This sponsored content has been created in collaboration with Skift partners.
This edition’s “Industry Insights”, features an exclusive interview with Ronen Kadosh. Ronen is the Head of Travel and Ticketing at Wunderkind. Wunderkind is a performance marketing platform.
Kadosh believes identity resolution is a game changer for travel marketing. It helps brands shift from broad targeting to personalized, real-time engagement. Kadosh discusses how Wunderkind’s performance driven approach can help brands drive loyalty and results along the entire journey.
Here is our conversation.
SkiftX – What are the most exciting opportunities for the industry today?
Ronen Kadosh: The biggest opportunity is to capitalize on converting anonymous web traffic into known customers — at scale. Our retail counterparts do this really well. The travel and hospitality industry has some of the biggest first-party datasets due to highly effective loyalty programmes, but many users browse anonymously. This is a huge opportunity to use CRM data to increase acquisition and lifetime value.
It’s very difficult to scale tactics like abandonment-retargeting because it is so hard to identify website traffic. Brands can create persistent profiles across sessions that will allow them to personalize better and retarget more abandoners by focusing on the real-time resolution of identity. This could lead to thousands of extra direct conversions.
Pair that with AI-driven triggers and dynamic segmentation, and you can deliver timely messages across email, onsite, and paid media — based on real-time behaviors, not guesswork.
The brands that win will not just know who’s booking — they’ll also know who’s browsing, abandoning, and re-engaging. This insight will be used to create high-performance experiences for all customers.
What are your biggest concerns or challenges?
Travel brands face a major challenge today, which is the dominance and loyalty of online travel agents (OTAs), who capture significant market shares and customer loyalty at the expense direct bookings. The increasing regulations on privacy and the decreasing reliability in third-party cookies also make it difficult for traditional digital channels to be effective. To engage their customers effectively, travel brands must shift their strategies to include identity resolution and data from the first party. This shift requires a thoughtful investment in technology and partnerships to support compliance while delivering genuine customer benefits.
What is your brand doing to move the industry forward?
Traditionally, brands have had a difficult time recognizing and reconnecting with anonymous visitors to their websites, which has led to potential guests booking through third-party OTAs. This increases the acquisition costs and limits the ability to develop strong, direct relationships.
Wunderkind is tackling this challenge in a head-on manner with advanced identity-resolution technology. This transforms anonymous visitors to known, engaged profiles, all in real-time. So, brands can send personalized messages to the right people at just the right time. This will boost direct bookings. By shifting bookings away from OTAs and into brands’ own channels, we help them capture more owned, direct revenue — ultimately increasing margins and profitability.
We empower travel brands by capturing valuable data from the first party. This allows them to provide exceptional customer experiences, create lasting loyalty and drive sustainable revenue growth. Wunderkind transforms unknown site visitors into known and loyal customers. It does this by recognizing 10 times as many visitors on the site, enabling brands to scale abandonment targeting to drive brand direct, incremental bookings.
What is your best travel hack?
It’s less of a hack and more of a hint. We all tend to eat at the same restaurants when we travel based on online reviews. Ask someone you know who lives in the area you are visiting for authentic recommendations. If you can’t find a reliable source, visit the local coffee shop and ask the baristas or shopkeepers. You could also ask locals. Although it may be out of our comfort zones, I’ve had some of the most memorable meals in my life.
Visit Wunderkind for more information on our work with travel and hospitality companies. click here.
This content has been created by a collaborative effort. Wunderkind Skift’s branded content Studio, SkiftX.
