ATJ Itinerary Platform

ATJ (atj.com) is the premier US-based tour operator specializing in Asia and the Pacific region. They have been offering custom and small-group trips to the region since 1987 and have cultivated a reputation for excellence. In fact, travelers are so pleased with their experiences with ATJ that over 80% of ATJ’s business comes from repeat travelers and new travelers who have been personally referred by an existing ATJ customer. Thus, my role as Content Marketing Director at ATJ had a strong inbound focus. My primary objective was to optimize travelers’ end-to-end experience with ATJ to promote customer satisfaction and make it easy for travelers to share their experience with friends and family.

Now that we are both retired, we love exploring new parts of the world on regular basis. We enjoy sophisticated cultural experiences and luxurious amenities when we are abroad and ATJ does a great job of consistently meeting our expectations.

- Mary & Bob J., repeat ATJ travelers

While my tenure with ATJ had already given me some idea of what could be improved to make even more travelers like Mary and Bob, it had also made me aware of a tendency towards siloing. Each department was deeply entrenched in their own workflows and aware of specific problems, but few steps had been taken to analyze pain points and potential improvements from a broader perspective.

My first step was to zoom out and map ATJ’s core service offering (custom travel) to better visualize the activity flow between various departments to identify pain points and key interrelationships.

To identify pain points, I gathered data to better understand and empathize with the experience ATJ travelers were having with the service. I analyzed existing quantitative data (feedback survey, CRM data) and qualitative data (my own and my colleagues previous experiences working with and traveling with the company) and conducted additional interviews with travelers, sales staff and administrative staff. Looking at this data holistically, I identified several consistent pain points in the customer journey that accounted for the majority of traveler satisfaction.

1. Some travelers are disappointed with the initial itinerary they receive from ATJ. Travelers are attracted to ATJ based on its reputation for expert knowledge, luxury and personalized service. Accordingly, they expect their itinerary to be fully customized to their desires. Thus, when the text-heavy itineraries are clumsily put together and contain duplicate or contradictory text, this creates a negative first impression

2. During the initial travel planning process, many travelers find it difficult to keep track of revisions being made to their itinerary. Revised itineraries are sent by PDF to the traveler with an email and/or phone call explaining the changes that have been made. For complex trips, it is not unusual for an itinerary to be revised 10 or more times, and these revisions may take place many months apart depending upon how far in advance the trip was planned.

3. Once an itinerary has been finalized, many travelers find it difficult to keep track of what information and documents ATJ needs in order to confirm the trip (personal details, visa applications, payments, etc.). This is especially frustrating for families or groups traveling together and travel companions of different nationalities as requirements may differ per person.

4. Travelers are frequently annoyed when on-the-ground activities do not match the finalized copy of the itinerary provided by ATJ. In general, travelers are very happy with their travel experience with ATJ’s suppliers. However, a common complaint is that in country tour providers often alter daily itineraries to better fit local weather, traffic patterns, holidays, etc. Travelers frequently find it disappointing and jarring when their on-the-ground experience does not match the finalized daily itinerary that was reconfirmed for them just before traveling.

By referring to the service blueprint above, it is easy to see that Points 1, 2 and 4 all relate to frustrations with ATJ itineraries (creating them, editing them and confirming them with suppliers), and that the current itinerary platform is deeply embedded in the service (shown in blue). The itinerary management process includes interactions between the traveler and ATJ, ATJ and their suppliers, the traveler and ATJ’s suppliers, and integration with ATJ’s custom ERP system.

Point 3 is related to frustrations with understanding and submitting required pre-travel information to ATJ (shown in green). Similar to the itinerary creation process, this process also transcends multiple layers and methods of interaction. Required information and due dates are tracked in ATJ’s custom ERP system but communicated to the traveler by email, phone and/or mail and followed up by multiple contact people. Documents are submitted by email, online payment portal, fax and mail and manually logged in the ERP system.

Clearly, to improve either of these aspects of ATJ’s service, a thorough understanding of the needs and requirements of each type of stakeholder in the service delivery process would be necessary.