‘Live Today, Love Tomorrow, Unite Forever’: that is the slogan that summarizes Tomorrowland perfectly, explained Tomorrowland’s marketing manager Michael Dujardin. “When you are in Tomorrowland, it’s all about ‘today’: you need to live the experience as if no other day ever mattered or will matter.” In order to do that, every single detail needs to be perfect, from the music up to the restrooms: “No Dixi boxes at our festival but real toilets, and when eating you must feel like in a restaurant.” It may seem trivial but such attention to detail has helped create the buzz that we have seen for many years now.
But the journey towards that extraordinary experience should be unique as well. So each touchpoint, each interaction with the customer should add to the feeling of living a unique experience. Once registered, everybody is looking forward to receiving the box with the entrance bracelet that can be used as a digital wallet, which contributes to shorter waiting lines and an overall greater comfort: that’s how Tomorrowland stands out from the mass of festivals we can choose from each summer. “And of course everybody knows about the special flights as part of the festival travel packages”, added Michael: “DJs in the waiting area before check-in, hostesses dressed in Tomorrowland attire, it’s just a simple illustration of how you can stretch ‘today’ to several days before and after the experience.”
The experience becomes even more compelling by adding a digital dimension, explained founder Manu Beers: “Two Swedes sitting on the same plane to Belgium? Why wouldn’t we inform them of their fellow countryman, so they can get in touch if they want to?” That’s where analytics comes in, of course: it is an excellent example how the appropriate use of data can create actionable insights that can make a difference for the people attending the festival. A difference in total customer experience by connecting people, in this case.
During his opening remarks at the Executive dinner, our country manager Jeroen Van Godtsenhoven briefly elaborated on the speed and degree at which human tasks are being taken over by machines. In this Tomorrowland case, the answer seems pretty straightforward: the machine may identify that two countrymen are boarding the same plane to Tomorrowland, and it may send this information to both parties, but the idea of linking these people still has to come from humans. Yet another example how Tomorrowland makes tomorrow look very bright, and not just on those two weekends per year.