← All customer stories

Inghams: acting on feedback before the season ends

Santa’s Lapland runs for six weeks a year, and by the time Gemma Harrison’s team at Inghams had sorted its feedback by hand, the season was over. A Wordnerds proof of concept on Inghams’ own comments showed the business a faster way, and Inghams went ahead.

Last updated 13 November 2026

At a glance

  • Inghams, specialist ski, summer and Lapland tour operator, part of the DERTOUR UK group
  • Started with a proof of concept on Inghams’ own customer feedback
  • Told by Gemma Harrison, Head of Customer Experience
  • Feedback categorised by Wordnerds, so the team spends its time acting on it
The challenge

Santa’s Lapland runs for six weeks, and feedback sorted by hand arrived after it had finished

Gemma Harrison looks after customer experience at Inghams, the specialist tour operator behind ski, summer walking and Lapland holidays, and at Santa’s Lapland, and every piece of customer feedback comes to Gemma’s team.

Santa’s Lapland runs for only six weeks a year, and in that time thousands of guests leave thousands of lines of comments. If Gemma’s team couldn’t see what was going wrong, and what was going well, within those six weeks, nothing could change until the next season, a whole year away.

Sorting the comments was a job for people with spreadsheets. It was mind-numbing for whoever did it and open to bias and error, and two people would put the same comment in different categories, so nobody could trust a trend. Each team looked after its own channels, so nobody saw the whole journey, and by the time the analysis was finished the season was over.

Gemma already knew that acting on feedback paid off. When the team analysed comments on the Santa’s Lapland festive feast by hand, the feast’s scores went up, and that lifted NPS overall. Doing the same for everything, every season, was more than a team working by hand could manage.

Inghams customer story
How they did it

To sort a season’s feedback in time, Gemma went looking for a machine to do it

Gemma had been cautious about AI, and wanted proof before asking the business for budget.

  • Met a team that understood the problem

    Gemma met Wordnerds at a CX event, alongside colleagues from other travel brands who all got excited about it. From day one, it felt like Wordnerds understood Inghams’ problem and wanted a partnership as much as Inghams did.

  • Tried ChatGPT, and found its limits

    Gemma looked at ChatGPT and other AI tools. They raised questions about the security of Inghams’ data, and they couldn’t be trained on the nuances and lingo of a specialist tour operator.

  • Asked to see it work on their own data

    Gemma knew the budget question was coming, so a trial mattered, and Wordnerds ran a proof of concept on Inghams’ own feedback.

The proof of concept used Inghams’ own feedback, so the business could see itself in the results

A generic demo would have shown someone else’s data, possibly from another industry, and people at Inghams couldn’t easily have related to it. The proof of concept showed their own guests’ comments, and that validated the case Gemma had been making.

Inghams went ahead, planning to bring feedback from every channel across its Santa’s Lapland, ski and walking holidays into Wordnerds. Setting it up took a year, alongside everything else going on in the business, and Gemma never felt pushed to hurry.

What they do now

Wordnerds does the categorising, so Gemma’s team can use what guests say

Inghams set Wordnerds up to do the sorting that used to take the team so long.

  • Every brand’s feedback in one place

    Feedback from every channel, across Santa’s Lapland, ski and walking holidays, goes into one platform, and the themes and trends come out as soon as it’s in.

  • The same category, every single time

    Wordnerds categorises every comment the same way, with no human bias or mistakes, so the team can trust a trend in one season against the next.

  • Competitors’ reviews alongside their own

    Wordnerds scrapes competitors’ reviews from TripAdvisor and other sites, so the team can look at their customer journey alongside Inghams’ own, which it never had time to do by hand.

What changed

Gemma’s team stopped sorting comments and started spending its time on what they say

Inghams’ customer experience team no longer categorises feedback by hand. Wordnerds sorts the comments from its ski, walking and Lapland holidays into consistent themes, which gives Gemma Harrison’s team the time to work on what guests said, and a chance to act inside a six-week season such as Santa’s Lapland.

The team was relieved to hand the categorising over, and people now spend their time on what guests have said, developing what Inghams offers and its future strategy.

Inghams is part of the DERTOUR UK group, and the set-up has room for more brands, more data and new feedback channels as the business grows, so the team can act quickly on whatever Inghams adds.

Gemma’s advice to other travel operators applies to anyone choosing a feedback tool. Don’t be taken in by suppliers who say they can do it all. Inghams’ main aim was to spend less time categorising feedback and let a machine pull out what mattered, so look for something that fits your business, at a cost you can manage, with a team that wants to partner with you.

Key metrics
253,000 Voices heard
282 Working days saved
£54,000 Labour cost savings

About Inghams

Inghams is a specialist tour operator for ski, summer and Lapland holidays, with more than 90 years’ experience in skiing holidays. It was founded by Walter Ingham, the man who took Britain skiing, and is part of the DERTOUR UK group.

Inghams

About Wordnerds

Wordnerds turns what customers say into what organisations do. We ingest feedback from surveys, complaints, reviews, calls and social; apply transparent, explainable AI to surface themes and drivers; and serve the insight two ways from one semantic model: full-detail Power BI for analysts, plain-language AI-chat answers for everyone else. Every result traces back to what customers actually wrote, so it's evidence you can act on, not a black box.

Wordnerds

Questions CX leaders ask

How do you act on customer feedback when your season only lasts a few weeks?

Take the categorising off people’s desks, so the analysis keeps up with the season. Inghams’ Santa’s Lapland programme runs for six weeks, and sorting its comments by hand took longer than that. Inghams now uses Wordnerds to categorise feedback from every brand into consistent themes, so Gemma Harrison’s team can see what’s going wrong, and what’s going well, while there’s still time to change it.

How do you get budget approved for a customer feedback analysis tool?

Ask for a proof of concept on your own data. Gemma Harrison, Head of Customer Experience at Inghams, knew the budget question was coming, so a trial mattered. Wordnerds ran one on Inghams’ own feedback, and because the results came from Inghams’ own guests, people in the business could relate to them. That validated the case, and Inghams went ahead.

Can ChatGPT categorise customer feedback for a travel company?

Inghams looked into it. Gemma Harrison tried ChatGPT and other AI tools before choosing Wordnerds, and found they came with their own problems. There were questions over the security of Inghams’ data, and the tools couldn’t be trained on the nuances and lingo of a specialist tour operator. Wordnerds now categorises Inghams’ feedback consistently, with no human bias or mistakes.

Book a diagnostic and we'll look at your customer feedback together — and show you the themes hiding in it.

Book a diagnostic Explore our platform
Pete, founder of Wordnerds

So you're reading the footer now? Either you ❤️ Wordnerds or you're desperate for something to read. Either way, CX Corner from Wordnerds is the answer. Fortnightly Voice of Customer bombs dropped in your box. Signup or find out more.