Data Analytics in Tourism Industry

May 05, 2021

The travel industry is the one that heavily depends on the data it collects and now has become more efficient since the emergence of Big Data Analytics. It has transformed the travel industry and is now a part of their day-to-day operations. Personalization, effective pricing strategies, product design, optimizing sales channels, attribution, customer service, social media engagement, channel management, ancillary sales – all of these can only be tackled efficiently with a strong foundation of data.

Market Research

The travel and tourism industry uses data analytics to compile and analyze information about its main competitors. In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of what other hotels or agencies are offering customers, data can be acquired from a variety of sources. There is an extensive variety of online platforms where customers can share their opinions on hotels and travel companies.

All this data can be used to pinpoint the strengths, weaknesses and overall reputation of rival companies. This can be extremely valuable, as it helps business leaders to spot potential gaps in the market, or opportunities to deliver in ways that rivals are failing.

Targeted Marketing

This analysis helps marketers categorize travel consumers and promote only those products and services they are likely to buy. This is the need of the hour for every successful transaction with the consumer. Classifying customers by type is vital since consumers have different needs and expectations. For example, the leisure traveler will be looking for budget-friendly amenities, entertainment, and luxury, while the business traveler needs a comfortable room, convenient dining, and reliable internet access. A single person might just be looking to grab a bite and a comfortable night’s stay, while a family would want a low-cost, child-friendly, clean facility. Using data analytics, marketers can revolutionize the travel industry, since they can now identify the correct services for the right people, bring them in and exceed their expectations.

Reputation Management

In the internet age, customers can leave reviews on a wide range of different platforms, including social media sites, search engines, and dedicated review websites, sharing their opinions and experiences. Customer’s tendency is to trust reviews more than the website as it is assumed that businesses tend to bend the truth in their marketing. With data analytics, it can be recognized whether customers are impressed or disappointed. Once this information has been gathered, hotels can use it to inform their training efforts, in order to make improvements and ensure future reviews are positive.

Provide Data-Backed Recommendations

Data analytics does not just aid in predicting customer habits and behavior. For marketers, it goes a step further by providing insights into the reasoning and logic behind such behavior. By understanding the catalyst behind the consumer’s behavior, marketers can anticipate travelers’ needs well in advance and market to them tailored programs to meet their specific objectives. For example, if a traveler is looking for flights to Chicago they will also be offered accommodation options for their trip. These types of data-powered recommendations could also be for car rental deals, alternative routes, stopovers and even local attractions.

Strategic Marketing

Given that the tourism industry is very diverse, it might be difficult to develop the right marketing. But, data analytics helps tourism companies to adopt a more strategic approach in their marketing efforts, targeting the right people in the right way. Moreover, data analytics helps in delivering facts and figures. When these are converted into stats, insights like who your customers are, where they are, what they want, how they want to be contacted and when, can be found. This allows targeted promotional content to be delivered.

Revenue Management

In order to find the right price for the services provided, via the right channel, internal as well as external data are required to be analyzed. What can be considered as internal data are past customer expectation, occupancy rates, room revenue and current bookings and external data are information about local events, weather, flights and school holidays. Involvement of data analytics gives an edge over the competitors and helps the marketer to make a niche for themselves. Revenue management helps in incorporating the analytics and determining which competitive properties are actually relevant to the customer’s that are willing to pay. Also, the competitor rate information can be known and thus help a business to plan the next move.

Want to know more about Data Analytics ?

Check Why Data Analytics is Important in Business and Data Analytics in Retail Industry to grasp the importance of Data Analytics in different fields.