Living in a society filled with smart gadgets and devices means that every day, your mobile phone, your dating app, and your search queries are being recorded, stored then sold as valuable data. The same applies to your searches for flights, tours and bookings made directly with the airline, online or with the travel agent. But how are companies finding this data valuable? What can they extrapolate from it?
Let’s examine how travel data can be used for not tourism purposes. Sit tight as you will be blown away by its versatility and functionality across wider industries. We will demonstrate how future bookings can identify consumer trends and behaviour that are priceless nuggets of information for companies seeking to fix problems.
Travel data for Big Pharma
Ever wondered how pharmaceutical companies and even NGOs like Medicins Sans Frontier stay equipped with an adequate amount of medicine such as vaccines or pills for malaria, yellow fever, and such?
Or how they can potentially predict the next hotspot for viruses? They rely on data which shows them the expected volumes of people travelling in and out of a disease-infected area. And this data can even be broken down to the top flying nationalities so airports and airlines are equipped in advance in addition to the national tourism authorities who can issue warnings and alerts of health pandemics.
Media Agencies and travel data
Have you ever walked down the gates of an airport terminal to find products on sale that are just what you were after? Welcome to the world of programmatic media buying and product placement based on traveller statistics.
Nowadays many media agencies can design hyper-target campaigns and rely on contextual advertising due to the availability of travel data which shows them the traveller profile, nationality mix and even cabin class preference (ideal for luxury brands and products).
“Data is not only instrumental towards targeting the right people at the right time, but it can also improve the efficiency of creative campaigns with real-time, relevant messaging, and consequently optimising the audience retention,” says Marina Giuliano, VP of Sales for Media Agencies at ForwardKeys.
Hedge Funds, Portfolio Managers and Alpha Dogs
A completely different language is spoken in the world of finance where the pace is fast, and actions speak louder than words. Travel data is sourced as “alternative data” and the source is not to be shared or promoted to anyone, rather it is safeguarded as a “secret weapon” to maintain the upper hand on the market trends and value proposition of assets.
This way the value and demand for properties/ real estate, airlines, hotels, and even destinations can be determined by flight schedules and seat capacity daily, weekly, and monthly with future-looking forecasts determining the price of stocks or shares. Should we sell now or later, is the question on their mind.
Natural Resources such as Petroleum Companies
While one part of the world is leading hotly contested discussion on reducing carbon emissions and creating a better green footprint for future generations; others are examining the consumption of fuel for production purposes, gauging prices of gas based on demand and quantity, determining the cost of airfares and the fleet of aircraft to fly based on the cost of fuel.
And to determine all of this they need indicators of travel intent and travel demand by bookings – from a global perspective down to the local fleet and market.
“The ForwardKeys data is incredibly valuable for commercial jet fuel hedging investors. By analysing airlines’ load factors, they can quite accurately predict the volatility of specific routes and the demand for fuel,” shares Maria Rodrigues, VP of Sales in Finance and Aviation.
Theme parks, tourist landmarks and travel data
This example perhaps is the least shocking one on this list but is nevertheless a great example to showcase merely to highlight how savvy an owner of a theme park can be.
By using travel data, namely air ticketing data, tourist attractions can determine which source markets are key players, understand the booking patterns and determine adequate entry fees to improve the profit margins.
Correlation reports are pivotal in such cases and can improve market penetration of the different types of tourists in their locations. The data makes it blatantly clear what the new opportunities are. Read here a recent use case of a famous “unnamed” theme park franchise.
Conclusion
The usefulness and ability to transform business goals of travel data are endless. By reading this article, we hope it has inspired you to re-think the importance of such data and seek more data-led solutions in the future.
“The versatility and adaptability of the data solutions at ForwardKeys are unlike anything else in the market. I can switch from solving business problems in Snowflake for a client in finance and half an hour later be on the phone with a tourism board in Brazil, helping them make better data-backed tourism strategies,” adds Rodrigues.
About ForwardKeys
Since its inception in 2010, ForwardKeys has been driven to provide science-led answers for the travel and hospitality sector. These answers are backed by the most comprehensive air ticketing data in the world that is checked and aggregated daily from airlines, OTAs and GDSs. Furthermore, it is not all machine-led but supported by analysts and customer success managers around the clock in English, French, Spanish, Mandarin, and Dutch.
The latest innovations at ForwardKeys allow clients to embed the data files directly into their dashboards via Licensed Datasets and Data Smarts. Learn more and visit: https://forwardkeys.com/licensed-datasets/