Allianz Partners HK’s Greg Plifka shares insights on innovation in the travel sector

Greg Plifka, Managing Director at Allianz Companions Hong Kong, not too long ago shared his insights with us on how firms are leveraging modern options to reshape buyer expectations and experiences.

Plifka, a distinguished insurance coverage skilled with 18 years of in depth expertise within the Asia-Pacific area, specialises in embedded insurance coverage options the place related insurance coverage covers will be supplied alongside the enterprise accomplice’s core product inside their present buyer journey.

Underneath his management, Allianz Companions cemented its place as a number one insurance coverage supplier for modern options to the automotive, journey/airline, retail, and monetary service industries in Hong Kong.

On the similar time, Plifka’s deal with constructing easy, digital insurance coverage packages and fostering a customer-centric tradition led to the creation of quite a few long-standing partnerships, making him and a key contributor to the corporate’s continued success.

As a choose on the TDM Journey Commerce Excellence Awards Hong Kong 2025, he delved into how journey suppliers can improve their choices by partnering with trade gamers and the way expertise developments remodeled the trade to create unique and localised experiences.

Along with your in depth expertise, might you elaborate on how modern options form buyer experiences within the journey, leisure, and hospitality sectors?

Following the pandemic, we’re persevering with to see a digital transformation of journey and tourism, pushed by technological modifications and developments which have redefined buyer expectations. Travellers of at the moment need options and companies which are only a click on away, offering seamless journey experiences.

Two key areas the place modern options are enjoying a giant half are personalisation and fixing what we name ‘journey rigidity’, in the end enhancing buyer experiences and boosting loyalty. With regards to personalisation, it’s about synthetic intelligence (AI) and knowledge analytics. For instance, offering airline or hospitality employees with visitor particulars and preferences at their fingertips in order that they will present options or provides based mostly on these distinctive wants.

Journey rigidity is what all travellers face all through their journey – from planning, researching, reserving, going and even when having fun with the journey itself. What we’ve witnessed is that, particularly after the pandemic, there’s a variety of uncertainty – from vacation spot option to unexpected circumstances like cancelled flights, misplaced baggage, and even well being emergencies while abroad. What travellers need is for journey suppliers to cut back this rigidity, and modern instruments will be a part of the answer. For instance, one of many instruments Allianz Companions provides is Allyz, a one-stop-shop digital platform which offers journey recommendation and experience together with built-in companies. Options embody vacation spot itineraries and real-time flight and security data.

In your opinion, what are essentially the most important challenges at present dealing with firms within the journey and hospitality industries, and the way can they tackle these challenges successfully?

Customers of at the moment have gotten extra demanding, anticipating environment friendly and intuitive experiences that ship instantaneous gratification. This immediacy has led to larger competitors amongst journey suppliers for loyalty, prompting firms to deal with eliminating friction via expertise while sustaining a human contact in journey companies.

Because the pandemic, individuals have additionally change into warier earlier than travelling with issues equivalent to getting sick or caught in a rustic as a consequence of sudden lockdowns, including to journey rigidity. Trade gamers must ease these anxieties and supply peace of thoughts.

To assist mitigate traveller issues, journey suppliers can accomplice with ecosystem companions equivalent to journey insurers, as the proper insurance policies can tackle a few of these anxieties and reassure travellers from the beginning. Insurers like Allianz Companions present worth via insurance policies that assist customers throughout unexpected circumstances equivalent to flight disruptions and cancellations. We provide clients 24/7 assist with help groups throughout greater than 70 nations, offering high-tech and human-touch experiences. With regards to our product improvement, clients are on the centre of every part we do, and we use their suggestions and the most recent market knowledge to form our product improvement.

Given your confirmed observe report, how do you assume sturdy B2B2C partnerships contribute to the development and success of companies within the trade?

Partnerships throughout the journey ecosystem are key to making sure seamlessness, which travellers of at the moment are demanding. Trade gamers must work throughout silos in order that collectively we can assist travellers have memorable experiences that may preserve 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 will proceed to collaborate to seek out methods so as to add worth to the client.

As an trade, the extra we are able to do for travellers to make their lives simpler and supply options in a well timed method alongside the best way, the extra loyal they are going to change into. For instance, firms that accomplice with journey insurance coverage suppliers to reinforce buyer care can differentiate themselves by providing peace of thoughts all through your complete journey expertise, eliminating travel-related issues together with disruptions and unexpected circumstances, equivalent to flight delays, private emergencies, or baggage points.

The truth is, our clients have instructed us that coupling journey insurance coverage with their core merchandise or choices resulted in higher conversions of their core product.

What position do you imagine technological transformations play in influencing the journey trade?

Know-how has revolutionised journey and made many elements of the journey much more handy, equivalent to empowering travellers to plan and guide their whole journeys from the consolation of their houses or on the go, managing flights, transport, lodging and itinerary choices.

This additionally makes communication extra instantaneous, and travellers can simply contact service suppliers to troubleshoot any points proper as they crop up. This additionally means, nonetheless, that buyer assist have to be extra available to are likely to international travellers who could have issues and are available from totally different time zones, as they are going to demand responses immediately or inside minutes, with restricted ready time.

Know-how may also assist form the trade by serving to to bridge gaps when it comes to labour shortages and improve journey experiences. In a 2023 examine by Deloitte, half of the lodges and 99 % of airport managers surveyed mentioned that they undertake new applied sciences to handle employees shortages they expertise. It additionally discovered that 74 % of airport respondents and 57 % of resort basic managers anticipate automation to spice up visitor experiences and in the end their backside traces. Happily, instruments like AI can assist to hurry up responsiveness and servicing by assembly clients proper the place they’re.

With extra seamless communication and larger connectivity on-line, journey experiences change into a two-way avenue. Technological transformation has supplied travellers with a voice to share overtly about their experiences for different customers to learn, so there’s much more transparency and openness internationally now. What’s vital is that as phrases can unfold shortly by way of platforms like social media, trade gamers should keep conscious of what clients and travellers are saying, to allow them to act simply as shortly on suggestions and issues.

Trying forward, what future traits in journey and hospitality do you assume will current the best alternatives for development and innovation?

Sustainability is more and more prime of thoughts for the journey trade, together with travellers who anticipate journey suppliers to handle it. Customers have gotten more and more eco-conscious and open to firms that supply eco-friendly options. For instance, airways can supply cleaner gasoline by way of Sustainable Aviation Gasoline (SAF) or give vacationers various choices to buy carbon offsets. In the meantime, lodges might deal with native produce to assist surrounding communities and reduce their carbon footprint. With customers being extra aware of the influence their actions have on the setting, the trade has alternatives to reply with options that meet customers’ eco-conscious wants.

Their selections are additionally fuelled by wanting genuine and distinctive experiences, pushed by post-pandemic attitudes. Travellers are more and more transferring away from typical tourism, trying to find extra personally significant locations and offbeat experiences.

Round 49 % of worldwide travellers search immersion in native cultures and merchandise, and so they need personalised experiences and actions. To satisfy this demand, journey suppliers can curate extra native experiences via collaborations with different trade companions. For instance, lodges can accomplice with tour operators and nationwide parks to design unique packages.

With distant working right here to remain for the foreseeable future, one other alternative is focussing on digital nomads because the quantity is predicted to extend. These people journey freely and work remotely from the world over, seeing themselves extra as momentary residents than vacationers. Distant employees could not essentially be particular person travellers, and so they could deliver their relations like their companions and youngsters. Hospitality gamers might take a look at digital nomad packages, which will be coupled with curated luxurious or wellness experiences for these employees to unwind on their days off.

As a choose on the TDM Journey Commerce Excellence Awards Hong Kong 2025, what are the first standards you’ll use to judge the nominees?

A key criterion for me could be how nominees wish to redefine trade requirements and elevate buyer experiences. Travelling can current surprising challenges for vacationers and journey suppliers who’re capable of scale back journey rigidity go a good distance in enhancing the expertise of travellers, turning them into returning friends. With enhanced buyer care, travellers usually tend to have peace of thoughts via their journey expertise in order that they will deal with having an unforgettable journey.

Innovation and the usage of expertise is one other space to contemplate, as expertise will current infinite alternatives for nominees to ship high-quality experiences. Examples of expertise making a distinction in tourism embody prolonged actuality (XR) and AI getting used to create novel experiences, utilizing data-driven insights to handle crowd management and guarantee a optimistic customer expertise and utilizing digital twins to reinforce occasions. These examples all return to mitigating traveller issues, making certain that they’ve a easy and optimistic expertise while on their journeys.