Rigorously monitoring even the most basic of demand-based data
can make a critical difference to overall performance says EyeforTravel
and Datumize’s new Understanding Customer
Behaviour Through Demand-Based Analytics white paper, which is available to
download now. The paper finds tracking own-site searches, business-to-business
requests, drop-outs across the funnel and service availability can result in
major uplifts to bookings.
“All companies know what they sell – but they don’t know
what they don’t sell,” says Josep Maria Gomis, Travel Solutions Architect, at Datumize.
He suggests that travel brands can grab uplifts in conversions quickly by
monitoring simple elements such as geographies for where requests are received.
“When we deployed our solution with one of our clients five years ago, for
example, we found that the first region they received requests for was Spain.”
The sales director knew this already, and he was also blasé about the discovery
that the second most common type of request was for inventory in France. But
the fourth region – to his astonishment – was China. “He said – ‘you are wrong
– we are not selling in China!’” says Gomis. “And we said, ‘you are not selling
because you don’t have a product, but this is the fourth most popular market for
which you receive requests. You should have a product for them! We consider
this a lost sale.’ And after a month they started offering products for China.
Profits went up.”
Another way of finding these lost sales and improving business
performance quickly through monitoring requests is looking at the languages
used: “One of our customers discovered that people were looking for products on
its Polish webpage but typing in queries in the German language,” says Datumize
founder Nacho Lafuente. “This might seem like a stupid case but it’s tens of
thousands of euros that you are not converting. If you are looking for ‘Crete’,
a Greek island, on a Polish page, then the result is not found.” Analysing
requests can find that some customers are not finding products that you have
available because of a language gap. Not every destination is the same in every
language, which leaves an obvious measurement metric to judge whether the
offering matches what your clients are searching for.
Demand-based analytics create opportunities to match a brand’s
product with the true picture of what customers want and are looking for.
Measuring relatively simple metrics, such as those above,
also gives brands an opportunity to search for patterns and critically when
anomalies occur in those patterns. For Spanish tour operator W2M, which receives
250 million availability requests per day, finding the mismatches has been a
key driver of business performance. W2M has set up some automatic alarms to
flag up higher-than-expected error ratios, so the IT team can respond
immediately. “We went from a 10% level of error to under 5%,” says Ernesto Sigg
Rodríguez, head of clients and supplier performance. “I would say that
represents between 5% and 10% growth in terms of sales,” which has made major difference
to his business where margins are very slim.
Making dynamic changes and working across a business to
implement them requires constant inputs, says Lafuente. “When you are dealing
with a highly competitive business such as travel, margins are so low that they
need to squeeze [every] euro,” he says. “It’s not only about having a general
understanding or perception of how things are going. You need to photograph
every single minute and have alarms for things if they break certain
thresholds.”
Demand-based analytics promise a step-change in travel
brands’ capabilities, unlocking huge insights that will allow brands to better
target consumers, build superior products and adjust faster to changing
patterns. To understand how to unlock the value contained in demand-based data,
download
the Understanding Customer Behaviour
Through Demand-Based Analytics white paper now! It includes:
- Real-world examples and case studies
- Industry survey data
- Data-based techniques and areas of focus that can improve business performance immediately
- Expert insight.
This white paper features insights from:
- Europcar
- IHG
- The Travel Corporation
- Thomas Cook Hotels & Resorts
- Vueling
- W2M.
