In the latest issue of BBTBetty Low analyses ways data can be used to help manage the future of travel. Here is a rundown of ways to make this happen for your business:
Benchmark data against a wider range of travel profiles
TMCs do produce data which allow their clients to benchmark their fares with those of other corporates of similar travel profile but this is inadequate. If you benchmark only against your own kind, you might not understand the wider marketplace.
Collect non-travel data
The travel Industry needs to look at other people in the real world. They look at data to identify trends to sell products, to see where people are and what people are buying.
Companies whose business is selling, such as retail, are likely to have big data projects. This technology is not cheap and not surprisingly companies will give first priority to marketing and sales, not the travel department.
But travel managers can use outsource specialists to achieve the same results. Those that can’t or don’t can be reassured that travel technology companies and TMCs have also recognised the value of multi-source, real-time data.
Travel technology firms and TMCs have recognised the value of multi-source dataDedicated data projects
So what specific data might help buyers? Susan Hopley, founder and CEO of information trading platform The Data Exchange, quotes the example of a corporate that wanted daily data on average fares, including leisure, on 40 city pairs across multiple agencies.
Another client wanted the average room rates of hundreds of specified hotels around the globe according to place of purchase.
Keesup Choe, CEO of data analysis firm PI, explains that dedicated data projects don’t come cheap, but the rewards can be great. Savings of up to 10 per cent are not unrealistic, If your travel programme is US$50 million, it becomes a significant amount,” he says.
Real-time information
The Travelport Booking Feed shows all bookings in real time, so that corporates know what has been booked before ticketing. The travel technology firm is about to unveil a product which can monitor the real prices available on routes. Carriers will be able to monitor their fares against those of other carriers to see how competitive their fares are and corporate customers can have this information in real-time.
Aggregate your data
Airlines know market shares, but individual buyers are not allowed, by the terms of their contracts, to share their airlines’ pricing data with other corporates. However, buyers could be better prepared for the bargaining table if they joined to aggregate their data in a way which masked the identity of any individual company.
Click here to read the full article on statistic strategies from the latest issue of BBT.