Around the World with Big Data

Big Data and the Future of the Travel Industry

photo cred: frosch insider

Millennials are all about experiences.  They are not as concerned as the generation before them with building wealth through owning multiple homes and staying with companies for 20 years.  It is more normal for them to take a year off of work to go travel and see the world.  With that, and the internet making us a much smaller world, the travel industry is a massive industry and continuously growing.  It is expected to grow to 10% of the entire Global GDP by 2022, or an annual revenue of around $10 trillion.  An industry of this size will only benefit and become more efficient with the use of big data.  A traveler leaves behind a massive amount of data for companies to leverage.  Everything from your location, flight path, hotel rating preference, to how you move your mouse when on a travel site.  And travel companies are no stranger to storing this data.  Hotels, airlines, online travel agencies, airports etc. are all getting on board with the gigantic advantage that big data will bring to the future of their industry.

The first and possibly most important aspect that big data will bring to the travel industry is the ability for personalization in the passenger journey.  Wouldn’t it be great to log on to your favorite travel site and not have to tell it every time that you won’t stay in a hotel that is less than 4 stars?  Or that you’re a millennial going backpacking so budget friendly is always your preference.  With the use of big data companies can enhance the customer experience by making it more focused around each traveler’s personal preference.  Big data is not just to profile the traveler but to have true personalization – recommend a specific hotel to a specific traveler based on their specific wants, need and purchase patterns as opposed to generic recommendations based on the type of traveler.  Personalization is huge in travel because it is not just a transaction or a purchase travel is an experience and an emotional one that makes the ability to personalize that journey the most important aspect in the future of travel because it will lead to higher conversions and better customer retention.

While personalization and enhancing the consumer experience is great for the customer it is also great for the business.  However, because the traveler leaves behind so much data and in so many different spots the next step for companies is to be able to consolidate all that data to make is useful.  With the use of big data travel companies will be able to do that and will have a much better insight when to serve their content and to who.  An example to sum up the above, if a customer searches for a vacation on an online travel agency and leaves the site to go to Facebook and posts a status that says “I hate the snow” well that online travel agency could use their data (if able to consolidate it) to show not to serve a ski vacation ad to that traveler. 

Companies know that big data is the future for their travel organizations and have started to heavily invest it in. The airline, JetBlue has started a subsidiary called JetBlue Technology Ventures that is going to partner with all different types of up-and-coming tech minds throughout the country and be based out of silicon valley to with the aim of serving as a launch pad for innovations that improve customer and crew experiences and increase the airline’s operational efficiency. TravelClick’s Business Intelligence tool, Demand360, is growing internationally and has just signed 8 more major international hotel brands to share their future and historic data.

Big data is absolutely the future of travel, for the traveler and the companies.  Through personalization and abilities to predict future demand, big data leaves the consumer and the company in a win-win situation.