That was the message from Bradley Taylor, UK head of brand and customer experience at market research firm GfK, speaking at Abta’s Customer Insight in the Travel Industry forum last week.

He warned that millennials – those typically born between 1980 and 1995 – had access to “thousands of online reviews at any one time” and firms could not guarantee that traditional marketing strategies would translate to loyalty.

“It’s no longer about how much you can spend on online advertising,” he told delegates at the forum. “[Millennials] need to feel like someone took the time to make it about them.”

He suggested that companies were no longer “master and commander” of how their brands are perceived by consumers. “We are dealing with customers who have access to thousands of online reviews at any one time and you can’t control it,” he said.

“We need to learn how to manage ourselves and how we react to that, because things can go really pear-shaped these days,” he added.

Using data compiled by GfK, Taylor presented his view on the makeup of the millennial consumer, suggesting that typically they fall into two groups: those aged 15-24, and more “mature” consumers, aged 25 and over.

He described how the older contingent are climbing the corporate ladder quickly, getting married later in life and are hungry for experiential travel.

Presenting data from GfK’s UK Consumer Life 2016 study, Taylor showed that millennials’ desire for “adventure” was 18 points higher than the UK average, while their need to “travel by plane” was nine points above the national average.

He said there was a need for travel firms to begin their relationships with customers early in the booking process and used data from 30,000 tweets compiled in the first week of April to highlight the demand from millennials for buying travel.

Taylor explained that 11% of Twitter users studied said they “needed a holiday” in their tweets while 15% said they “couldn’t wait” for their getaway – with a total of 47% using “holiday language” while not actually on a trip themselves.

“The adventure starts when they want to go on holiday and that’s when [firms] need to be there,” Taylor said.