```html
As temperatures rise across the GCC and schools break for summer, the region enters its annual travel season. Airports buzz with families heading for cooler destinations or for spiritual journeys like Al-Hajj. It’s a time when customer behavior and expectations shift dramatically.
For brands, this is not “business as usual.” The travel season in the GCC brings unique emotional and functional needs shaped by the region’s culture and way of life. Successful customer experience (CX) leaders understand this shift and adapt their experience design accordingly.
Let’s explore how CX can better align with consumer behavior during this important season.
In the GCC, the travel season carries more than the promise of a holiday. It is a deeply emotional time:
This emotional landscape means that CX must go beyond functionality. It must support, reassure, and empathize.
Consumer behavior shifts on a practical level too:
In the collectivistic GCC culture, the family experience matters as much as the individual one. Brands should design journeys that consider group needs, for example:
Omnichannel consistency becomes crucial, as customers will use apps, social media, call centers, and face-to-face channels depending on where they are in their journey. Maintaining a consistent tone and experience across these touchpoints builds trust.
Empathy and human touch should be embedded even in digital interactions. A travel insurance reminder worded with care, or a hotel check-in app that says, “We wish you a blessed journey,” can create emotional connection through small but meaningful moments.
GCC travel season is a golden opportunity for brands to build loyalty by showing they understand and care about their customers’ life context.
To do this well:
CX is not static. It must evolve with the rhythms of life, and in the GCC, travel season is one of the biggest rhythms of all. By aligning experience design with customers’ emotional and functional needs during this time, brands can turn a transactional season into one of deeper connection and lasting loyalty.
```
This white paper is a collaborative output of the 2026 International Conference on Customer Experience (ICX2026) — Asia’s first conference bridging Customer Experience academia and industry practice. It draws on primary research conducted through structured questionnaires completed by 22 CX leaders, practitioners, academics, and CXPA members across 12 countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. The paper presents findings from speakers and CXPA Asia Council members who contributed their perspectives ahead of the conference. A subsequent edition will incorporate delegate responses collected during and after the event, producing the final published version. All findings are anchored to the CXPA Customer Experience Book of Knowledge framework, covering Customer Insights & Understanding, CX Strategy, Metrics & ROI, Experience Design & Innovation, and Culture & Accountability.
This monograph focuses on the roles and responsibilities of the product development and design department, outlining how CX professionals can work more effectively with their product counterparts to achieve business and customer goals. The book outlines common department structures, business challenges, and success metrics for product development and design, and explains strategies and tactics CX professionals can use to improve collaboration and achieve shared goals and objectives in improving customer experiences and generating better business outcomes.
This monograph focuses on the roles and responsibilities of the business improvement team, outlining how CX professionals can work more effectively with their counterparts to achieve business and customer goals. The book outlines common department structures, business challenges, and success metrics for business improvement, examines the role of CX in Lean Six Sigma and Agile, and explains strategies and tactics CX professionals can use to improve collaboration and achieve shared goals and objectives in improving customer experiences and generating better business outcomes.
The world of CX is quickly evolving. CXPA is committed to partnering with you and other organizations to help you keep up with the latest developments. Recently
