How travel brands can improve customer experience

Customer expectations in travel have always been high, but they’ve shifted in more subtle ways over the past few years. It’s no longer just about speed or availability. It’s about how confident customers feel at each stage of the journey, especially when something doesn’t go to plan.

That creates a particular challenge for travel brands. It’s not that customer experience is fundamentally broken. In many cases, it’s that businesses may be seeing the experience very differently from the people they’re trying to support. And those gaps, while easy to miss internally, are often where the most useful opportunities sit.

Moneypenny’s latest Customer Experience Divide research helps bring that into clearer focus. Carried out with Censuswide in January 2026, it draws on the views of 2,000 senior decision-makers and 5,001 nationally representative UK consumers, offering a robust picture of where business perception and customer reality are no longer aligned.

For travel brands, that matters because the experience is rarely judged in a calm, low-stakes moment. It’s judged when plans change, time matters and reassurance suddenly becomes part of the service itself. That’s why even small disconnects can have a much bigger impact than they first appear to.

What the research shows at a glance:

• ‍40 percentage point gap: 74% of travel businesses say social media meets expectations well, versus 34% of consumers.‍
• 33 percentage point gap: 71% say web forms are working well, compared with 39% of consumers.‍
• 32 percentage point gap: 59% say chatbots meet expectations well, versus 28% of consumers.‍
• 22 percentage point gap: 77% are comfortable with AI booking appointments or reservations, versus 56% of consumers.‍
• 11 percentage point gap versus all UK businesses: 37% of travel businesses say loyalty is driven by consistently positive experiences, compared with 26% across all UK businesses.

Where travel customer support is falling short of customer expectations

One of the clearest patterns in the research is how travel brands rate their support channels compared with how consumers actually experience them. Across multiple touchpoints, business confidence is much higher than customer confidence, which suggests that some of the channels brands rely on most heavily may not be landing in the way they expect.

The biggest channel perception gaps

‍

Social media

74% travel vs 34% consumers

Gap: 40 percentage points

‍

Web forms

71% travel vs 39% consumers

Gap: 33 percentage points

Chatbots

59% travel vs 28% consumers

Gap: 32 percentage points

AI receptionist

52% travel vs 25% consumers

Gap: 28 percentage points

‍

What’s striking here isn’t just the size of the gaps, although some of them are substantial. It’s how consistent the pattern is, because tourism brands are leaning hard into digital-first support while customers aren’t always experiencing those channels as smoothly, clearly or helpfully as intended.

For a sector where speed, reassurance and convenience are so closely tied to booking confidence, that’s a big deal, because a channel can look well oiled from the inside and still feel confusing or frustrating to the person using it.

How should travel companies use AI in customer service?

The AI data gets closer to a more strategic question, because it’s less about whether travel businesses are interested in automation, and more about where customer trust still has some catching up to do. Confidence is highest when AI feels practical, useful and low risk, but the business view remains noticeably more optimistic than the customer view.

Where AI confidence rises

‍

AI understands what the customer wants easily

77% travel vs 57% consumers

Gap: 21 percentage points

AI books appointments or reservations

77% travel vs 56% consumers

Gap: 22 percentage points

Human handoff available at any point

78% travel vs 68% consumers

Gap: 10 percentage points

What comes through here is fairly clear: travel businesses are moving ahead with automation, but customers are still judging it on whether it feels effortless, understandable and easy to escalate to a real person when needed. The brands most likely to benefit from AI won’t simply be the ones that automate more, they’ll be the ones that make automation feel reassuring as well as efficient.

In travel, where bookings can feel high stakes and support often kicks in at moments of uncertainty, that’s a meaningful opportunity.

Why out-of-hours customer support matters in travel

Out-of-hours support is one of those areas where the data needs a little interpretation, because travel businesses place much more value on it than consumers do on paper, particularly when it comes to flexibility, competitiveness and trust. At first glance, that can look like overestimation, but in practice it points to something more interesting.

How travel businesses and consumers view out-of-hours support

‍

Supports different schedules

48% travel vs 26% consumers

Gap: 22 percentage points

Helps stay competitive

45% travel vs 24% consumers

Gap: 21 percentage points

‍

Builds trust

42% travel vs 21% consumers

Gap: 21 percentage points

Customers may not always describe out-of-hours support as a must-have feature, but they absolutely feel its value when plans change, delays happen or they’re dealing with a different time zone. That makes this less about offering longer hours for the sake of it and more about making support feel visible, accessible and reassuring when the stakes are higher.

For travel brands, that is a useful distinction, because the real opportunity sits in being available at the right moments rather than simply being available more often.

Why personalisation matters in travel customer experience

Personalisation is still seen as a key part of strong customer experience in tourism, and businesses clearly believe in its value. The interesting nuance is that, while consumers also care about it, the level of importance travel brands place on personalisation is noticeably higher.

The personalisation gap

‍

Travel businesses rating personalisation as important: 87%

Consumers rating personalisation as important: 68%

Gap: 19 percentage points

That doesn’t necessarily mean travel brands are wrong to prioritise it, but it does suggest that personalisation isn’t always being felt in the way businesses assume it is. In a booking journey, where customers are comparing options, weighing cost and thinking practically, relevance has to be obvious in the moment or it risks fading into the background.

The opportunity here is not simply to personalise more. It’s to personalise more meaningfully, in a way that actually helps customers feel understood and makes their decision easier.

How age shapes customer expectations in travel

Age adds another layer to the picture. Younger customers tend to be more comfortable with digital channels, chat-based support and AI-led interactions, but even they are not as positive about those experiences as travel businesses are. Older customers are more cautious, and they place greater value on clarity, reassurance and human support, especially when something feels complex or time-sensitive.

That matters because it points to one of the biggest blind spots in travel customer experience. There isn’t a single model of support that works equally well for everyone, and a customer might be perfectly happy using a chatbot to check a detail while wanting a real person the moment plans change. The experience has to flex with the context rather than force people down one route.

What drives customer loyalty in travel?

One of the more commercially useful findings is how travel brands think about loyalty. Compared with the wider UK business picture, they are more likely to link loyalty to consistently positive experiences, which points to a stronger recognition that retention is built over time rather than won through one standout moment.

What keeps customers loyal

‍

Consistently positive experience

37% travel vs 26% all UK businesses

Gap: 11 percentage points

‍

That matters because travel is often shaped by repeated interactions rather than just one booking. When loyalty is built on consistency, even small points of friction become more significant, and a delayed response, a poor handoff or a support channel that looks good on paper but feels awkward in practice can all chip away at confidence over time.

For travel brands, that makes customer support more than an operational function. It becomes part of the experience customers remember, compare and come back for.

What travel brands should take from these findings

Taken together, the data points to a clear challenge. Travel brands are not ignoring customer experience, and if anything they are investing heavily in it, but the risk is that some of that investment is being guided by internal confidence rather than what customers are actually experiencing. That is exactly where blind spots start to form.

The brands most likely to stand out will be the ones that stay close to what customers actually feel, especially in moments of uncertainty, friction or change, because in travel it’s not just about getting someone from A to B. It’s about how supported they feel along the way.