AI, Analytics and DS: pool of opportunities for the hospitality industry
n the last 10 years, digital transformation has spurred numerous innovations and disruptions in the travel industry. Digital and data-centric technologies have enabled the hospitality and travel sector to redefine customer experience. More recently, mobile technologies have taken center stage as pre-purchase behavior among consumers, is increasingly dominated by extensive research and comparison of multiple options through smartphones and mobile apps.
A key benefit of using digital technologies for customer-facing processes is that, they produce a tremendous amount of data for travel companies. Customers create data on multiple touchpoints through historical online searches, past bookings of hotels and flights, reviews, referrals, etc., and greater the number of touch points, more detailed are the insights. Given such a surge in the volume of data from so many platforms, brands can sometimes find it intimidating to make sense of all this information and apply it productively. However, this is precisely where integrating data science and analytics, can offer a brand huge dividends.
Where does data science fit into the game?
The expectations of each customer are as varied as their purpose of travel. Hence, identifying customer demands and meeting their expectations can be a daunting task for the travel and hospitality sector. Nonetheless, these expectations have to be met and exceeded in order to retain customers and elicit their loyalty towards the brand. To this end, more and more brands are integrating data-driven tools and advanced analytics into their enterprise solutions to derive contextual insights through their interactions with both existing and potential customers. These tools can play a major role in helping brands deliver a seamless and satisfying customer experience, especially for high-involvement purchasing activities like booking hotels or leisure services.
