The future of today’s tourism sector rests on the capacity of companies and professionals in the sector to understand and anticipate travellers’ needs. It is a very complicated challenge, no doubt about it, but fortunately there are many tools to smooth the way – tools that were inconceivable just a few years ago.
In the era of so-called Big Data we are swimming in an ocean of information so immense that these tools are indispensable. Companies need their help to screen all the data provided by the traveller fingerprint, and to create arguments that will form a base for their business decisions within the tourism sector, whether they are a travel agency, an OTA, an airline or a hotel chain.
Predicting tourism demand
To accurately predict tourism demand for a particular destination or accommodation option, all it takes these days is a click. One single click, on the appropriate platform. This is a bold statement (and one that comes as a surprise to many), but what we are getting at is that having the right tools and knowing how to use them means that any professional within the tourism sector can extract privileged information for their company with very little effort involved.
When we talk about ideal tools and Big Data we are referring to tools that help us with the analysis of tourism data – also known as Business Intelligence tools for tourism. They are platforms capable of collecting, interpreting, comparing and analysing all the information users leave on the internet during their planning process and as they enjoy their holiday. Work that would be impossible for a human can be performed by these tools in just a few thousandths of a second.
Decision-making
The analysis provided by tools specialised in the tourism sector, such as Insights-X from TravelgateX lets a hotelier or OTA manager identify clear trends in demand before reservations begin to materialise. They can discover which products travellers will prefer and what they are willing to pay for them… In short, they get to know the values, strengths, weaknesses and threats of a tourism business and make the necessary decisions to bring it to success.
With this type of tourist analysis tools, nothing is left to chance or intuition, and they provide you with:
Safety in all steps you decide to take in the course of your business.
Optimisation of resources.
New business opportunities.
Anticipating everything
Transforming this ocean of data into knowledge also means helping your company prepare, making sure it is ready to face any setbacks that might occur within the sector. Getting ahead of situations other are not able to see coming and protecting the business before it is too late.
Within the tourism sector, more than in any other, social changes, national and international policies, fashion and exceptional events are key factors when speaking of good or bad seasons: Brexit, economic crises and recessions, the Arab Spring, digitalisation and the bankruptcy of a giant like Thomas Cook… Everything can change in the blink of an eye if you miss to pick up on the clues around you.
Data + Insights-X = knowledge
Evaluating all these parameters and understanding the enormous possibility offered by managing more than 2 Terabytes of data extracted from over 3,000 million searches and more than 20,000 reservations per day worldwide, we focus our efforts at TravelgateX on developing a Business Intelligence tool for the travel sector completely adapted to the needs of each and every company in the tourism market.
This is the big difference: rather than offering cold data, Insights-X provides answers to doubts that any tourism professional might have when embarking on a decision-making process, whether it is with a view to the end-of-year balance, the start of a new season, or thinking about a business plan for the next 3 years. It is a tool that helps tourism companies take advantage of opportunities that until now only existed in their imagination.