Virtually every consumer-facing travel brand is capturing
critical data constantly from their site visitors but many are struggling to maximise
its value says EyeforTravel
and Datumize’s new Understanding Customer
Behaviour Through Demand-Based Analytics white paper. This is because
of the reams of information that are being constantly created across multiple
channels and the need to be always on and live. These factors often prevent travel
companies from getting down to the key metrics that matter and being able to
fully extract and study them.
“Travel companies normally only have access to converted
sales and aren’t able to track all the requests that customers are making
though channels,” explains Datumize’s head of marketing Carlota Feliu.
“Some of them they can track, for example, through their own
website. But the vast majority they are not capable of tracking this data with
the technologies they are using. Everything that you want to do in demand
forecasting starts with good data and good knowledge of your customers –
without this, you won’t be able to understand demand, predict it, or increase
it,” says Feliu.
She points to several key areas where brands can start to
interrogate their data:
Inventory: Do you
have the right offer at the right price in each area?
Availability: Do
you have the stock available to action all requests, and in the right price
range?
Experience: Are
all software links in the chain performing as they should for a quick, smooth
booking?
Vueling Airlines, a Spanish, low-cost provider, has around
five million search queries a day, 50% of which come directly from customers
and 50% from online travel agencies and other tour operators. But since its
business goal is to answer all enquiries for a flight in a second or less, it
was struggling to store and make use of all this demand data.
Jonathan Guerrero Corcho, innovation manager, explains that
a Datumize solution – which monitors everything without adding any code to the
main process or slowing anything down – means that the business can now
understand more which kinds of routes and dates are most in-demand, with
negligible noticeable effects to end users.
“We can see if a route is being asked for more times than we
are operating on for those days and we can not only adjust the current schedule
but we can adjust the next schedule,” he says. “We can say ‘this route is
better to operate on Tuesday than Monday, as the numbers are saying that this
route is more requested on Tuesday.’”
This kind of learning is particularly important for a
business that does not operate the same flights each day, but a limited number
of times a week.
- 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.