Impact of Big Data on the Travel Industry

Wouldn’t life be just amazing if travel became so easy that it would take just a few clicks to book your dream holiday? If you could just get on a site and without even entering your preferences you are shown the best beaches across the globe fitting your budget, airlines that you usually prefer to use, your preferred seat location and hotels of your choice. This indeed is the magic of Big Data!

The ever growing chunks and chunks of user data generated every minute by travelers online is processed by analysis techniques also known as Big Data analytics and is used by businesses for competitive advantage. Not only this, for consumers it brings personalized service at very high speed. In fact, it is going to be the next big thing in the travel industry. Whether it is the airlines, hotels, travel agencies or simply travelers, all are going to reap the benefits of Big Data. It has been around for a while but now apparently its usage is picking up momentum in the right direction.

Airline Industry and Big Data

Airlines are betting big time on big data analytics. British Airways already uses a ‘Know Me’ feature to make an in-depth analysis of data for each and every customer to provide personalized results to them resulting in a better look-to-book ratio, boost in revenue and better customer satisfaction. GDSs like Amadeus use features like ‘Extreme Search’ and ‘Featured Results’ that help in improving customer experience. For example, they don’t need to mention a date for travel and they can ask random queries like ‘When are the cheapest flights to Brazil available?’ or ‘Can I go somewhere for 500$?’ and get very specific results.

How the Hospitality sector can benefit from Big Data Analytics

The hospitality business is another sector that can use big data analytics to offer rooms and services that are the preferred choices of their loyal customers. By knowing their customer’s preferences hotels can send them personalized messages and deals. If you are a hotel and have data about what time of the year your customers tend to travel, how much they like to spend and what they like doing, you can suggest rooms, activities and ancillary services that will go a long way in exceeding their expectations.

Impact on Travel Agencies

For travel agencies, it is going to be a boon because by simply tracking their customer preferences of destinations you can create personalized packages for them, by studying the behavior of travelers like, which destinations do travelers in the age group 18-35 prefer, make suggestions on the basis of the choices of your customers. Your prompt advice will make a huge impact on the customer decision making and will help in better conversions. In fact many online travel agencies are now collaborating with big data startups using the Hadoop technology to process huge chunks of data.

Big data will also help advertisers maximize their ROI through highly tailored marketing messages based on online user behavior and their search history.

It all revolves around consumer experience but it is a win-win situation for both, business and the consumer. The more personalized, convenient and budget-friendly travel will become, the higher will be customer loyalty and higher will be the conversion rates for businesses.

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TravelCarma is an experienced travel technology brand with expertise in providing travel businesses worldwide with mobile-friendly online booking portals with content management, powerful back-office and mid-office systems and access to global inventory through XML API integration. If you are looking for an effective online solution for your travel business, write to us at sales@travelcarma.com or visit our website for more information.