The customer journey: Turning obstacles into experiences
Many of the most responsible travel businesses I know are actually quite shitty when it comes to making a great customer journey. Understand me right: they are fantastic on location, their product is good.
But what happens on the way?
Let’s just say there’s plenty of room for improvement.
To make your responsible option the preferred one, it has to be better or at least equally attractive compared to other options for your clients.
Understanding the customer journey is essential for creating an experience that transcends a typical trip and becomes an unforgettable journey. A single poor experience can ruin an entire holiday, while a thoughtful touch can elevate an ordinary moment into something extraordinary.
Here's where a common mistake occurs: many believe that the customer’s journey starts and ends with their visit to your hotel, attraction, or destination. It would certainly make planning easier if you only had to worry about what happens when your guest arrives. But that’s not enough for long-term success. The experience extends far beyond that one moment unless you have a "drop-in" concept, of course.
The customer journey is a dynamic process, made up of many phases and touchpoints. These stages should be carefully planned, just like any journey. Think about it: you can’t plan a trip from Oslo to London without considering how to get from one city to the next. Similarly, each step in the guest’s journey should seamlessly flow into the next. Every phase must connect to create a cohesive experience, and every touchpoint builds the bigger picture. The entire journey is greater than the sum of its parts.
In traditional tourism, we often break down the customer journey into phases:
Dreaming – When the guest first becomes aware of your destination.
Planning – When they begin considering your destination as an option.
Booking – When they’ve selected you, and now it’s time to smooth out the booking process.
Experiencing – When they finally visit and immerse themselves in the experience.
Sharing – Where they reflect on and share their journey, recommending it to others.
Each phase represents a distinct opportunity to engage with your customer. The experience doesn’t just happen when they’re at your location. It starts with their dreams and continues as they reflect on their trip long after it’s over.
Let’s consider the guest journey in slightly different terms:
Anticipation: Building excitement and desire.
Transit: Reassuring guests they made the right decision.
On-Site: The experience itself, the interactions, the atmosphere, and the people.
Transit (again): The journey home and final impressions.
Reflection: The aftermath, the memories, the photos, and the social media shares.
As you can see, the journey consists of more than just the time spent at the destination. Every interaction is a touchpoint, and every touchpoint offers the potential to elevate the experience. The magic happens when you make these touchpoints seamless and meaningful.
Take my experience last summer at a children’s music festival with my family. The planning phase was smooth, easy bookings and helpful information that built up the kids' excitement. But during the transit phase, things weren’t ideal: the kids fought in the car, leaving us in a bad mood. But as we approached the festival, we were greeted warmly by staff, which immediately lifted our spirits. Little details, like fun hats for the kids and clear signage, helped make the experience smoother. Even a scraped knee was quickly forgotten thanks to an ice cream cone and a princess band-aid.
The day wasn’t without hiccups, long queues for drinks and bathroom breaks tested our patience, but the experience wasn’t ruined. In the end, we left with happy kids, photos, and a bunch of good memories.
This example illustrates how the customer journey can involve many phases and touchpoints, each offering an opportunity to enhance or diminish the experience. Every small adjustment at each touchpoint can have a big impact. It’s about creating a seamless journey from anticipation to reflection.
A key part of this is making sure you communicate clearly and in ways that engage visitors. Information is useful, but too much can overwhelm. Instead of just facts, use stories, examples, and interactive experiences that encourage your guests to connect with their surroundings. The more senses you can engage, like sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell, the more likely guests are to remember and cherish the experience. When you surprise and delight them, you create emotional connections that turn great experiences into lasting memories.
In today’s digital world, travelers interact with Facebook and Google daily but only engage with your brand a few times a year. This makes brand loyalty fragile. That's why it's essential to break down traditional engagement silos and start interacting with your guests where they already are, outside the typical phases of dreaming, planning, and booking.
This is where the concept of unreasonable hospitality comes in.
As highlighted in the book Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, it's not about meeting expectations, it’s about exceeding them in every phase of the journey. It’s about taking the extra step, no matter how small, to create a lasting impact. Transform a good experience into an exceptional one.
"Hospitality is not about the service you give; it’s about the way you make people feel."
– Will Guidara
By adopting an omnichannel approach, you can enhance the number and quality of your touchpoints, creating a more comprehensive and meaningful customer experience. Every interaction, from the moment a guest dreams about visiting your destination to the day they share their experience, is an opportunity to build a stronger, deeper connection.
The customer journey isn’t just about the destination. It’s about every contact point along the way, and it’s in your hands to make those steps unforgettable.
In Unreasonable Hospitality, Will Guidara shares an innovative approach to presenting the bill:
"At Eleven Madison Park, we didn’t wait for the guest to ask for the check. Instead, at the end of their meal, we’d bring the bill over and drop it off—with an entire bottle of cognac. We’d pour everyone at the table a splash and leave the full bottle. We would encourage them to help themselves and pay the check when they were ready."
This method transformed the typically transactional moment of paying the bill into a luxurious and personalized experience, allowing guests to feel unhurried and valued.
Why not make the worst bottle(neck) an amazing experience?
