One delayed flight, two journeys
Your ad asks for real-time, data-driven experiences across all touchpoints, and it names the reality underneath: guest data lives in CRM, booking and loyalty, so when a trip changes, today's messages arrive as batch campaigns that do not know what just happened. Here is the week-one work product I would bring to Guest 360: one journey, specified end to end, on a flight I know personally.
Worked example. The guests, times and message texts are illustrative. The route, the Etihad Guest tiers and the scale are real.
EY74 · Zurich → Abu Dhabi
delayed +2:05
announced at 07:52, before boarding
Sara Etihad Guest Gold
Connecting in Abu Dhabi to Bangkok, 55-minute connection. Books direct, lives in the app.
The Keller family First Etihad trip
Two adults, two children, Abu Dhabi is the destination. Booked through an agency, no app installed.
Sara
what happens
The Kellers
07:52
Delay published at Zurich Airport
APP PUSH
“EY74 is delayed 2 h 05. Your Bangkok connection will not hold. We are already holding you a seat on the next flight.”
Booking: 55-minute connection · loyalty: Gold · app active, so push, not email.
SMS
“EY74 now departs 11:45. Your seats are unchanged and your bags check through. Nothing you need to do.”
Booking: trip ends in Abu Dhabi · no app installed, so SMS to the agency-file number.
Held from this second: every scheduled marketing send to both guests, frozen while the disruption is live.
APP PUSH
“Confirmed: Abu Dhabi → Bangkok, seat held on the 20:15 departure. Tap to accept, or an agent will call you.”
Decisioning: hold, propose, one tap. Auto-booked only after she accepts; a human fallback stays in the loop.
NO MESSAGE
Their plan changed once, not twice. Neither should their phone.
09:10
The wait at the airport
APP PUSH
“The lounge is open for you until boarding.”
Loyalty: Gold benefit, surfaced exactly when it is worth something.
SMS
“Meal vouchers for the four of you, ready at the gate desk or via this link.”
Booking: family of four, three-hour wait. Care first, channels second.
15:58
Arrival, Zayed International, Terminal A
APP PUSH
“Your Bangkok gate and the fastest transfer route, ready in the app.”
Real-time: gate and walking time, not a generic arrival mail.
SMS
“Welcome to Abu Dhabi. Belt 5 for your bags, taxis and transfers straight ahead.”
First trip: arrival guidance instead of silence, still nothing promotional.
Next day
The journey closes
EMAIL
“Your connection was tight yesterday. We have credited Etihad Guest Miles to your account. How was the journey?”
Service recovery before the survey, in that order.
EMAIL
“How was your first trip with us?” With a first-trip guide to Abu Dhabi, and now the survey.
CRM: first Etihad booking. The relationship starts after the trip, not during the delay.
What never went out
The seat-upgrade campaign scheduled for that evening, suppressed for both guests. An upsell in the middle of a disruption spends the trust the journey just earned. And the survey waited until the trip was over: a survey sent mid-disruption gets answered angrily or not at all.
Where this sits in week one
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START
The disruption journey. It joins all three data sets your ad names, CRM, booking and loyalty, the triggers are unambiguous, and the emotional stakes are the highest in the airline.
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NEXT
Pre-trip and post-trip lifecycle journeys, reusing the same segments, triggers and suppression rules the disruption journey proves.
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PARKED
The engine that picks the next best offer for every guest. Not because it lacks value, but because the journey logic should earn trust on real events before it starts selling.
That is the spec shape I bring: measurable (how fast a missed connection gets fixed, how many calls never need the contact centre, how many surveys actually get answered), ready for whichever platform Guest 360 runs on, and honest about what not to send. It slots straight into the Guest 360 backlog your Digital Technology & Innovation division is hiring around.
This page, and the journey model on it, I designed and built myself with the AI toolchain I work in daily, Claude Code among other tools. It is how I would prototype journey specs for Guest 360 too: clickable in days, not described on slides.
