Summary
The travel industry has mastered digital basics like online booking and mobile apps, but the 2025 Digital Customer Journey Maturity Report reveals a deeper challenge ahead. Most brands still struggle with identity resolution, data integration, and sustaining personalization beyond the booking. Sponsored by Wunderkind, this report uncovers where digital maturity stands today, and how AI-driven personalization and unified data can transform fragmented traveler experiences into seamless, loyalty-building journeys.
In the age of AI-powered personalization and hyper-connected travelers, the digital customer journey is no longer just a marketing funnel, it’s a living ecosystem. One that starts long before the booking and continues long after the trip. Yet, according to new research from Digital Travel Insights, even the most advanced travel brands admit they’re still figuring out how to deliver a truly seamless, end-to-end experience.
As digital expectations rise and traveler loyalty becomes harder to earn, understanding where your organization stands on the journey maturity curve has never been more important.
That’s why we partnered with Digital Travel Insights to sponsor the 2025 Digital Customer Journey Maturity Report, a data-driven exploration of how travel brands are rethinking identity, personalization, and cross-channel coherence.
Download the Digital Customer Journey Maturity Report
Why Travel’s Digital Maturity Matters Now
Travelers today don’t just plan trips — they curate experiences. They expect the same intuitive, personalized digital interactions from airlines and hotels that they get from retail and streaming giants. But most travel brands still struggle to recognize their customers across devices and channels.
The report reveals that while 99% of travel brands have mastered the basics — CRM systems, mobile apps, and digital booking tools — fewer than 40% are confident in their post-trip engagement strategies.
That means for many organizations, the digital journey still ends when the traveler checks out — not when they’re ready to book again.
What the Data Says: Maturity vs. Momentum
Here are a few standout findings from the survey:
– 55% of travel executives rate their digital journey maturity as only “adequate.”
– 71% say anonymous visitor identification is their biggest obstacle to optimization.
– 67% cite cross-channel data integration as their top priority for the year ahead.
– Only 36% sustain personalization across most touchpoints, despite heavy investment in AI and automation.
In other words: the foundation is there — but the opportunity lies in connection, not collection.
From Fragmented to Fluid: The New Imperative of Identity
One of the report’s most urgent insights? The need for identity resolution. Nearly half of travel marketers can identify just 30% or fewer of their anonymous site visitors. Without that visibility, personalization breaks down, and with it, customer loyalty.
This is where Wunderkind comes in. Our Autonomous Marketing Platform uses a proprietary identity graph spanning 9 billion devices and 2 trillion digital events annually to help travel brands recognize anonymous users in real time, without relying on third-party cookies.
By turning anonymous clicks into known customers, brands can finally unify data across every touchpoint, transforming fragmented interactions into seamless, revenue-driving journeys.
The Path Forward: AI, Personalization, and Trust
The research shows that AI is becoming central to how travel companies plan to close the experience gap:
– 61% will invest in AI-powered marketing automation within the next 12 months.
– 75% plan to expand AI-driven recommendation engines to deliver smarter offers and more relevant experiences.
But data without trust is a dead end. As privacy legislation evolves, the most forward-thinking travel brands are designing transparency directly into their digital journeys , using progressive profiling and consent-aware data capture to build confidence with every interaction.
What “Next-Level Maturity” Looks Like
According to the report, the brands leading the way share three traits:
1. Unified Data Core – A single customer profile across all systems, enabling real-time personalization and decisioning.
2. Automated Engagement Loops – Post-trip feedback, loyalty triggers, and re-engagement workflows built into the journey itself.
3. Cross-Functional Ownership – Digital maturity treated not as a marketing project, but as a company-wide mandate that connects technology, experience, and creativity.
When travel brands achieve this alignment, personalization becomes not just scalable, but self-optimizing.
The Takeaway: From Awareness to Action
The travel industry has reached a turning point. The next wave of innovation won’t come from more data, but from better connections, between systems, between teams, and most importantly, between brands and travelers.
The question isn’t whether your brand is digital-first — it’s whether your digital journey is mature enough to meet travelers where they are.