New Personality Matching App Drives Destination Bookings
ACCESS Newswire
The Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia Hotel and Destination Marketing Site has seen a Significant Increase in Engagement and Bookings with the new PersonaHolidays Personality Matching App. The App Creates Personal Holiday Recommendations Using Advanced Personality Matching Technology
BRIDGETOWN, BARBADOS / ACCESSWIRE / January 16, 2017 / PersonaHolidays is an Intelligent psychology-based technology that puts personality into travel planning and booking. Its first client, the Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia and its website Barbados.org, has proved the value of the application. Visitors using PersonaHolidays on the Holidays.Barbados.org site stay longer and do more and bookings have soared as a result. . See more on the Barbados blog here http://barbados.org/blog/how-barbados-made-personality-part-of-holiday-planning.
Kathy-Lynn Ward, COO of the Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia: "Barbados.org have seen an increase of 500% in bookings for visitors to the Persona Holidays.Barbados.org channel. "Visitors use the channel to search for and find hotels that match their personal needs and personality. As Ward says, "Travellers love the app, which quickly provides them their own unique travel persona and matches them up with hotels of compatible character."
Guests' feedback confirms that the app's traveller profiles and hotel and holiday recommendations are spot on. "The feedback has a 98% positive rating with just 2% saying its not quiet right and that is being addressed now," says Ward.
The app is different to any other booking or travel planning system in that it is based on personality. Its intelligent systems predict travellers interest and personas from their clicks and choices while searching for hotels and holiday options. "The mind behind this is the vast database that PersonaHolidays continues to create and perfect with each hotel and visitor interaction. It is constantly growing and learning, and the real magic is that it does not ask travellers to complete a questionnaire or do a personality test. Personas are implied from choices and relationships. All this experience and knowledge is contained in the data mind," says Ward.
The PersonaHolidays team does work with hotels to create their unique brand persona. "The persona team interviews each hotel using a personality branding approach developed by Sally Hogshead," Ward says. "This provides a Archetype which is then run through a Matchwords engine to create the travel persona attributes. That process requires a fair amount of human interaction to clearly define the hotel character."
For an example of how it works, Ward used the case of a traveller who has shown an interest in holidays off the beaten track. For that client the app recommended Bathsheba, a windswept escape on the rugged east coast of Barbados along the fierce Atlantic Ocean. Four (4) hotels might suite that particular traveller, all varying in nuanced ways. Atlantis Hotel is classified as the Avant Garde – a luxury property with a twist of rustic charm. Another contender was Sea-U, rustic – for the more artisan. There is also a budget inn for the frugal traveller and something a bit more soulful for the mystic. In the case in point the traveller's persona suggested the first option, the Atlantis for the Avant Garde, which was perfect for their personality.
PersonaHolidays is unique in matching travellers with hotels based on personality in several ways:
PersonaHolidays App matches travelers with hotels by personality and offers truly personal vacation recommendations
It can be implemented with almost any existing booking systems
It may be installed without having to change software
It creates travel personas by behaviour tracking and predictive analysis. This makes it really easy and fun to use. Travellers enjoy the process and many comments have been received saying how accurate it is.Search results are very targeted and travellers get a few well-defined suggestions rather than a page full of options, typically present with standard booking engines. This vastly reduces the clutter and overload, which is one of their biggest complaints with travel booking.Hotels are individually branded with an established brand personality test which is refined into the brand travel persona by the PersonaHolidays systems experts.Destination marketers can install the app on top of any booking engine or travel planning system they may have. This means they do not have to invest in expensive technology or replace or re-engineer existing systems.
Ward says Barbados was the perfect testing ground as it has a diverse range of properties, including some ranked as the best luxury hotels in the world. It also has many small local B&B, guest houses, apartments and villas. The Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia destination marketing website is the largest information site of Barbados vacation and holiday information. It has over 100,000 pages, images and videos on all aspects of island life – travel documents, festivals, events, where to stay and what to do – with search engines, holiday planning and bookings.
Now that the app is fully tested and proven, the team is putting final touches to financing and preparing for the next move; to license the technology to other tourism destination management and marketing organizations. A few chain hotels and other travel technology companies have already shown interest in the solution.
PersonaHolidays plans to license its personality matching technology to destinations, hotel association and groups. Several chain hotels and niche suppliers have already expressed interest. The company is seeking investment to launch internationally.
The Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia Destination Marketing Organization website was established in1995. it was one of the first tourism destinations with an extensive multimedia presence. Its Tourism innovations have been commended by Google and featured in the New York Times and include the first Facebook booking engine for small hotels. The website provides insightful travel guides, accommodation, activity and events directories as well as holiday planning and bookings. PersonaHolidays, which creates unique personal vacations based on personality matching, is the latest addition to Barbados.org's innovative technology.
