Greg Plifka, Managing Director at Allianz Companions Hong Kong, just lately shared his insights with us on how corporations are leveraging cutting edge answers to reshape visitor expectancies and reports.
Plifka, a prominent insurance coverage skilled with 18 years of in depth revel in within the Asia-Pacific area, specialises in embedded insurance coverage answers the place related insurance coverage covers may also be presented along the industry spouse’s core product inside their present visitor adventure.
Below his management, Allianz Companions cemented its place as a number one insurance coverage supplier for cutting edge answers to the automobile, journey/airline, retail, and monetary provider industries in Hong Kong.
On the identical time, Plifka’s center of attention on construction easy, virtual insurance coverage applications and fostering a customer-centric tradition ended in the advent of a large number of long-standing partnerships, making him and a key contributor to the corporate’s persisted good fortune.
As a pass judgement on on the TDM Trip Business Excellence Awards Hong Kong 2025, he delved into how journey suppliers can beef up their choices via partnering with business gamers and the way generation developments reworked the business to create unique and localised reports.
Together with your in depth revel in, may just you elaborate on how cutting edge answers form visitor reports within the journey, recreational, and hospitality sectors?
Following the pandemic, we’re proceeding to look a virtual transformation of journey and tourism, pushed via technological adjustments and developments that experience redefined visitor expectancies. Travellers of as of late need answers and products and services which are only a click on away, offering seamless journey reports.
Two key spaces the place cutting edge answers are taking part in a large phase are personalisation and fixing what we name ‘journey rigidity’, in the end bettering visitor reports and boosting loyalty. In relation to personalisation, it’s about synthetic intelligence (AI) and information analytics. For instance, offering airline or hospitality team of workers with visitor main points and personal tastes at their fingertips in order that they may be able to supply answers or gives in response to the ones distinctive wishes.
Trip rigidity is what all travellers face all the way through their adventure – from making plans, researching, reserving, going and even if playing the travel itself. What we’ve witnessed is that, particularly after the pandemic, there’s a large number of uncertainty – from vacation spot option to unexpected cases like cancelled flights, misplaced luggage, or even well being emergencies while in another country. What travellers need is for journey suppliers to cut back this rigidity, and cutting edge equipment may also be a part of the answer. For instance, one of the crucial equipment Allianz Companions gives is Allyz, a one-stop-shop virtual platform which gives journey recommendation and experience together with built-in products and services. Options come with vacation spot itineraries and real-time flight and protection knowledge.
For your opinion, what are probably the most vital demanding situations recently going through corporations within the journey and hospitality industries, and the way can they deal with those demanding situations successfully?
Customers of as of late are turning into extra not easy, anticipating environment friendly and intuitive reports that ship quick gratification. This immediacy has led to larger pageant among journey suppliers for loyalty, prompting corporations to concentrate on getting rid of friction thru generation while keeping up a human contact in journey products and services.
Because the pandemic, other folks have additionally transform warier sooner than travelling with considerations corresponding to getting in poor health or caught in a rustic because of unexpected lockdowns, including to journey rigidity. Business gamers want to ease those anxieties and supply peace of thoughts.
To lend a hand mitigate traveller considerations, journey suppliers can spouse with ecosystem companions corresponding to journey insurers, as the proper insurance policies can deal with a few of these anxieties and reassure travellers from the beginning. Insurers like Allianz Companions supply worth thru insurance policies that reinforce customers right through unexpected cases corresponding to flight disruptions and cancellations. We provide shoppers 24/7 reinforce with help groups throughout greater than 70 international locations, offering high-tech and human-touch reports. In relation to our product building, shoppers are on the centre of the whole lot we do, and we use their comments and the newest marketplace records to form our product building.
Given your confirmed observe file, how do you assume sturdy B2B2C partnerships give a contribution to the development and good fortune of companies within the business?
Partnerships around the journey ecosystem are key to making sure seamlessness, which travellers of as of late are not easy. Business gamers want to paintings throughout silos in order that in combination we will lend a hand travellers have memorable reports that may stay them coming again. What’s essential is that manufacturers are leveraging partnerships which are complementary to one another, the place they’ve like-minded approaches to innovation, and the place they may be able to proceed to collaborate to seek out techniques so as to add worth to the client.
As an business, the extra we will do for travellers to make their lives more straightforward and supply answers in a well timed approach alongside the best way, the extra dependable they are going to transform. For instance, corporations that spouse with journey insurance coverage suppliers to beef up visitor care can differentiate themselves via providing peace of thoughts all the way through all of the journey revel in, getting rid of travel-related considerations together with disruptions and unexpected cases, corresponding to flight delays, private emergencies, or luggage problems.
If truth be told, our shoppers have advised us that coupling journey insurance coverage with their core merchandise or choices led to higher conversions in their core product.
What position do you consider technological transformations play in influencing the journey business?
Era has revolutionised journey and made many facets of the adventure way more handy, corresponding to empowering travellers to plot and ebook their whole journeys from the relaxation in their properties or at the pass, managing flights, delivery, lodging and itinerary choices.
This additionally makes verbal exchange extra quick, and travellers can simply touch provider suppliers to troubleshoot any problems proper as they crop up. This additionally manner, then again, that visitor reinforce will have to be extra readily to be had to have a tendency to world travellers who will have considerations and are available from other time zones, as they are going to call for responses in an instant or inside mins, with restricted ready time.
Era too can lend a hand form the business via serving to to bridge gaps in relation to labour shortages and beef up journey reports. In a 2023 find out about via Deloitte, part of the inns and 99 % of airport managers surveyed mentioned that they undertake new applied sciences to deal with team of workers shortages they revel in. It additionally discovered that 74 % of airport respondents and 57 % of lodge basic managers be expecting automation to spice up visitor reports and in the end their backside traces. Thankfully, equipment like AI can lend a hand to hurry up responsiveness and servicing via assembly shoppers proper the place they’re.
With extra seamless verbal exchange and larger connectivity on-line, journey reports transform a two-way side road. Technological transformation has equipped travellers with a voice to proportion overtly about their reports for different customers to learn, so there’s much more transparency and openness the world over now. What is important is that as phrases can unfold temporarily by the use of platforms like social media, business gamers will have to keep acutely aware of what shoppers and travellers are pronouncing, so they may be able to act simply as temporarily on comments and considerations.
Taking a look forward, what long run developments in journey and hospitality do you assume will provide the best alternatives for expansion and innovation?
Sustainability is increasingly more best of thoughts for the journey business, together with travellers who be expecting journey providers to deal with it. Customers are turning into increasingly more eco-conscious and open to corporations that provide eco-friendly possible choices. For instance, airways can be offering cleaner gasoline by the use of Sustainable Aviation Gasoline (SAF) or give vacationers selection choices to buy carbon offsets. In the meantime, inns may just center of attention on native produce to reinforce surrounding communities and reduce their carbon footprint. With customers being extra aware of the have an effect on their movements have at the setting, the business has alternatives to reply with answers that meet customers’ eco-conscious wishes.
Their choices also are fuelled via in need of unique and distinctive reports, pushed via post-pandemic attitudes. Travellers are increasingly more transferring clear of standard tourism, on the lookout for extra for my part significant locations and offbeat reports.
Round 49 % of worldwide travellers search immersion in native cultures and merchandise, and they would like customized reports and actions. To fulfill this call for, journey suppliers can curate extra native reports thru collaborations with different business companions. For instance, inns can spouse with excursion operators and nationwide parks to design unique applications.
With far flung operating right here to stick for the foreseeable long run, any other alternative is focussing on virtual nomads because the quantity is anticipated to extend. Those people journey freely and paintings remotely from the world over, seeing themselves extra as transient citizens than vacationers. Far flung employees won’t essentially be person travellers, and so they would possibly convey their members of the family like their companions and youngsters. Hospitality gamers may just take a look at virtual nomad applications, which may also be coupled with curated luxurious or wellness reports for those employees to unwind on their days off.
As a pass judgement on on the TDM Trip Business Excellence Awards Hong Kong 2025, what are the principle standards you are going to use to guage the nominees?
A key criterion for me could be having a look at how nominees need to redefine business requirements and lift visitor reports. Travelling can provide surprising demanding situations for vacationers and journey suppliers who’re ready to cut back journey rigidity pass far in bettering the revel in of travellers, turning them into returning visitors. With enhanced visitor care, travellers are much more likely to have peace of thoughts thru their journey revel in in order that they may be able to center of attention on having an unforgettable travel.
Innovation and the usage of generation is any other house to believe, as generation will provide never-ending alternatives for nominees to ship fine quality reports. Examples of generation creating a distinction in tourism come with prolonged truth (XR) and AI getting used to create novel reports, the usage of data-driven insights to control crowd regulate and make sure a good customer revel in and the usage of virtual twins to beef up occasions. Those examples all return to mitigating traveller considerations, making sure that they have got a easy and sure revel in while on their journeys.
