Super Deciders

Chapter 8Case 4: Implementing Decisions

Claudio Feser, David Redaschi, and Karolin Frankenberger

Roughly six months later, it started to become increasingly clear that the transformation of ATG's sales approach had stalled. The problem wasn't in the US or Asia, where momentum and initial customer feedback were strong, but in its core business in Europe.

With ATG's new experiential travel strategy, Isabelle and the GET not only wanted to lead the industry in taking advantage of the trends of experience-oriented and personalized travel, but they also aimed to make ATG one of the most innovative, high-growth, and profitable companies in the European travel industry. With the digitization of front-office processes, the GET also targeted massively increasing customer satisfaction (measured in net promoter scores (NPS)) and customer loyalty (measured in reduction of churn).

The implementation of the new strategy required agencies' staff members to build new capabilities to deliver experience-based services and packages. These new capabilities included being able to integrate more complex offerings (combining excursions, guides, special events, etc.) into complete, comprehensive experiential travel offerings. It required agency employees to become better listeners, so they could gain an improved understanding of customers' needs. It also required them to become more creative in packaging different offerings, and more entrepreneurial to spot further opportunities to develop experienced-based ...