Bring Life Back into Your Marketing with Gamification for Travel Companies

Travelers are more selective than ever about when and who they do business with; you must emphasize why customers should choose you over others. An easy way to stand out is to change your marketing.

Refresh your brand image and improve customer experience with gamification—using game mechanics to make tasks fun to complete. It’s an easy, unobtrusive way to connect with your customers.

Learn how to use gamification for travel companies to your advantage below.

The Battle the Travel Industry Is Facing

While having recovered from the pandemic, the travel industry is still facing many challenges—some of which may be affecting your business—such as:

Travel is viewed more as a luxury as financial anxieties grow.

Corporate travel is slowing down

Luxury travelers are taking a simpler approach to traveling

Travelers are focusing on experience rather than brand—leading to less loyalty

Travelers' expectations of what luxury travel means are changing

Solve Your Travel Business’s Biggest Problems through Gamification

Break out of your usual marketing cycle tactics to create campaigns as exciting as the places your travelers go. Here’s how to use gamification in the travel industry.

Use FOMO to Sell Experience instead of Traveling

You need to make your travelers forget about cost and instead focus on the fun they are going to have. You can do this through user-generated content (UGC) and FOMO (fear of missing out)

However, people won’t share their information without a reward. So, why not make sharing information into a game?  

Create a contest where your customers can earn prizes like loyalty points, exclusive discounts, or even a local experience. To win, customers must post a picture of their travels on social media along with a relevant hashtag.

Build Loyalty Through Repeat Traveling

Returning customers are crucial to maintaining and growing your travel business. To encourage repeat business, build a loyalty program that rewards returning travelers.

Use our travel loyalty program integration platform to elevate your existing program through gamification—offering games or in-person experiences for a chance to earn rewards.

Repeat interactions create an emotional connection, which increases their loyalty to your brand. Not only will this encourage repeat business, but it will also have customers referring you to others—growing your customer base.

Turn Upselling into Elevating Experience

Take advantage of the new focus on all aspects of the travel experience and upsell more to your customers. Travel gamification can encourage upselling in many ways, from offering special rewards for spending to logging in daily for exclusive upgrades.

You can even tie upgrades to special, limited-time events to encourage more participation.

So, when people are traveling less, you can maintain profits through upselling.

Real Examples of Gamification Marketing for Travel Businesses

See how gamification can help your travel business.

Ruby Tuesday

Alaska Airlines

Using an interactive game and quiz on its blog, Alaska Airlines connected with customers during the pandemic by educating them about Covid and flying.

The results:

Read the Case Study →
Ruby Tuesday

Best Western

Ensuring customers continue to choose them for their hotel needs, Best Western created a slot machine game for its loyalty program. Customers could win 250 loyalty points or the grand prize of 150,000 points!

The results:

Read the Case Study →
Cinemark - Marvel

Southwest Airlines

Celebrating National Wanna Get Away Day, Southwest Airlines created a scratch-off campaign to increase engagement and capture customer data. Players could win round-trip flights, companion passes, and Rapid Reward® bonus points! On the last day of the campaign, they added an instant reveal mechanic for instant gratification.

The results:

Read the Case Study →

How You Can Create a Custom Experience for Your Travelers

Delight your customers with a completely customized—and branded—game. Choose from over 200 mechanics from our Catapult platform and have a game up and running in less than four weeks.

Don’t worry, you won’t have to do everything on your own. Our experts will guide you through the process to ensure you create the most entertaining game possible.

Our subscription-based pricing offers travel gamification without breaking your marketing budget.

Make Travel, Not Just the Destination, Fun

Engage customers through fun games to build loyalty, repeat business, and grow your business. Create a custom game that ensures customers remember your brand every time they want to travel.

Contact Us to Get Started →