Come fly with me: How Digital Transformation is Enabling Holi-data
The travel industry is undergoing considerable change. According to research from Statista, international tourism has more than doubled in the last 20 years and customers now demand faster and more customized services. With access to more travel information online, holiday-makers are always connected. They learned to be autonomous through self-service and real-time recommendations and want to make instant decisions while planning their travels. Travelers also enjoy the flexibility of making changes and receiving updates throughout their trip and being guided along their journeys, especially in the case of unplanned events.
In this article, we will discuss the role of data in enabling travel and holiday operators to retain customers and gain a competitive advantage in this crowded space.
According to a recent survey conducted by Schofields, more than 40% of those under the age of 33 prioritize ‘Instagrammability’ when choosing their next holiday spot. In light of this, tour operators are under pressure to provide customers with as much digestible information as possible. At the same time, several online travel websites have evolved providing more options. Holiday-makers are applying the pressure on travel companies to seek out the best deals at the most affordable cost. Gone are the days when we book our holidays in a physical store, instead we are presented with a vast array of enticing options that can be purchased with the click of a button. This expectation is widespread within the industry, as operators continually battle to deliver better holidays for less. For UK customers the Internet has expanded the amount of choice for customers and has undoubtedly enabled customers to hand-pick their perfectly-crafted holidays.
Highly customized and high-quality holiday experiences require meticulous personalization, for which a great deal of data is required. Tour operators use data in a highly intelligent way to provide new levels of services with customers. Within just a few years the amount of data available to airlines, travel and booking operators has dramatically increased. According to The State of Data in Travel Survey 2017, 65% of travel businesses now have a dedicated data analysis team, with 75% of these businesses expecting to increase their data analytics budget this year. This utilization of data is hugely important for travel operators, who learn to leverage data in an intelligent way to determine which next-generation services consumers will buy.
One company succeeding at processing vast amounts of data is Air France-KLM, which manages 16 million exchanges on Facebook and three million on Twitter a year. Stored on a Big Data Platform, these vast quantities of data can be redistributed in real-time to various customer service points. Using data in this manner enables Air France-KLM to create more personalized emails for its customers, building trust and allowing the airline to offer value-add services. Additionally, Air France-KLM continues to innovate its 360-degree customer-centric approach with conversational robots on Facebook Messenger, which gives access to all travel information that a confused flyer might need at the tip of their fingertips. Data brings new high-value services for the customer. Think of lost items as an example. Losing items happens frequently while traveling, and it can be a particularly painful experience.
Traditionally when you forget a personal item when leaving a place, the company brings it to the airport lost and found department. When you realize an item is lost, you might be a thousand miles away and do not even know where it took place.
