Data analysis creates offers that customers appreciate

How Big Data is transforming tourism

March 9, 2022

Data is the new oil, but how can it be used in tourism? On Wednesday three professionals gave insights into their strategies at the ITB Berlin Convention. Within the framework of the eTravelTracks and at the panel discussion entitled “The Power of BI: New Data Trends and Data Skills for the Travel Industry” Andreas Wulfes, CEO of Neusta Data Intelligence, Hayley Berg, Head of Price Intelligence at Hopper, and Mathias Gerber, Regional Director Central Europe at Sojern, showed what they have in store.

Giving travellers access to favourably priced offers is the vision of the travel app Hopper – an app that does not just support the booking transaction but also advises users making a booking about the best time in terms of the price or whether they should delay their decision.

As Hayley Berg explained, the company adopts a three-stage approach. It begins by looking back with a comprehensive documentation of changing prices. For this purpose the company has compiled an online archive comprising billions of data sets. This data is then evaluated using artificial intelligence and patterns that are identified are used to predict prices. The self-learning algorithm analyses price movements over the past three to five years along with price trends from the past few weeks. In the third stage the findings are then translated into a simple recommendation for customers. The company also uses the data that is obtained and evaluated in the creation of customised fintech offers, such as travel insurance that produces added value for the company.

Aiming not at the end user but at the providers of tourism services, Sojern is a company that offers tourism providers an evaluation of market data to enable them to adapt their pricing models accordingly. “We already have some 10,000 customers, including airlines, hotel groups, DMOs and individual hotels”, reported Matthias Gerber. “We analyse when and why people travel, and we use business intelligence and data science in order to identify guest profiles, i.e. the people behind the search”. Using this as a basis, strategies can be deployed to attract online users as customers.

More general market trends are deal with by Andreas Wulfes and Neusta Data Intelligence, with the aim of using data analysis to support pricing. At the ITB Berlin Convention 2022 he gave some insights into next summer’s booking trends. The greatest interest among Germans is in Turkey, especially the Antalya region, followed by Spain, especially Mallorca, and by Greece. So far few potential travellers are showing much interest yet in long haul journeys in the summer of 2022. Those who are considering longer distances are mainly heading for the Dominican Republic, the Maldives, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius or the USA.