data is a bit messy. Outside of a few large TMCs, there is no consistency. Hotel data management is a whole story in itself. Yet you need all this information to do the profiling and the RFPs [requests for proposal].”
MANAGING DEMAND Buyers need strategic data to help them with future decisions. Big data is about collecting and analysing data from multiple sources to help decision-making. This is not new. Buyers have always compared booked with flown and used card and expense management data as well as booked. What is new is looking to non-travel data.
Keesup Choe collects “the stuff which is usually ignored”, that from social media and other web sources. Choe then lets the algorithms work out the correlations rather than choosing the sets and charting the re- lationship. “Let the machine suggest patterns that give you insight into potential increases and decreases in demand,” he says. Tony Pilcher, now an independent con- sultant but for many years head of travel at HSBC, says: “We in the travel industry need to look at other people in the real world.
Dedicated data projects don’t come cheap, but the rewards can be great
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. The technology investment is not cheap so, not surprisingly says Choe, “companies will give first priority to marketing and sales, not the travel department”. But travel managers can use outsource specialists such as PI to achieve the same objectives. Those that can’t or don’t want to use an independent data specialist solu- tion can be reassured that travel technology companies and TMCs have also recognised the value of multi-source, real-time data.
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. If managers do not see reports until a couple of weeks after the reporting time, opportunity has been lost, according to Choe. He explains: “If you receive your February report on March 15 and it shows there’s been a spike in travel to Hungary, it will be several weeks later that you will be contacting the business unit to find out why. Getting access to more timely informa- tion allows you to do demand management.”
DYNAMIC DATA Matthew Pancaldi, HRG’s global client management director, also believes this is vital. “What’s happened in the past with a customer isn’t necessarily what they will do in the future. We’re trying to help the cus- tomer to manage their costs in a revenue
46 BBT MAY/JUNE 2014
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
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