carnival, and Priceline each identified operational excellence as a critical success factor to drive their business, and were proactive in their level of investment and innovation dedicated towards it—all in the name of securing trust, protecting their brand, and safeguarding revenue. The level of scrutiny may be heightened during the holiday season, but a reliable customer experience is paramount no matter the time of year.
“With the PagerDuty Operations Cloud, the travel industry can provide exceptional experiences for travelers while maintaining the highest standards of service reliability,” says Tim Armandpour, Chief Technology Officer at PagerDuty. “In an industry where the customer experience is everything, we know that operational resilience and reliability are of utmost importance for our customers.”
To continue your organization’s journey towards operational excellence, learn more about the PagerDuty Operations Cloud here or contact us to learn more.