Marketing and Media

The State of Marketing Technology in Travel 2019

Marketing and Media

The State of Marketing Technology in Travel 2019

January 2019
35 min read
Haixia Wang and James O'Brien

Skift Take

The role of marketing technology in the travel industry has passed the threshold of adoption, but significant attention is still required to bring the technology at work into its true and central role, industry-wide.

Report Overview

In this report, a proprietary Skift survey opens vistas onto the state of marketing technology (martech) solutions in the travel industry in 2019. While 72% of Skift's respondents said martech is critical to their competitive edge, significant attention is still required to bring the technology at work into its true and central role industrywide. This will require leaders in every vertical to make decisions about whether to bring dedicated individuals and teams into their personnel stack to help steer martech efforts, and it will also call upon them to define the next phase of vendor relationships. On top of all these responsibilities lays the increasingly powerful element of artificial intelligence; when it works, the results in terms of outcomes and lift have been shown to be remarkable. And while the promise of martech is clear, the backdrop against which it is evolving is a data milieu, replete with not only potential for efficient, ROI-focused results, but also the need for consumer data privacy policies and compliance to the coming range of global and regional regulatory changes.

What You'll Learn From This Report

  • An overview of the current state of martech solutions in the travel industry
  • The roles, outcomes, and next steps of martech
  • Martech use cases for airlines, car rentals, cruises, destinations, and hospitality
  • Structural and skill needs for optimal martech execution
  • Vendors and in-house dynamics within martech
  • The artificial intelligence equation
  • Data challenges and regulatory developments