Episode 298: Sharing Data to Enhance the Customer Journey, with Scott Garner

Scott is a longtime travel industry data guru, having served in senior executive roles at United, Adara, and Orbitz. He was instrumental in the founding of Orbitz and is CRO at Journera, which has been recognized as one of the World’s “10 Most Innovative Travel Companies“ by Fast Company and a “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum. Participating companies include United, American, Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, IHG, and many others.

On this episode of Destination on the Left, I talk with Scott Garner, Chief Revenue Officer for Jounera, about the brand’s unique data collaboration model that sees hotels, destinations, and airlines working together. He describes how the shared data helps marketers to create a 360-degree view of the travelers’ journey, identify potential customers and anticipate their needs seamlessly.

What You Will Learn in this Episode:

• How Journera facilitates seamless travel experiences and how they got the six big founding partners on board
• Why competing travel brands come together and share data to learn how the consumer is moving through the planning and purchase stage of travel and arrival
• How to focus on the areas of common interest and common benefit when creating a partnership
• How to foster communication and collaboration in the travel industry while still allowing brands to retain their uniqueness
• What Journera does with the data to benefit and provide those solutions for their clients
• The importance of data in digital marketing in the travel industry
• What historical data tells you a lot about a person’s future behavior and how that helps marketers in the travel and tourism industry

Collaborating with Shared Data

Journera was founded to take advantage of the insights that the travel and tourism industry can take from sharing data to make the visitor journey as seamless as possible. Scott talks about why it’s so important to bring together travel companies, even companies that are competitors, for the common good, which is to make the travel experience better. Travel involves piecing together many components, and you need companies, from airlines to car rental agencies, to enhance the traveler experience, and sharing data is the way to do that.

Retaining Uniqueness

There are times when Journera partners compete fiercely against one another, but there are also times when they’re stronger and need to collaborate and work together to create more efficient marketing solutions. Scott describes how he and his team create a win-win scenario while also being mindful that there are some parts of that relationship that have to be fenced off. The critical thing is to focus on the areas where cooperating benefits everybody involved, especially the consumer.

Using Data to Move Forward

At the core of what Journera does is assess data and then distill the findings to make them more usable in a marketing context. Scott describes how the team integrates individual partners’ data into their broader digital ecosystem, enabling marketers to target their potential visitors with greater precision. He outlines how data drives intelligence, which in turn helps DMOs make sound investment decisions to put themselves in the best position to move forward with confidence.

Resources:

• Website: https://journera.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/journera/
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-garner-8504942/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/journera

We value your thoughts and feedback and would love to hear from you. Leave us a review on your favorite streaming platform to let us know what you want to hear more of. Here is a quick tutorial on how to leave us a rating and review on iTunes!: https://breaktheicemedia.com/rating-review/