Why omnichannel customer support is critical for travel brands

The demand for travel keeps increasing: the size of the global online travel market was $600 billion USD in 2023 and forecast to exceed $800 billion by 2028. For travel industry brands that want to capture as much of the market as they can, it’s essential to provide omnichannel customer support.

Customers use over six touch points on average in their buyer’s journey, meaning they have lots of opportunities to interact with and communicate with your brand. For travel brands, the stakes are especially high: many of the customer service inquiries involve time sensitive matters, emotional investment on the customer’s end, and potentially some stressed out travelers. If it’s hard for them to reach out to you to solve an issue, that alone can be the start of a travel nightmare.

We’ll dig into why omnichannel support is so important for travel industry brands and how it can benefit your customers and your team.

Travel is inherently multichannel - so customer service should be

Travelers interact with hospitality brands across booking sites, apps, texts, kiosks, calls, social media, and in-person touchpoints.

Travelers need responsiveness and consistency across all of these channels. If your customer support tech stack can’t support omnichannel, that increases the risk of an inconsistent experience. Common travel disruptions like delays, cancellations, lost luggage, missed connections require fast, flexible support, and good support can make the difference between a minor disruption or a trip-ruining event.

People also often travel in groups, and one person in the party may prefer to pick up the phone while someone else wants to reach out via chat. Being able to address a wider array of communication styles can mean you can solve one issue for multiple guests, building loyalty when you save the day for everyone on the family reunion or bachelorette trip.

Travelers aren’t one-size-fits-all, and their communication preferences vary widely by culture.

Here’s one example: Qualtrics studied the ways that consumers around the globe prefer to communicate, including their preferred methods of booking airline tickets. In South Korea, almost a quarter want to chat with an automated system online - but in Spain, a quarter want to book flights with someone in person!

That’s why omnichannel customer support is so vital for travel brands, especially multinational brands that may have guests from every corner of the globe. It lets guests connect on the platform they’re most comfortable with, in their preferred language and style. This means there’s less friction, more trust, and smoother service during high-stress travel moments when experience matters.

A complete view of the guest journey across channels

Travelers often move across channels, such as booking via the brand’s website, asking a question on social media, then doing contactless check-in via an app - and they want responses fast. Emplifi studied consumer-brand social media engagement and found that over half of consumers expect brands to respond to social media direct messages within six hours. The clock is ticking as soon as a customer or potential customer reaches out!

If you want to appease customers, you’ll need an omnichannel customer support platform that pulls in social media direct messages along with all of the other customer information and touchpoints that provide context for the guest. Kustomer makes this easier for your agents with the Timeline view. This makes it easy for agents to get a full history of each customer’s prior communications, without needing to search through old tickets or toggle between tabs.

Turning support into a brand differentiator

Hospitality and travel is one of the clearest examples of something where many customers will happily spend more for a higher level of service. Travelers can get the same basic thing, such as a seat on a flight, from a no-frills airline or they can spend significantly more for a first-class seat with legroom and meal service. 

Omnichannel customer support can be one of those things that helps travel brands win over the types of customers that will happily spend more for a better experience. When travelers can get help quickly, whether through chat, email, or messaging apps, they remember it. Smooth, responsive service builds trust, which can help you clinch a client that’s considering traveling with you for the first time, plus lead to glowing reviews, referrals, and long-term loyalty.

For smaller hospitality brands, this is a powerful way to stand out or compete with larger national or global chains. By meeting guests where they are and resolving issues efficiently, you can deliver the kind of memorable service that rivals much larger competitors. In a market where reputations travel fast, exceptional support is what keeps guests coming back.

Operational efficiency for travel brands

Omnichannel customer support doesn’t just benefit travelers; it drives real operational efficiency for travel brands. When support channels are consolidated into a single platform, agents can work faster and smarter. They avoid jumping between systems, reduce duplicate responses, and get a complete view of each guest’s history in one place. This streamlines workflows, saves up to 9% of an agent’s time from toggling, and improves resolution accuracy.

It also makes tracking key metrics like response times and resolution rates much easier across all channels. If you run customer sentiment analysis from your customer service conversations, having all of the communications in one place can allow you to unlock better insights and identify trends in guest experiences that need attention.

The result: leaner teams delivering better service, and managers who can confidently measure and optimize performance at every stage of the guest journey.

Closing thoughts

In 2025 and beyond, omnichannel support is simply a must-have for any brand in the travel industry. Consumer expectations around customer support have increased as a result of technology. When you consider that in combination with high stakes that come with travel customer service issues, your agents need the best tool in the toolkit to be able to keep guests happy and moving on their way.

Omnichannel support can help mitigate travel woes and build loyalty with guests. If you haven’t already, it’s time to invest in tools that unify your customer interactions, like a comprehensive CRM and customer support platform.

Talk to our team today about how Kustomer can help you uplevel the customer experience for your guests!