Rapid Predictive Analytics for International Tour Operator

A Tour de Force in Predictive Marketing, Powered by Partnership & CDP

Improved targeting and higher conversion rates through personalisation

 80% faster model deployment compared to traditional methods

Over 10% year-on-year savings on a multi-million-pound marketing budget

Case Study Snapshot

  • Who: An Award-Winning International Tour Organiser
  • Industry: Travel & Tourism
  • Challenge: Reduce multi-million-pound direct marketing spend without sacrificing revenue or customer experience
  • Solution: Rapid deployment of 35 predictive cross-sell models via an AI/ML platform developed by Xpanse AI, integrated with UniFida CDP
  • Results: Delivered over 10% annual cost savings while maintaining revenue and accelerating personalisation

Client Overview

With a distinguished 25-year history, this UK-based company operates multiple brands as a leader in tours throughout Europe and beyond. Its success is built on quality and customer care, highlighted by carefully chosen hotels and a fleet of modern, comfortable coaches.

The company offers a diverse portfolio of holidays, including:

  • European breaks
  • Tours to the coast
  • River cruising
  • Tours with flights
  • Winter sun getaways
  • Battlefield tours

It maintains a strong connection with its customer base through various channels, including a network of 500+ collection and departure points, a call centre, website, brochures, email, and post. The company also specialises in tailor-made group bookings. 

This multi-channel approach generates a wealth of customer data previously underutilised for insight analysis and predictive analytics.

The Challenge

The client wanted to significantly reduce their annual direct marketing spend — which runs into millions of pounds — without compromising on revenue or customer engagement. Their existing approach lacked the predictive modelling capabilities required to effectively personalise offers or allocate budget efficiently.

Traditional data science approaches were too slow and resource-intensive to deliver the insight needed across the customer base in time for key campaigns. 

The Solution: Rapid AI & ML Platform Integration

The proposed solution involved an Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Advanced Analytics platform developed by Xpanse AI that rapidly delivers key insights and dramatically shortens the model development lifecycle. 

Instead of lengthy manual processes for data preparation, feature engineering, and model deployment, the platform automated these critical steps, which enabled the build of 35 predictive cross-sell models in just one-fifth of the time of traditional methods. 

These models precisely predict which customers are most likely to book different tour offerings, allowing the marketing team to target them with personalised offers.

The Role of UniFida’s CDP

A critical component of the solution was the integration with the UniFida Customer Data Platform (CDP). 

Our cloud-hosted platform centralised all customer data, creating a single, unified view. By ingesting data from the website, call centre, email, brochures, and mail order, the CDP provided a comprehensive foundation for the predictive models. 

Its Identity Resolution feature unified customer identifiers, enabling accurate marketing attribution across all channels. This capability allowed for highly personalised campaigns, ensuring data-driven and measurable efforts while supporting GDPR compliance. 

The UniFida data science team guided the Xpanse AI platform to generate the key insights and build, as well as deploy the models using data curated from the CDP.

Results & Benefits

Through a rapid, AI-driven approach to data modelling, the client achieved a significant return on investment while unlocking a new level of marketing efficiency.

The combination of UniFida’s CDP and Xpanse AI enabled the tour operator to deploy 35 predictive models in record time, delivering highly personalised campaigns and measurable business benefits.

The result was a major reduction in direct marketing costs without impacting revenue performance.

Over 10% year-on-year savings on a multi-million-pound marketing budget

80% faster model deployment compared to traditional methods

Improved targeting and higher conversion rates through personalisation

Increased cross-sell revenue across multiple product offerings

Deeper insight into customer behaviour and marketing channel performance

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