Big Data for Travel & Tourism

What is Big Data?

Let’s tackle the basics, the term ‘Big Data’ has been popping up quite often nowadays. To put it simply, Big Data is a massive amount of structured and unstructured data. Traditional database and software could not process it because of its sheer quantity.

The term ‘Big Data’ is mainly used to refer to the volume of data. However, when used by vendors, it may also refer to the technology that organizations require to handle large amounts of data and storage facilities.

This huge source of data can provide managers, businesses, organizations, policy makers and researchers with tons of solid and reliable information for decision making.

Big Data for Travel & Tourism

Information plays a big role in the tourism industry, especially information on tourist activity. Since tourists connect to the internet and use various technologies while on vacation, they leave behind digital traces which Big Data can easily collect and deliver – most of the information are from external sources, like social media sites. These vast amounts of data are simply too much for a traditional database to process, thus, sparking the need for analytics. For example, someone planning a holiday would acquire more sources from the internet regarding flights, activities to do at the destination or accommodations. All the data from these sources can help businesses involved in aviation, hospitality, and tourism target new clients and create opportunities to promote their services. It can also help tourism organizations visualize current trends and predict future trends.

See how travel & tourism companies use Big Data:

1. Travel and tourism organizations and businesses use Big Data to gather new information from actual tourists; this gives them the latest data to calculate and analyze rather than using surveys and expert’s opinions, which might be outdated and not as thorough
2. Members of the tourism industry are able to get a more realistic overview thanks to Big Data because it increases the sample base and does not rely on stated queries or intentions
3. Agencies or organizations can focus more on specific locations and destinations by using Big Data’s geofencing database
4. Tourism sectors in some countries started using Big Data to examine tourism flows and discover investment opportunities in their country. For example, the Cuban government uses Big Data to collect customer reviews and monitor travel accommodation performance
5. Companies can ascertain clients’ needs and expectations via Big Data, this will allow agencies to customize each trip and gain customer loyalty
6. Companies now have the opportunity to promote new business models related to tourism based on the data economy
7. Airline operators use Big Data to understand passenger behaviour, travel choices, the overall industry performance, increase their income opportunities and network connectivity
8. Airline operators also use it in revenue management, strategic marketing and pricing
9. Travel agencies can negotiate rates with suppliers, maximize revenue and discover sales opportunities with Big Data
10. Hotels and resorts can use the data provided to offer clients packages, deals and exclusive add-on services based on the current demand
11. Companies are using Big Data to scan news reports and social networking sites to figure out the latest developments in the travel industry

Tourism is a very dynamic industry where political, economical and social factors could determine the success or failure of a certain destination, service or product. Therefore, having enormous amounts of solid facts could really benefit the industry in making decisions, and predicting patterns as well as outcomes. The Big Data technology creates opportunities for the travel and tourism industry to grow and invent new business models by analysing said data and spotting market opportunities.

However, Big Data is still unknown to most travel agencies, furthermore smaller businesses tend to overlook the benefits of it, TravelCompute can help your company not only understand Big Data, but also utilize it to your advantage.

TravelCompute Travel & Tourism Big Data Platform

TravelCompute specializes as a reservation platform, travel CRM, travel back-office, tour management system and travel and tourism Big Data Platform.

TravelCompute Travel and Tourism Big Data Platform is an award winning platform that combines data from public and private sources, collects proprietary data, conducts social data mining and integrates with industry stakeholders in an automated way. The data is then processed and rendered into meaningful insights based on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning based big data technology for the national & local tourism organizations, travel management companies, destination management companies, hoteliers, airlines and other travel related companies.

The platform aggregates and maintains the following:

• Global Country Profiles
• Travel Industry Reports
• Destination Analytics
• Tourist reports
• Top Destination and Attractions Insights
• Social Media Tracking
• Real Time Twitter Data Mining and Historical Analytics
• Global News and Events Tracking
• Airfare predictions and Historical Data Mining
• And more

Expand your business and gain meaningful insights with TravelCompute. For more information, visit us at www.travelcompute.com

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