Big Data -Travel Industry

Big Data for the Travel Industry

Big Data is applied in several ways and one of its applications rarely discussed are the infinite possibilities to the travel industry. It can effectively help make the customer experience better and lead to better sales. Big Data means a lot of datasets that are beyond the capabilities of a typical dataset and analytics are the interpreting the technologies that enable the meaning of the large voluminous data.

A lot of data is encountered in travel. A prime example would be the analytics logs of an online travel agency. For years, analytics tools have enabled companies to keep track of detailed demographic statistics, and other pertinent information such as which pages convert the best, have the highest bounce rates, etc. With the advent of cloud storage and web services, the proliferation of cheap storage as well as distributed file systems that allow storage across dozens of commodity computers enables the cheap and efficient storage of petabytes of data without massive cost. This will provide travel agencies the capacity to handle more data. This provides them a larger dataset or data points to tell them which areas to focus their drive upon and what kind of products they would advertise and what audience they are specifically targeting.

The state of big data in travel will serve as a technological primer and will improve the services in the travel ecosphere. The ability of big data technology to enable us to find intelligence in vast amounts of data presents a clear, massive opportunity to reshape the way consumers are marketed and sold to in travel.

Some of the cool applications the travel industry is heading to are discussed below. Big data applications are moving from profiling to true personalization. For example, true personalization would enable a site to recommend a specific hotel to a specific traveler based on their specific wants, needs, and previous purchase patterns, rather than a generic set of recommendations based on the type of traveler.
Geo-fencing, the process of knowing when a traveler is near a certain attraction or vendor, is starting to emerge.

An example of this is the recently launched Foursquare Radar feature, which alerts you when you are near a place you at one time wanted to be reminded of. This technology is pure big data: gathering your coordinates in real time via your mobile phone’s GPS and realizing when you are in a certain boundary.

Another application which is I have heard of is the ‘meet and seat’ applications which is being implemented by certain airlines. My dad who has worked extensively in the travel industry has told me several instances where this initiative was discussed in Travel Technology conferences a few years ago. Travel companies have acknowledged the fact that data is extremely valuable to their success and that they can take this data and use it to build innovative ideas and applications and increase their performance on a whole. People usually spend a lot of time on long haul flights and this can be made productive by letting people choosing to sit next to someone with whom they share a lot in common with or with someone  with whom they can connect with on a professional level and use it a business opportunity. This can be easily implemented by incorporating LinkedIn or social networking profiles into the online ticketing portal and users have the opportunity to choose their travel companion or simply opt out of the service. This is only a brief explanation to what this kind of application can generate and there are many extended application to this.

As mentioned Big Data can provide infinite possibilities to the travel industry which is always encountering challenges and is looking for innovative ideas. This is a topic which has tremendous potential for discussions this is just a brief glimpse of the numerous opportunities.

References: Alex Kremer-Tnooz Talking Travel Technology