How to give every traveler a bespoke holiday experience
Yas Island is bridging the gap between digital and physical, for a bespoke holiday experience
If one trend has dominated digital in recent years, it’s personalization. Ecommerce recommendations, tailored playlists, even algorithm-fueled search results and social media profiles – everything is unique and tailored to your personal tastes.
By now, we’ve grown used to strangely accurate digital suggestions. But what if the same techniques could be applied to the real world?
That’s precisely what Miral and Publicis Sapient set out to discover on Yas Island – a major entertainment and leisure destination in Abu Dhabi – enlisting Microsoft’s help to craft a personalized, digitally augmented holiday experience.
Borderless destination
Yas Island is one of Abu Dhabi’s top tourist destinations. A stone’s throw from the airport, the island is a holiday playground brimming with family entertainment and leisure. Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, Yas Waterworld, and Warner Bros World Abu Dhabi, all vie for attention with motorsports, music arenas, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) matches, and one of Abu Dhabi’s largest malls.
There’s a lot to do on this island, so it can be bewildering to navigate for visitors. So, Miral –the leading curator of experiences on Yas Island and in Abu Dhabi – and Publicis Sapient, a global digital consultancy, partnered to create a connected experience, guiding holidaymakers around the island and helping them make the most of their stay.
Together, they enlisted Microsoft to help build MyConnect. With a blend of websites and a smartphone app, visitors can plan their stay before they arrive –– navigate every attraction quickly and easily, and even follow up long after they’ve left.
As Nigel Vaz, CEO of Publicis Sapient, says, the idea is to “Meet the customer where they are, continuing to surprise and delight.”
Personalized experience
MyConnect is a fully integrated digital platform, enabling guests and visitors to plan their stay, discover what’s happening while they’re there, and book tickets and experiences.
Then there are the deals and discounts unlocked by geo-location – you have to physically be there to get the offer. And because the platform is seamlessly connected with Microsoft Azure – every aspect feeding into centralized analytics – data collected from leisure and retail choices are used to personalize discounts and recommendations.
For visitors, MyConnect acts as a concierge, carving a personalized path around the island – and everything it has to offer – in a seamless blend of digital and physical.
“It was very easy for us to bring that to life because of the integrated platform and its capabilities.”
Augmenting the island
Already, says Mohammed Al Zaabi, CEO of Miral, “With this digital platform, we have created a wall-less destination where our customers can enjoy different experiences without any limitations.”
But the company is already planning for the future. Ali Nimer, Executive Director Digital & Technology, Miral, says that the system’s flexible Microsoft Azure infrastructure enables them to quickly integrate new attractions, as they did with Yas Marine Circuit and Warner Bros., “It was very easy for us to bring that to life because of the integrated platform and its capabilities.”
His comment suggests that MyConnect’s current iteration is just a taste of the future. Indeed, Al Zaabi concludes that: “We are just at the beginning of our digital transformation journey, and there’s still much more to come.”
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