Travolution Summit: Mobile will bring stricter rules on personal data that some firms will abuse

Firms in the future will be increasingly defined by those who play by the rules of customer data privacy and those who flout them.

Pictured: Daniele Beccari speaking at the Travolution Summit

Firms in the future will be increasingly defined by those who play by the rules of customer data privacy and those who flout them.

Speaking at last week’s Travolution Summit, Daniele Beccari, head of travel product at Criteo, outlined how mobile will transform the travel sector over the next decade.

Beccari predicted smartphones will become the main transaction channel in years to come.

“We will all be connected to many devices which will generate a humongous amount of data,” he said.

“It is going to get very complex for users to pay attention to a key message in all the noise. The answer is relevancy, which personalisation is part of.

“We used to have a notion of [customer] segments but this relies on stereotypes. You will hear less about segments and more about users.”

Beccari warned that with increased access to personalisation technology there will be increased user-protection issues.

“We have already seen regulators stepping in to make regulations stricter,” he said.

“More and more data is being classified as personally identifiable information. Penalties for merchants who abuse data are going to increase.

“We will also see the emergence of two different tactics: merchants who stay in-line with regulations and others that will try to do everything to grab personal data and abuse it.”

Marieke Flament, vice president EMEA of Hotels.com, added: “Today one in three of our bookings is made on a smartphone. We predict that by 2018 it will be half.

“It’s not about having a mobile strategy, it’s about being mobile first. In the next year apps need to become better.

“That’s where the game is going to be because apps are where you find your most loyal customers.”