Travel industry enters “age of experimentation”
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Travel companies that are willing to experiment and embrace big data will be best placed to succeed in the future, a new report has stated.
In its latest white paper, entitled “Defining the future of travel through intelligence”, Amadeus says that technology and big data are changing the travel experience, and that companies now need to obtain a “360-degree view of travellers” in order to create tailored experiences that meet their individual needs and preferences.
And the companies that succeed in doing this, according to Amadeus, will be those that are willing to experiment.
“It won’t be enough to assume future success by continuing with the products, services and patterns that have been effective so far,” the report states. “A changing environment requires new products, services and collaboration opportunities across the industry that meet the new expectations of travellers – and surpass what’s on offer from the rest of the market. Innovation requires travel companies to imagine ways to do things differently, or indeed, to do new things altogether.”
The travel industry is entering, according to the report, an “age of experimentation”, in which the travel companies that succeed will be those that try and test new ideas. And the ideas most likely to succeed, it added, will be those that take an “analytics-enabled approach” to innovation.
“Today, not only do travel players have unprecedented volumes of data to work with, but computing power is increasing exponentially, giving them the ability to unlock the benefits of analytics and automation,” said Pascal Clement, head of travel intelligence at the Amadeus IT Group. “The companies that are more likely to succeed in the future travel industry will be those that embrace big data and experimentation.”
Using big data and intelligent technology that remembers customer preferences, travel providers will be able to create completely new products and services for their clients, according to Amadeus.
For example, if a traveller is watching a film on a plane and they like the setting, they could discover the location where the film was shot through a single touch of the screen, and then be presented with destination information and the opportunity to book travel to that location.
“Every step in a traveller’s journey – from searching for a timetable or checking in to a hotel – creates data. This data, if picked up from hundreds of points across the travel network, presents a valuable opportunity for travel companies to transform it into meaningful information to facilitate strategic, tactical and operational decisions, ultimately to the benefit of the traveller,” the report stated.
Achieving these deep analytical insights will involve not only travel data, but also external information such as weather, geographical, social media and spend data. When companies are able to integrate both their own data and that of third parties, they will be equipped to develop breakthrough products and services.
In the past, this data acquisition, coupled with limited computing power, posed the biggest hurdle to fully realising the potential of analytics. But this is no longer the case; travel companies now have unprecedented volumes of data to work with, and computing power is increasing exponentially, enabling companies to harness the benefits of analytics and automation.
“As market dynamics in the travel industry evolve with unprecedented rapidity and new competitive threats emerge, responsiveness to your environment becomes the key to success and growth. Companies that embrace a culture of collaboration, combined with a flexible and agile technology environment, will be rewarded,” Clement added.
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