The challenge:
Accountability gaps hinder the team's ability to serve advisors
As an established business built on personal referrals and client relationships, Europe Express’ legacy platforms, processes, and digital channels were falling behind the times. In line with a significant digital transformation strategy across the Travelopia group, Europe Express’ leadership is committed to investing in the latest tools to grow.
While Europe Express was using Salesforce for basic customer relationship management (CRM), the business was searching for an end-to-end platform to unify the customer experience from sales leads and marketing to reservations and after-sales client service.
The existing combination of Salesforce for CRM, legacy software for bookings, and traditional tools like spreadsheets, emails, and documents – requiring manual data entry and uploads – left the business siloed and unable to track and optimise performance efficiently.
The core challenge was that Europe Express’ sophisticated reservation system – which processed bookings, financials, logistics, trip dates, advisor contacts, and third-party data integrations – was disconnected from its customer platform.
As Head of CRM at Europe Express, Conner Jens is responsible for managing email lists, audience segmentation, internal workflows, process automation, and optimising customer journeys. He summarises the challenge:
“We have brilliant people and a loyal advisor network, but without the right tools, we lacked control and visibility across our sales funnel from tracking leads and conversions into quotes or bookings. Requests would come in via the website, email, phone, or booking system and end up in various inboxes without accountability.
“To fulfil our potential, we needed to integrate sales, marketing, reservations, and customer service systems so we can stay ahead of the competition and grow sales without compromising the quality service we are known for,” says Conner.
With remote and onsite teams and advisors across the USA, Barcelona, South Africa, and India organising trips to hundreds of destinations within Europe, there was significant potential in unifying and simplifying Europe Express’ core business systems, people, and processes.
Europe Express faced significant challenges in maintaining accountability, improving efficiency, and working around outdated systems, which impacted their ability to provide seamless experiences for travel advisors and clients.
Despite its talented team and loyal advisors driving repeat bookings, fragmented systems and manual processes led to service bottlenecks, meaning warm leads were missed or left cold.
The solution:
Reservations and customer service systems synchronised with HubSpot
Several travel businesses in the Travelopia group had already upgraded to HubSpot and shared their successes, so it was a straightforward decision to make the switch from Salesforce.
“Having seen HubSpot’s role in transforming our sister companies, it made perfect sense to replicate that for Europe Express. We were 100% confident that it could solve all our use cases,” says Conner.
Out of the box, HubSpot’s Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and Service Hub quickly delivered the integrated capabilities Europe Express needed to meet its core operational requirements, from converting leads to looking after travel advisor and agency relationships.
Building on this, Europe Express’ in-house data specialists worked with HubSpot experts to use its API to create a real-time synchronisation between the bookings and reservations systems. This two-way connection was the bridge that opened up a new level of capabilities for Europe Express, providing one reliable source of client information with no duplicated or manual data entry.
With the integration, a salesperson simply enters an order number into Sales Hub, and it automatically populates and centralises all the booking information. This up-to-the-minute data is used for everything from personalising communications to revenue reporting, forecasting, and resource management.
Service Hub is used for all the post-booking and advisor and agency management processes, including shared inboxes, support ticket routing, service requests, and agent collaboration to coordinate trips. Marketing Hub draws on this rich data to personalise communication flows and dramatically improve results.
Operating as a unified platform, HubSpot’s Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and Service Hub provide real-time synchronisation between Europe Express’ bookings and customer service systems. This integration eliminated manual data entry, centralised client information, and empowered its teams to deliver personalised, efficient service.
The transformation
Working smarter, not harder, delivers measurable results
Automatically synchronising hundreds of weekly advisor bookings not only saves significant manual data entry time but also frees up sales and service staff to spend more one-on-one time caring for advisors and travellers. When they request quotes or inquiries, all the information is up-to-date and accessible on one platform.
Leads converted 40% faster
Onboarding new agents is at the heart of the Europe Express business model. BDMs can sign them up at events or meetings, agencies can register their teams, or advisors can register online. Once joined, advisors generate quotes via the booking engine or request a quote via phone or email.
With Sales Hub lead management and prospecting and features, all incoming leads are segmented and routed directly to the appropriate sales representative. Automated follow-ups, alerts, and real-time reporting create accountability for managers to track and optimise performance so nothing falls through the cracks.
As a result, the average time from lead to quote was reduced by 40% or over 20 hours. In the travel industry, faster quotes translate into more deals as agents cross-quote multiple options.
30% more leads submitted within 60 days
After investing in signing up a new advisor, converting them into active clients is critical for Europe Express. Once they have their first successful booking, most will become repeat or high-volume bookers with a considerable lifetime value.
The streamlined lead management processes, combined with a personalised onboarding email series, increased the rate of new travel advisors submitting leads within 60 days by 30% while removing many time-consuming and repetitive tasks.
Targeted emails boost open rates by 272%
With its past systems, Europe Express was limited to manual email targeting with limited personalisation, which meant it broadcasted high volumes of emails with low open rates.
Leveraging Marketing Hub, they now send far fewer emails with relevant, timely, and personalised information to tightly targeted groups. Their open rates have increased by 272% to an exceptional 52%, and their emails are now a source of valuable resources for busy agents.
In addition, a series of highly segmented, personalised, and automated email marketing sequences helped spark and foster authentic connections and increased conversion rates on web quotes by 13% without any additional manual input.
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