Measuring and making the most of consumer data

Travel brands are sitting on huge value in their databases but are yet to unlock its full potential, which will be game changing

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.

For more case studies of brands that have driven performance gains from better utilisation of data, download the free white paper now.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.

Click here to download your copy of the white paper for free!

How simple measurements can make a big difference to travel brands’ performance

Travel brands can make huge leaps in performance through relatively simple measurements and metrics finds new white paper

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.

Click here to download your copy of the white paper for free!

Why demand-based data matters

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 says new research

Demand-based data is increasingly important and can allow travel brands to become both more agile in the short-term and better prepared for long-term trends according to the new Understanding Customer Behaviour Through Demand-Based Analytics white paper from EyeforTravel and Datumize, which is free to download now. Looking at ongoing demand patterns will arm travel brands with a wide-range of capabilities, such as more responsive marketing, better-adjusted pricing, more personalised products, superior forecasting capabilities and increased planning capabilities.

This kind of data is of utmost importance to a youth brand like Contiki, part of The Travel Corporation’s agglomeration of 30 international brands. Raj Dhawan, senior executive, technology at The Travel Corporation, explains that understanding and forecasting demand is critical to keeping Contiki’s catalogue of offerings appealing and up-to-date.

“The one area that we look at regularly is search terms on our website – the cities and countries where people are searching,” he explains. “That may result in us culling some trips and destinations or increasing our inventory on those destinations.

“There are areas and destinations that are hot in the market versus those that are not, and every year that changes a bit. Based on that, our product changes to some extent, with variations that could appeal to the audience that we have.”

Building on this monitoring, the business is experimenting with a machine learning pilot to give these learnings a concrete and immediate use: Depending on patterns of searches, for example for a particular area or cost bracket, Contiki customers will see a website personalised for their type of customer.

“When people search for certain terms, the website is curated based on this,” says Dhawan. “That’s something we are piloting, and that uses machine learning and the search product on the website.”

This is just one example of the insights from brands featured in the white paper. Download the full research now to get more from industry leaders, including Europcar, IHG, Thomas Cook Hotels & Resorts, Vueling and W2M.

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.

Click here to download your copy of the white paper for free!

Are travel companies ready for the digital revolution?

Travel companies are struggling to transform themselves for the digital age, with digital transformation, technological and data siloes and internal data quality their top three internal challenges

According to the World Economic Forum, digitisation in the aviation, travel and tourism industries is expected to create up to USD305 billion in value through increased profitability up to 2025. This should make digitisation a key priority for the travel industry, however, achieving a strong platform to do so is proving difficult for travel brands. This is one of the findings from the new Understanding Customer Behaviour Through Demand-Based Analytics white paper from EyeforTravel and Datumize, which is free to download now.

In a major survey of the industry featured in the white paper, travel suppliers (accommodation, car hire, cruise, ground transport, airlines & tour operators) said that their greatest internal issue is digital transformation (34.4% of respondents). This is followed by technological alignment (30.5%) and the perennial concern of data siloes and internal data quality (29%), both of which are critical to achieving a digital brand fit for the 21^st Century.  

“Our data and the industry interviews conducted for this white paper suggests that a significant proportion of the travel industry is struggling to construct the necessary infrastructure to create strong digital brands,” said Alex Hadwick, Head of Research for EyeforTravel. “Stringent data practices increasingly underpin the modern travel sector, which is emphasised by our finding that the most important trend for travel suppliers right now is GDPR and cyber security, followed by big data and analytics. There is huge value to be unlocked but brands need to get the basics right first by complying with regulations, creating secure, structured and accessible databases and measuring the right metrics.”

The research recommends that brands move data into the cloud and focus on getting a picture of total demand. This is the approach of hotel giant IHG: “Before we had a big data platform, we weren’t able to store and analyze our availability requests,” said Jeff Garber, vice president of revenue management systems at IHG during the EyeforTravel 2018 Digital Data Europe conference. “We had a lot of information about reservations, and customers that had made reservations. As we bring more data into that big data platform, we can really understand the choice model. Our next step is merchandising and being smarter about what people aren’t buying so that we can reduce the clutter we are showing to them.”

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 Behavior 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.

Click here to download your copy of the white paper for free!

Why your next data hire should be a neural network

Neural networks are becoming more complex and powerful, creating a revolution in data analysis and making them indispensable to the travel and tourism industry according to EyeforTravel’s Does Deep Learning Hold the Answer? report.

Although Artificial intelligences (AI) are a long way from truly emulating the human brain and replacing your data analysts, they are taking their first steps and should definitely be a part of your data team. This is the conclusion of EyeforTravel’s new report into deep learning, which is free to download now.

The case for using neural network-powered deep learning techniques lies in the potential return on investment that they can provide. Not only can neural networks undertake complex analysis but they can also reduce workloads, freeing up data professionals to work on more demanding tasks. For example, the report notes that Stena Line’s deep learning program to understand price competition for its onboard products saves weeks of analyst labour, increases accuracy dramatically and all for a cost of roughly EUR15,000.  

Not only can they help with some of the more mundane tasks and working through very large data sets but it is constantly growing in complexity and will soon be able to take more tasks on. “Instead of building very complex models to understand the parameters that influence revenue, you just feed the data into a system and let the system – thanks to a deep learning algorithm – learn what works,” says Marion Mesnage, Head of Innovation and Research at Amadeus IT. “There is no assumption on the model whatsoever. That’s very disruptive…but we believe it could equal or outperform what humans can achieve.”

It's not just data teams that deep learning can help, marketing teams also stand to benefit substantially from deep learning. Neural nets can learn huge amounts about what makes customers tick, such as optimal pricing points and the best creative as well as where to deploy this. The report notes that The Travel Corporation is using deep learning to track online sentiment and automatically adjust advertising to appropriate formats and destinations. 

To find out more about deep learning download the free report now and see:

• What brands such as Amadeus, Expedia, Stena Line, and The Travel Corporation are doing to harness deep learning.
• How neural nets have been developed and how they power deep learning.
• Where deep learning will transform the industry.
• How deep learning can save time and reduce costs.
• What the limits are to deep learning and how regulation might affect it.

The report is part two of EyeforTravel’s How Will Artificial Intelligence Transform Travel? report series. You can find the first report, which studies chatbots in travel, by clicking here.

How travel brands are using deep learning to get ahead

Artificial intelligences running deep learning programs are already helping travel brands understand pricing, improve the customer experience, reduce workloads and make marketing smarter according to EyeforTravel’s new Does Deep Learning Hold the Answer? report.

The report, which is free to download now, examines the role that deep learning can play in travel and finds that far from being a futuristic concept, the machine learning technique is already creating real-world return on investment for travel brands.

One of the most obvious areas where deep learning is being deployed is in the area of predictive pricing. The report notes several different brands that are using deep learning in the field of pricing but in different ways. Both technology company Amadeus and metasearch firm Amadeus are deploying deep learning to understand airline pricing and model it into the future. Amadeus aims to maximise prices and revenues from airline tickets, whereas Aviasales is approaching the challenge from the consumer perspective. They claim that they can predict air fares with a 5% error margin and are applying this to make recommendations to customers about when and with which airline to book.

Stena Line on the other hand has combined deep learning’s ability to recognise objects and its pricing strategy. Their challenge was to make sure they were offering the cheapest prices on board compared to what consumers could buy on land but not to undercut to such a degree they were losing revenue. To do this manually would have been exhausting and expensive as there are tens of thousands of products to monitor. Through machine learning, neural networks and image recognition software, deep learning can recognize products and their prices and present findings back to the team with a more than 90% accuracy rating. 

To find out more about deep learning download the free report now and see:

• What brands such as Amadeus, Expedia, Stena Line, and The Travel Corporation are doing to harness deep learning.

• How neural nets have been developed and how they power deep learning.

• Where deep learning will transform the industry.

• How deep learning can save time and reduce costs.

• What the limits are to deep learning and how regulation might affect it.

The report is part two of EyeforTravel’s How Will Artificial Intelligence Transform Travel? report series. You can find the first report, which studies chatbots in travel, by clicking here.

Can deep learning change travel and tourism?

As data becomes the difference between a growing brand and one in decline, EyeforTravel’s new Does Deep Learning Hold the Answers? report finds that deep learning can and is changing the travel landscape.

Travel could be one of the main beneficiaries of rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) learning techniques as struggles to utilise huge amounts of data in order to understand complex human behaviours. Key to this is deep learning according to the report, which is free to download now. This a method where neural networks organised in hierarchical layers evaluate data sets. Deep learning deliberately aims to emulate the way that human and animal brains interpret information and consequently is making huge strides.

Currently, the technology still is at an early stage and the neural nets that power deep learning are far simpler than biological counterparts, usually using layers of nodes that passes a decision onto the next layer of nodes once a value has been reached. Therefore, what it truly excels at is focusing on a single task, which is typically finding relationships and patterns in very large quantities of data.

“What we are doing now is artificial narrow intelligence, AI that’s specific to a certain task,” says Amer Mohammed, Head of Digital Innovation at Stena Line. “We need to come up with mathematical models that can actually understand the world, not just fake understand it.” In the meantime some of these tasks that deep learning is already being used for in travel include pricing, language processing, image recognition, consumer analysis, and market modelling.

In the future, AIs will be able to tackle multiple tasks and come closer to human abilities as rapid advancements are being constantly made at the bleeding-edge of machine learning. Already Google’s DeepMind division has been able to build a multi-tasking AI and the rate of advance is staggering.

However, there a major issues and bottlenecks still to conquer if neural networks genuinely want to get close to the capabilities of the human brain. One key issue is the data and power that deep learning requires. For a neural network to effectively learn it most often required and often a guiding hand when initially tackling the task. They also a greedy when it comes to IT requirements. Whereas the human brain runs on the equivalent of around 20 watts, the AI that beat the top Go player in the world required 50,000 times that. Russian metasearch company Aviasales notes in the report that “System resource is the only limit. Even our test library consumes a lot. Hence, we could be more productive by achieving [a] new level of computer performance.”

“The opportunities are enormous and already unveiling themselves,” says Alex Hadwick, Head of Research at EyeforTravel. “Almost everything in travel has a huge number of variables as trip itineraries are complex with multiple decision points, making deep learning especially suited to drawing conclusions from the masses of data. The other thing about deep learning is that we are training it to get better and better every time we add information, so in theory this could be a really powerful tool for personalization. There is the potential to conduct far larger scale and more variated testing and then to combine this information and refine at each stage through dep learning.”

“It’s definitely going to come with ethical challenges, however,” believes Hadwick. Neural networks can end up being black boxes due to their complexity and multiple layers of decision making. You can find yourself with an answer but not knowing how the AI arrived at it. This will run counter to European data regulations in the case of customer-facing decisions and data for starters. We can also end up programming in our own biases and ignore potential mistakes, so we need to understand and master this technology and ask where it best deployed. If we do though, the possibilities are vast.”

To find out more about deep learning download the free report now and see:

• What brands such as Amadeus, Expedia, Stena Line, and The Travel Corporation are doing to harness deep learning.
• How neural nets have been developed and how they power deep learning.
• Where deep learning will transform the industry.
• How deep learning can save time and reduce costs.
• What the limits are to deep learning and how regulation might affect it.

The report is part two of EyeforTravel’s How Will Artificial Intelligence Transform Travel? report series. You can find the first report, which studies chatbots in travel, by clicking here.

Find out why 74% of the respondents picked mobile investment as a big winner for the travel industry

EyeforTravel Infographic and Survey Report: Marketing and Mobile Strategies to Engage the Connected Traveller’.

With research findings showing us that 148.3 million bookings were made online last year, and 65% of same-day hotel reservations were made via a smartphone, according to eMarketer.

Currently there’s a lot of room for disruption in travel and the stakes are high. The prize will go to brands that can successfully offer a seamless connected experience. Partnerships, data and technological innovation will decide who wins and who loses out.

"A smartphone is a critical tool for the travel industry, particularly in terms of understanding passenger patterns for booking, search and on trip decisions," said Shreya Ganapathy, Head of Content and Marketing at EyeforTravel. "When you consider how the mobiles have changed the way people interact with brands, its time travel brands follow the change, but what’s the right digital strategy is what we are trying to get answers to.”

So with this growth at stake and shift to mobile, data and technology to create the seamless travel experience we at EyeforTravel did a survey in January 2017 to give us an outlook at what impacts customer experience, online marketing and mobile investment, and the impact of changes on the travel landscape.

EyeforTravels report and infographic on what companies are spending their digital dollars you can access the report and infographic here.

Here’s a few findings: when it came to asking what would be the greatest opportunities to focus on in 2017 we had mobile as a clear winner at 74%, followed with content marketing at 65% followed by social media. Artificial intelligence, text based communication, VR and application development also showing increase from our last year’s survey.  Biometric tools and robotics are not the main focus for our respondents for 2017.

Want the rest of the report- get it here!

How Is Data Changing Travel?

Data is the driving force behind the changes being felt in the travel industry and its effects are being applied everywhere, from flight searches to hotel front desks. The pace and level of this change can seem overwhelming but we want to help guide you through this with our new State of Data in Travel Survey.

Take just five minutes to complete the survey and we will send you the results, so you can see how the industry is changing, where the challenges are, and how you compare. If you work with data at all, whether as a CEO, marketer, revenue manager, analyst, or data professional, we would love to hear from you. Completing the survey will also get you access to a host of free content and a chance to win a pair of Luxe Edition Beats Solo2 headphones!

We want to use the survey to figure out where the opportunities and the barriers are, such as:

• How are budgets changing? 
• What are the most popular data sources and where are the gaps?
• What is driving investment into data?
• What channels are working well for marketers?
• What is holding the industry back? Staffing & skills? Attribution issues? Poorly-defined KPIs? Data quality & cleanliness?

We will be analysing your answers alongside hundreds of other travel professionals to create a comprehensive report.

This report is part of our Smart Travel Data Series, which you will also receive for completing the survey. You can access the white papers we have already released as part of this series through the following links, with more content to come:

• Understanding the Travel Consumer's Path to Purchase
• Improving the Airline Experience
• EyeforTravel Smart Travel Data Summit 2016 Round-up  
• Airport 3.0: The Technology and Data Transforming Airport Operations 

We look forward to hearing about your experience with data in the travel industry and will continue to produce research to support you and your organisation.

Alex Hadwick

Head of Research, EyeforTravel